Lots to love in this one. Pro Alex Crum takes us inside the psyche of an MLP Dreambreaker specialist. We explore the underlying tenet of our collective, unrelenting love of pickleball (hint: it’s all about flow). And special guest Federico Staksrud joins the PicklePod to debate the heroes and villains of pro pickleball.
In This Issue:
— Ranking the best sports movies ever
— Beating the 5 common types of player
— Is Anna Leigh actually the villain?
This is the good stuff.
Our Picks 👆
🌎 Universal: Most Common Beginner Mistakes
Know someone who’s just getting into pickleball? That’s great! Now do them a solid and pass this along: a list of the most common beginner mistakes, as compiled by the Reddit community. Hitting too hard. Hanging out in no-man’s land. Blaming the paddle. Yep, they’re all in here.
🔥 Ranking: The Best Sports Movies Ever
Zane and Nico are back with another ranking, this time debating history’s greatest sports movies. No spoilers, but we’ll say this: “Field of Dreams,” “Rudy,” “Friday Night Lights,” and “Slap Shot”… all didn’t make the cut.
🚨 Summer Sale: Top-Shelf Paddles, Basement Prices
Holbrook. Six Zero. Honolulu. Franklin. Friday. RPM. And that’s not all. Our friends at JustPaddles are offering some serious summer sales right now, with discounts up to 70% off. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, check here first. Use code THEDINK at checkout.
👀 Sneak Peek: MLP Orlando
User “Lucas” shared this pic on our Discord channel (you can join that here) of the MLP Orlando setup from inside the arena at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. Action gets underway tomorrow. Here’s everything you need to know.
How to Beat the 5 Most Common Types of Opponent
By and large, pickleball players tend to fall into a handful of distinct categories. Every player has strengths and tendencies, after all; the way they manifest on the court can determine, for example, whether they spin a lot or prefer to just hit the crap out of every ball.
The first skill you need is determining what types of players your opponents are. And fast. From there, deploy these strategies to quickly gain the upper hand.
✅ Player Type 1: The Banger — Don’t fight fire with fire. Block or punch balls back at their feet, and make them move as much as possible. Bangers hate the kitchen because the geometry isn’t in their favor. That’s where you need to cook.
✅ Player Type 2: The Lobber — Lobs are pretty easy to predict once you know what to look for, mainly a quick inversion of the wrist so the paddle face opens wide. Hit a lob back with 70% power, aiming deep. And remember, you can always let it bounce first. No shame in that game.
✅ Player Type 3: The Patient Dinker — Move them around constantly. And only attack if two things are true at the same time: the ball bounces above your knee AND your feet are planted and balanced.
✅ Player Type 4: The Spinner — Simply put, use their spin against them: counter a slice with topspin; sidespin with sidespin in the same direction; and topspin with a slice. Through it all, remember to stay low and watch the ball through contact. Spinner: neutralized.
✅ Player Type 5: The Wall — Here, you need to make their resets unpredictable and uncomfortable. Send balls at their paddle-side hips and shoulders. Hit a few at their shins. Throw in a lob. They want nice and easy. You need to counter with controlled chaos.
Easy peasy, right?
This Bread & Butter Sale Is Loco
Bread & Butter put the Loco on sale at noon today, which is notable mostly because it almost never dips this low in price. This is the paddle a lot of people, us included, called 2025's best.
And your Dink code stacks on their discount. Add THEDINK at checkout, and it lands around $130. For this paddle, that's the kind of number that doesn't come around often.
It won't be at $130 forever.
Grab the Loco and stack code THEDINK.
Pickleball and the Pursuit of Flow
Why do we love pickleball so much?
NYC entrepreneur and 5.5 player Ben Grant gets asked this all the time.
The easy answers, he says, we all know. Pickleball is social. It is accessible and easier to learn than tennis. It can be played for enjoyment or competitively at almost any age with pretty much anyone.
But there’s a deeper answer, he contends, and it’s all about flow, the nexus of activity and focus when “time seems to disappear, self-consciousness fades, and action can begin to feel almost automatic.”
As he writes in a new guest post for The Dink:
“In pickleball, you could think of flow as what happens when the DUPR rating, or combined DUPRs, on both sides of the court are close enough that the outcome is uncertain. The game is neither too easy nor too hard. Challenge matches skill. And when that balance is right, people can get completely pulled into a game.”
A group of people experiencing flow on the court only amplifies the experience. And there’s an even more elevated state we pursue, often without realizing it: complete control.
“Pickleball gives people movement, competition, connection, improvement, and joy. But more than anything, it gives people a place to put their full attention,” he says. “In a world that constantly pulls that attention apart, that is no small feat. It may be the deeper reason we all keep running it back.”
Is Anna Leigh Waters… a Villain?
On this week’s PicklePod, the guys are joined by MLP heavyweight Federico Staksrud, who was recently traded from Orlando to the New Jersey 5s.
The motivation there seems pretty clear: New Jersey desperately wants the title this year, but will almost certainly need to get through St. Louis to do it. Ask anyone who wins a series between Noe Khlif and Will Howells (5s) vs. Gabe Tardio and Hayden Patriquin (Shock), and the youngsters are the heavy favorites across the board.
Fed instantly and dramatically changes that equation.
His trade also brought up a fun debate: Who are the heroes and villains of professional pickleball?
There are a few obvious villains, at least in the guys’ minds: Hayden. Lea Jansen. Christian Alshon.
Ben Johns is an unwilling hero. Zane might be more akin to Donkey from Shrek. As for Fed himself: “I’m historically a villain. But I’m trying to be a hero.”
In the case of ALW, though, it gets a bit more complicated.
“Anna Leigh Waters is always the character in a movie that other people are trying to dethrone,” says Zane. “She’s so good… she’s always the one trying to be knocked off by the hero.”
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Pro Pickleball’s Most Stressful Job
Alex Crum has made a name for himself as one of MLP’s new breed of Dreambreaker specialists, players whose primary role is to jump into a match when everything is on the line for four, maybe eight points at a time.
That’s it. Hours, lifetimes of preparation. All for a few short minutes of chaos — and maybe even glory.
“It's nerve-racking. But it's also incredibly rewarding,” he tells us. “Everyone is tighter than normal. Even the best players miss volleys and passing shots they'd make 99 times out of 100.”
“My first priority isn't hitting something spectacular,” he says. “It's making balls.”
Hear more from Alex, in his own words, about how he prepares mentally and physically for a role that’s pickleball’s equivalent of an NFL field goal kicker.
He’s currently 16-8 on the season for title contender Columbus Sliders. So we’d say his bona fides are pretty solid.
Headlines & Quick Hits
The Return Adjustment That Saves Senior Players’ Legs
Why You Keep Getting Jammed By Shots at Your Feet
Parris Todd’s 5 Keys to the Twoey Backhand Counter
Highlights
Federico Staksrud is anti-bucket hat
The most nonchalant rec player ever
One very confusing Guess My DUPR
Missed a recent issue? We've got you covered
A review from the Dink Fam...
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