The “dead” dink is a misunderstood and wrongly maligned shot in our sport. It is one of those areas of the game where a few coaches and content creators created a stigma around a shot that is critical to good play and, in doing so, hampered the games of thousands of pickleball players. Let’s fix […]
JW and Jorja Johnson have been the second-best mixed doubles team on the PPA Tour for the past 2+ years. From 2023-25, they appeared in 19 finals, won 5 gold medals and beat Ben Johns/Anna Leigh Waters twice. In Major League Pickleball they teamed up on the Dallas Flash and went 26-7 in 2024 and […]
They don’t call it “Mixed Troubles” for nothing. While a regular pickleball partnership has its own challenges, playing pickleball with your significant other is a different sort of challenge altogether. Below we’ll explore tools to help lifetime partners who wish to also be pickleball partners. There is a world in which this can happen – […]
This article applies to the majority of pickleball players (72% based on DUPR ratings). Before you shut down your computer (or phone) screaming “heresy!” … hear me out. I do not offer this coaching advice lightly. After all, it runs directly contrary to the general consensus. The third-shot drop is the quintessential pickleball shot. From […]
There’s a lesson we can all learn from what is so far the biggest upset of 2026 on the PPA Tour. Last month at the PPA Tour Mesa Cup, Anna Bright/Hayden Patriquin stunned Ben Johns/Anna Leigh Waters by rolling to a three-game sweep in the gold-medal match. On match point, Bright sent a third-shot drop […]
Let us know if this sounds like you: When you started playing pickleball, you knew nothing about it. But it seemed interesting, so you learned a little bit here and a little more over there. Eventually, you felt OK about your game, but then … you were stuck. That is what we refer to in […]
The pro pickleball players who constantly succeed share a trait: The ability to consistently execute on their plan. I am thinking of this as “Disciplined Execution.” In my vernacular, “Disciplined Execution” means doing your best to develop, stick to, and execute a game plan. It is important to always include “doing your best” in any […]
We are entering interesting times at the top of pro pickleball. For a long time now, order has prevailed in the men’s doubles division. Ben and Collin Johns were able to wear opponents down with a steady soft game diet. Drop, move forward, dink, wait for a mistake or a ball that Ben could attack. […]
Want to play better pickleball in 2026? Here are 6 shots that you want to make sure you have in your game. I bet you could use improvement on at least 4 of the 6, especially if you’re a 3.5 or 4.0 player looking to improve your rating this year. 1. A reliable backhand return […]
Every pickleball player uses metrics when they play as a way of measuring performance. Even the score is just a metric: How many points you have compared to your opponent. There are useful metrics, like how many serves am I missing per game on average. And there are useless metrics, like your unforced errors (more on […]
