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After two consecutive years of heartbreak, Anna Leigh Waters and the New Jersey 5s have at long last banished their demons and won an MLP Championship.

It was a record-breaking, sensational spectacle in New York City. And The Dink team was there every minute to capture the action. We’ve got a full recap, plus highlights, below.

In This Issue:
— 15 bad habits hurting your game
— Debate: kids at open play?
— MLP has a new champion

Let’s do it.

Major League Pickleball set an all-time single-day attendance record on Saturday, seeing a whopping 4,200 fans punch their tickets in Central Park. The Dink crew was there in force — check out our recap of all the action.

PPA pro Lea Jansen didn’t always play with JOOLA. But once she tried the Scorpeus she was hooked. And she’s never looked back. Here’s her paddle progression through the years — from widebody to curved-top elongated.

What do you do when your partner won’t come up to the kitchen line? Words of encouragement are great, but they won’t win you any games. The real solution is a bit more direct: Poach as much as possible. It might sound cutthroat, but it’ll work. You stay in the game, they (hopefully) get the message.

Mere hours after the conclusion of the MLP season, pro pickleball is back. That’s right, the PPA Tour starts, well, right now… the Veolia Pickleball National Championships begin today in Cary, North Carolina. All your favorite players are in the mix. More than $1.5M in total prize money is on the line.

We’ve been down this road before, but it’s rarely a pro dispensing the advice.

Lucky for you, Zane Navratil is sick of seeing all us average Joes make the same silly mistakes over and over. So he’s here to do something about it.

He lays out 15 bad habits hurting your game the most. Here are five to give you a taste of what’s in store.

👎 Reach instead of feet. Yes, taking the balls out of the air is a priority. But get in the mindset of moving your feet first, every shot. Solid base, feet under your shoulders. Now choose your next adventure.

👎 Too much wrist. For most players, extra wrist action leads to inconsistency on dinks, drops, and resets. Lock it up, get the ball back low, and wait for your chance to attack.

👎 Just dinking around. Dinking to just keep the point alive and hoping something good happens is a strategy… it’s just a losing one. Every shot should have intention. If not, you’re playing to lose.

👎 Skipping the overgrip. How you set up your paddle is your business. But stock grips don’t stay grippy once you start sweating. They just don’t. That extra control could make all the difference when it matters most.

👎 Watching your work. Ball-watching your best shots is the surest way to get crushed on the very next shot. If that drop is dropping, move your feet and get your butt to the kitchen.

If you’re relating to any of this (and we know you are), there are 10 more pro tips where this came from.

➡️ Zane’s top 15 bad pickleball habits.

Most court shoes aren’t built for pickleball.

The lateral cuts, the hard stops, the slides – it's a different grind than any other sport.

A few months of real play and the tread is gone. The shoe looks fine. The grip isn't.

The CourtStrike Pro 3.0 is built around that. Outrigger and grip pattern designed for side-to-side. Lightest iteration yet. And it comes with a six-month outsole warranty.

That's Selkirk saying they've done the math on how hard pickleball is on shoes. They like their odds.

Shop the CourtStrike Pro 3.0 and use code ADV-THEDINK for $20 back.

What. An. Ending.

If the pickleball powers that be could have scripted their perfect conclusion to the MLP season, it’s hard to imagine it going any better than what unfolded over the weekend.

As everyone hoped, the season ultimately came down to St. Louis vs. New Jersey. The 5s vs. the Shock. Anna Leigh Waters against Anna Bright. Hayden Patriquin dueling against his friend and PPA doubles partner Federico Staksrud.

The 5s won it in two series. Anna Leigh finally has her MLP title to add to the trophy case.

But it was anything but convincing. Both matches went to a Dreambreaker, albeit in dramatically different ways.

In the end, NJ was just too much. But it wasn’t all Anna Leigh Waters.

The MLP Finals MVP was Federico Staksrud — an honor he earned through and through. There is playoff intensity. Then there’s what Fed brought to every single second his team was on the court, culminating in launching his shoes and socks into the crowd after winning it all.

For the last time in 2026, here’s what you missed from an incredible MLP event over the weekend.

➡️ Full recap: 2026 MLP Finals

A frustrated rec player took to Reddit to vent a recent open play experience.

On top of numerous players clearly being below the listed DUPR range, he said, “One guy brought his 11-year-old boy to play with us. He is good for his age, but he is not 3.0 level yet… No one wanted to play with the boy. People left early. He wasn't the only one.”

Open play, as we all know, can be a bit of a toss-up when it comes to skill levels. Everyone wants to think they’re better than they are.

But bringing a kid is different territory.

If he’s good enough, then great. But if his skillset is sub-par, or even borderline, it’s probably best to start in a lower group until there’s no doubt he can hang.

Sandbagging goes both ways, after all.

➡️ What do you think?

A fault ends the rally instantly. No review, no do-over.

But the list of ways to commit one is longer than most players think, and several of them catch even solid 4.0 players on a weekly basis.

We broke down every fault category, serve violations, kitchen faults, the two-bounce rule, out-of-bounds edge cases, straight from USA Pickleball's 2025 rulebook, plus the four most common self-inflicted mistakes.

If you've ever argued a call at rec play, this settles it.

Stop giving away free points.

Anna Leigh Waters just won her first MLP Championship — playing with a mysterious new paddle nobody is ready to talk about.

The Franklin “?” popped up on the UPA-A Approved Paddle List a couple weeks back, and sure enough ALW debuted it over the weekend at MLP NYC.

We’ve been asking around, and don’t have much to report by way of details just yet.

We’ve heard it’s a necessary iteration stemming from JOOLA’s sweeping patent infringement lawsuit announced back in April, which named Franklin as one of the brands. But nothing confirmed there.

Stay tuned. We’re on it.

➡️ Here’s what else we know.

A review from the Dink Fam...

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