^{Advertise | The Dink Home | Shop Gear | Subscribe}

DUPR’s dominance knows no bounds. The rating system already favored by rec players everywhere, not to mention MLP and the PPA Tour, is now the official ratings partner of USA Pickleball.

That’s right, folks: UTR is out, DUPR is in. What does this mean for the APP Tour, which partners with USAP on their Golden Ticket Tournaments? We asked around and found out, below.

In This Issue:
— Automated line calls coming to MLP
— UPA-A takes fight to fake paddles
— Watch The Dink MiLP Nattys live

What’s your DUPR?

The saga has ended: Carmel-by-the-Sea has become the first city in California to outlaw public pickleball outright. City Council voted Wednesday to enact a permanent ban on the sport at Forest Hills Park, the only outdoor public courts within city limits. What’s next, ice cream? Puppies?

To be the best, you should emulate the best, right? One Reddit user came up with a clever hack to learn from the pros: watching matches at half speed. From footwork to paddle positioning to shot selection, it all comes to life when you slow things way down. Give it a try.

Google Gemini wants to improve your pickleball game. AI is getting so smart, it can now critique your technique in seconds based on a simple video upload. Focus areas, smarter strategies, even recommended drills based on performance. Just don’t expect any insider tips and tricks; you’ll have to keep coming to us for that.

The Dink Minor League Pickleball National Championship is popping off in Dallas. We’ve got a team dressed as the Founding Fathers. And another as Dolly Parton, complete with wigs flying off mid-match (link below). But don’t get it twisted: the competition is fierce and these teams are playing to win. Tune in live on The Dink YouTube Channel all weekend.

Ever have one of those games where you just keep dumping easy dinks into the net? Yeah, us too.

Maybe you're feeling extra nervous for some reason. Perhaps your opponents are super aggressive at the kitchen line and you're struggling to keep up. Or maybe you're playing with a new partner and you don't want to let them down.

Whatever the case, playing tight at the net is a recipe for lost points piling up on you. Before you know it, you're in a cycle of self-sabotage:

So how do you hit your way out of this bad situation? When you feel this start to happen, the simplest fix is to force yourself to follow through on every shot.

✅ Keep your follow-through motion compact and consistent
✅ Don’t let your paddle cross over the plane of your body
✅ Remember to snap back to a ready position

An effective follow-through helps reset your rhythm and get you back to basics. Think of it this way: you’re not hitting a dink; you’re hitting through the dink. Every time.

Holiday parties are coming. You could show up with crackers and pretend it counts.

Or you could show up with Maui Nui’s Summer Sausage and instantly become the favorite guest.

These gift packs are clean, high-protein, wild-harvested, and actually delicious. Not greasy. Not heavy. Just bright, clean flavor. The Snack Stick 6-Pack is the easy move. The Summer Sausage is the power play.

Buy any four gifts and get a fifth free. Mix and match however you like. Head to mauinuivenison.com/THEDINK.

Good guests bring wine. Great guests bring Maui Nui.

A few weeks back, we exposed the dark underbelly of the pickleball paddle black market.

Clones or fakes of popular paddles from respected brands like Selkirk, JOOLA, CRBN, Six Zero and more are littered across sites like Alibaba and Temu. The secondary paddle market isn’t just alive and well, it’s positively booming.

It’s become an unavoidable issue — so much so, in fact, that UPA-A President Jason Aspes declared in a recent email to paddle brands it “has evolved into an existential threat to both the game and the legitimate business of paddle manufacturing.”

In that email, the UPA-A is calling for an open-sourced approach to gathering best practices to fight back against the rising tide of companies producing fake paddles.

The resulting list of specific steps, technologies, and practices paddle brands have implemented to help prevent counterfeiting, whether through authentication measures, supply chain controls, digital verification, or legal enforcement, will be pooled into one document and made public in the coming weeks.

"Our goal is to create a unified and proactive framework to help all brands safeguard their products and collectively protect the integrity of pickleball," said Aspes.

➡️ Read the full story.

Big news for any competitive pickleball players out there: DUPR is now the official rating system of USA Pickleball.

That’s right. UTR is out, DUPR is in.

The news, announced today, means that all match results from USA Pickleball-owned events, including its Golden Ticket tournaments where medalists earn their way to The USA Pickleball National Championships, will count toward players’ DUPR ratings.

“USA Pickleball adopting DUPR is a major milestone for our sport,” said Tito Machado, CEO of DUPR. “It brings the National Governing Body and the entire pickleball ecosystem under a unified, trusted rating framework.”

One lingering question is where this leaves APP, which until now has partnered with USAP for their Golden Ticket Tournaments.

Both USAP and APP confirmed to us that their partnership will continue. Which means… beginning in 2026, the APP Tour is jumping on the DUPR bandwagon as well.

➡️ Read the full story.

Midwest Racquet Sports is hooking you up with a Nike seasonal sale that hits up to 50% off.

Fresh fits. Fresh footwear. Fresh chance to convince your friends you leveled up over the holidays.

Men’s and women’s styles are all in the mix. Go get yourself right.

One of the biggest knocks against professional pickleball is that the players are still required to call their own lines. That’s like LeBron James deciding when he was fouled. Not a good look.

Implementing high-tech line-calling hardware systems used in other sports (like Hawk-Eye in pro tennis and football, among others) is a very costly endeavor. But as the sport continues to advance, and the game-speed gets faster and faster, it’s becoming an unavoidable necessity.

Major League Pickleball may have found a clever workaround: beginning next year, it will partner with Owl AI to bring their advanced generative AI and computer vision to analyze game video in near real time, delivering human-level accuracy to line calls and challenges.

The best part? As a 100% software-based solution, Owl AI will integrate with existing MLP broadcast cameras.

No word yet on whether (or when) this tech will hop the fence to the PPA Tour. But we’ll be keeping our Hawk-Eye on it.

A review from the Dink Fam...

Share the best newsletter in pickleball with your friends and you’ll get free stuff. What’s not to like?

{{rp_personalized_text}}

Copy & Paste this link: {{rp_refer_url_no_params}}

If your company is interested in reaching an audience of active pickleballers, you may want to give us a shout.