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We’ve all been there. You start a pickleball game feeling good. Vibes are high. And in a flash, the score is 0-5 and you’re wondering what hit you. Learning to play from behind is a necessary skill in our sport, just like that twoey roll or forehand flick. We lay out a few pro pointers, below.

In This Issue:
— Pro paddles are failing, major fines are next
— The ups and downs of pro pickleball betting
— Pickle instructor by day, punk rocker by night

Don’t call it a comeback.

Sixty-eight global teams are heading to Fort Lauderdale soon for the third annual Pickleball World Cup. Canada will be one of them, but not in any official capacity. When the country’s governing body, Pickleball Canada, declined to field a team, a group of players banded together and decided to go anyway.

Firefighters across Milwaukee have found a unique but effective way to stay in shape and pass the time during a 24-hour shift. Crews at several firehouses have erected makeshift pickleball courts inside their stations and out in parking lots. As you might expect, play gets pretty heated.

Our Courted social pickleball events series was a hit in Austin, TX — an afternoon for meeting new people on the court between trips to the DJ booth and food vendors. Now, it’s Miami’s turn. The final event of the year goes lights up Dec. 13.

Forge + Bond is a new brand designing, manufacturing, and mass-producing innovative pickleball paddles out of Gunnison, Utah. Cooler still, their patented FUSIONFIBER material is a variant of carbon fiber often found in luxury supercars. F+B wraps it around the entire perimeter in place of common plastic edge guards.

Whether you’re a slow-starter or facing a big lead late in a critical game, knowing how to play from behind becomes more important the better you get.

Just ask Zane Navratil. He was down big in a deciding third game yesterday at PPA Las Vegas against a formidable team in Hunter and Yates Johnson. But he and partner Zane Ford (yes, we know, this was Zane and Zane vs. Johnson and Johnson) dug deep and pulled it out in the round of 32.

And you know what? They never looked or played like there was any doubt. We asked Navratil for a few tips on mounting a successful comeback, especially when the pressure’s really on.

✅ “Don’t overcomplicate things. The match isn’t going to be determined by a last-second miracle adjustment. It’s going to be determined by who executes one more ball at 9-9 in the third.”

✅ “Accelerate, accelerate, accelerate. When you’re tight, make sure you’re still hitting out on everything. You lose control when you slow down the swings.”

✅ “Rely on your favorite shots and favorite spots. Go with the shots you can execute in your sleep.”

There’s nothing more satisfying than a well-earned, come-from-behind win.

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The governing body of professional pickleball, the UPA-A, wants everyone playing with paddles that fall within specific performance parameters. So they devised a series of new guidelines and made them law beginning Sept. 1, 2025.

The problem is, some paddles that cleared the initial bar have since been flagged during onsite testing at pro events, primarily for being too gritty and thus producing too much spin.

Rather than turning the other cheek, the UPA-A is dropping the hammer. Repeat offenders will face a series of escalating fines through the end of 2025.

Beginning next year, the fine for a third offense could hit $50,000 — levied against the brand, not the player. And that specific model could be banned from play entirely.

So far, about six different brands have had paddles confiscated for exceeding the allowable RPM limits. Now the message seems clear: Fall in line or face a fine.

Sarah Greenwell can be found doing very different things depending if the sun is up or down.

By day, she’s a certified pickleball instructor in and around New York City, mostly catering to retirees. She teaches clinics throughout Westchester County and even competes in tournaments from time to time, though she’s far happier playing the sport just for fun.

At night, though, she trades her paddle for a guitar and hits the stage as frontwoman for the Providence, RI-based punk band, GYMSHORTS, who have toured with bands like La Luz and Deer Tick and frequented festivals like Riot Fest and SXSW.

Sarah has been with the band since 2012, and got seriously into pickleball about five years ago.

“When I'm on the stage having a great show, it’s a total escape. I’m not thinking about any problems,” Sarah told us. “Playing a great game of pickleball does the same thing for me. Pickleball and Rock & Roll have a surprising amount of overlap. With the right energy anyone can play.”

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Pro pickleball has gone through some fits and starts when it comes to entering the sports gambling space.

First, we don’t call it gambling. We don’t place bets. Instead, pro events are part of “predictions markets” where users trade “shares” on the outcome of future events — politics, sports, culture — using crypto or traditional currency.

MLP tried a fleeting experiment with Polymarket, a leading global predictions market, during the MLP Finals. Not long after, it announced a year-long partnership with competing marketplace, Kalshi.

Now, less than two months later, PPA and MLP are back with Polymarket, announcing just yesterday a “watershed multi-year agreement” that will launch… at some indeterminate point later this year.

What happened with Kalshi, you wonder? Join the club. We have no idea. But Polymarket seems legit — Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, recently announced a strategic investment of up to $2 billion in the platform, which is also the official predictions market of X (formerly Twitter).

Now, the only holdup? Polymarket isn’t currently fully legal in the United States. Rest assured, they’re working on it.

We’ll be the first to fill you in when vision becomes reality.

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