Raise your dinking IQ

One 16-year-old's epic weekend. USC is now a pickleball school.

March 10, 2025

After early rounds filled with upsets, the PPA Cape Coral finals went to the top seeds across the board yesterday. There was still plenty of excitement, though. (Like a beatdown in men’s doubles and another Triple Crown for ALW.)

More on that, below.

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In This Issue:

🏆 Stage set for Collegiate Nationals
👑 ALW wins another Triple Crown
🧠 How to harness a higher dinking IQ

Who’s got a case of the Mondays?

Our Picks ☝️

♻️ One Man’s Trash: The Fully Recycled PPA Tour Trophy

The trophy handed out at yesterday’s PPA event was a real eye-catcher, all silver and red and shiny and beautiful. Turns out, it’s also made of 100% recycled materials.

🚣 Name Game: How Pickleball Got its Moniker

The sport wasn’t named after a fruit or the founder, Joel Pritchard’s beloved family dog. In fact, his wife noticed its borrowed elements from multiple sports and likened it to “pickle boats,” a rowing term for a crew comprised of leftover rowers.

🤭 Friendly Fire: Dylan Frazier Dupes Dave Fleming

During some friendly banter between matches, Dylan Frazier let it slip to announcer Dave Fleming that his name is actually pronounced “Die-lan,” which Fleming went on to refer to him as in the ensuing match. Turns out, Frazier has a history of pranking his friends.

Want Higher Dinking IQ? Don’t Be Square

When it comes to cross-court dinking, we all want to be more aggressive at the kitchen line. But where to start?

Recent MLP Florida Smash draftee and Managing Director of PPR Sarah Ansboury has played thousands more hours of pickleball than you have. So listen up.

  1. Don’t be too square — keep your hips facing your opponent and lean in

  2. Keep the ball in front — don’t let the ball beyond the corner of the kitchen line and sideline

  3. Open your inside foot — when dinking cross-court, open your body toward the middle to help keep the ball in front

  4. Lean in for the ball - take it out the air whenever possible to take away time from your opponent and reduce the need to shift as much on the bounce

  5. Take it down a notch — unnecessary lateral movement can hurt more than it helps; rely instead on shifting your bodyweight and letting the paddle face do the work

Less is more here, people. Smart pickleball is effective pickleball.

Your Pickleballs Are Gonna Outlive You (Unless You Switch to These)

Fun fact: the average pickleball will chill in a landfill for 100 years. Let that sink in. Kinda depressing, right?

Komodo's BioBall™ is trying to fix that. They biodegrade in just 3-5 years. And get this – they last 5x longer on the court than your standard plastic ball.

Same price, same performance, way less landfill guilt. Sounds like a win-win to us.

If you're ready to ditch the plastic mountain (one pickleball at a time), Komodo's BioBall™ is a no-brainer.

🤔 Newsletter getting clipped? Click ‘view entire message’ or click here to read online

It’s Another Triple Crown for ALW

Another PPA Tour event wrapped up yesterday in Cape Coral, FL. All the top seeds prevailed, but there were still plenty of storylines.

  • Anna Leigh Waters pulled down another Triple Crown, the 33rd of her career

  • Ben Johns and Andrei Daescu took men’s doubles (that’s Andrei’s third consecutive win in the event)

  • Christian Alshon won his first-ever singles gold 

  • Anna Leigh Waters and Catherine Parenteau won gold in women’s doubles against Anna Bright and Rachel Rohrabacher (the TENTH matchup in a row between these two teams)

  • 16-year-old John Lucian Goins went through qualifiers to win bronze in men’s singles, beating Ben Johns along the way

Our man on the inside, Erik Tice, has all the results — with full analysis — right here.

PPA Cape Coral Open Results

Stop Wearing the Wrong Shoes

Let's face it, most "pickleball shoes" are just… shoes. Not exactly engineered for the insane demands of our game, right?

Good news: Our guy Zane Navratil teamed up with SQAIRZ to change that. Their XRZ™ shoe is built from the ground up for pickleball.

Think roomier toe box (apparently your toes need space to do their magic), special grip for side-to-side explosions, and stability features to keep you upright (and injury-free).

Bottom line: a shoe designed to actually up your pickleball game, not just tolerate it. And it’s got Zane’s stamp of approval (and six months of prototypes to get it right).

Check out the SQAIRZ XRZ™ and see what Zane cooked up.

Stage Set for 2025 Collegiate National Championship

As if you needed another reason to wish you were 15 years younger, pickleball is picking up steam as a college sport.

In the final Super Regional of the season, the University of Southern California (USC) dominated the field, dropping just one game the entire tournament.

The 2025 Collegiate National Championship, in partnership with DUPR, will be held April 11-13 at the Life Time in Peachtree Corners, GA.

The main draw features a 64-team bracket format; there is also a 32-team secondary bracket as well as a general Challenger Bracket.

Teams are competing for prize money (via giant check, of course), bragging rights and even the chance to turn pro.

And the Dink Award Goes to …

Alright, Dink Fam, let's talk about the 2024 Nike Dink Awards. You guys went absolutely wild this year, doubling the votes! Seriously, double?

Because of that, we went all out: real crystal awards for every winner. And we got to hand some of them out in person at PPA Cape Coral.

Tanner Tomassi, our Best YouTube Content Creator winner, got his $1,000 production grant delivered in style: 1,000 crisp $1 bills. Because, let's be real, that's how you do it.

Anna Bright won Fan Favorite, and her mom Liping, a friend of The Dink, grabbed the award on her behalf. We also want to give a shoutout to Gabe Tardio, who took home Men's Most Improved Player of the Year.

And don't worry, we didn't forget about the rest of the winners. We mailed out their awards, and they've all been received.

You guys made these awards bigger than ever, so we went bigger too. Huge congrats to all the winners. You earned it.

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