Opinion: Pickleball has a paddle culture problem
Last Edited
Jan 05 2025
Category
Community
For a game that is rapidly changing, there’s been at least one constant in pickleball at both the amateur and pro levels over the past 2 years: players complaining about paddles.
They’re too hot. They’re too gritty. How can such-and-such paddle be legal?
Those conversations were reignited recently when USA Pickleball announced that several power paddles would be sunset on July 1 and ineligible for USAP-sanctioned play after that date.
In its statement announcing the decision, USAP said paddles with an “excessive trampoline effect can compromise the integrity of the sport by reducing the emphasis on finesse, control, and skill, giving players an unfair advantage.”
This idea that certain paddles are unfair started with pro players and paddle reviewers questioning the CRBN 1x Power Series in the spring of 2023, then turning their skepticism to the Gearbox Pro Power Elongated later that year. Those complaints grew even louder in 2024 with the release of the JOOLA Gen 3 paddles and then the Mod TA-15 this summer.
Your equipment is your choice
While modern power paddles are undoubtedly an advantage over the equipment of 2 or 3 years ago, I struggle to understand how they could be considered an unfair advantage when they are available to everybody – albeit at a higher price these days.
Do I have an unfair advantage over my opponent if I’m wearing the best court shoes on the market and they show up in sandals? It’s definitely an advantage, but that’s an equipment choice that we both made.
The eagerness by pros to question any new paddle simply because it has more power or spin than previous equipment has trickled down to amateurs and created a toxic culture where players’ accomplishments are diminished by fellow competitors simply because they are using the best (legal) paddle technology on the market.
It couldn't have been the hours they spent drilling or working out every week, time spent watching film or the lessons they took to improve their game. They won just because of their paddle. How’s that for unfair?
Equipment plays a role in all sports
Similar equipment advantages exist in almost every other sport – golf clubs, baseball bats/gloves, basketball and football shoes, hockey sticks, etc. If you want to use top-of-the-line gear, you’re free to do so without judgement in those sports. Pickleball players should take note.
After the USAP announcement, pro player Rob Nunnery (among others) questioned whether the JOOLA Mod TA-15 should be banned even ahead of the USAP sunset date of July 1.
But there is precedent for handling it this way in other sports. In 2008, the United States Golf Association announced that they would be changing the groove standards for irons and wedges to limit spin. That rule went into effect for pros in 2010 – 2 years after the announcement! – and for amateurs in 2014.
In the meantime, pros and amateurs continued to use their old equipment (because it was better) up until the very last day possible – without judgement from their peers. No asterisks, no whining. The equipment was legal at the time they were using it.
I hope we see the same with the paddles that will be sunset in 6 months. They are within the USAP rules until midnight on June 30, and players should be able to use them in USAP-sanctioned events with clear conscience up until then.
Players can’t be the ones drawing the line
Part of this issue is on the paddle companies for making paddles that can and do change drastically over time, becoming significantly more powerful than they were out of the box. That puts players in an impossible position of trying to determine when a paddle has gone from “broken in” to “illegal and unsafe."
No player knows for sure where that line is unless they're playing a pro tournament with paddle testing (99.9% of us aren’t). But we’ve ended up in a position where amateur players across the country are trying to draw their own lines and accusing others of cheating with absolutely no evidence to back that up.
That's not healthy for the sport.
We can’t have players like Rob Nunnery making their own personal list of approved paddles.
It’s time we let the governing bodies do the governing and stop shaming our fellow competitors for what they choose to play with.
Join Pickleball’s Greatest Community
Subscribe to our FREE newsletter to be the most well-informed pickleball fan on the court, featuring news, giveaways, and much more!
