Pickleball is booming. Pickleball clubs are closing. Both things can apparently be true at once.
The problem isn’t a lack of players. It’s the brutal math behind running a facility: massive leases, too many courts and business models that need seven figures in revenue just to stay afloat.
Turns out, “build it and they will come” works a lot better when the rent isn’t $50K a month. We break down the numbers below.
In This Issue:
— The brutal math behind club closures
— How good is your DUPR, really?
— 3 power paddles for $100 or less
Crunch the numbers.
Our Picks 👆
🏙️ PPA Chicago: Big Stakes, Bigger Storylines
The PPA Tour is making its Chicago debut, and there’s plenty to watch. ALW is closing in on career title No. 200, while the men’s doubles field feels especially ripe for chaos. If you want the cleanest primer on what matters most this week, this preview has you covered.
🌵 Team Pickleball: Taking Over Texas
Brookhaven Country Club is about to become ground zero for team pickleball. College Worlds, MiLP at MLP and the first-ever MLP Nations Cup are all landing in one place this October, creating a packed weekend that blends college stars, amateur standouts and international team competition. In other words: if you like team formats, Texas is about to be the center of the pickleball universe.
🎯 Do This: Five Drills, Any Skill Level
Good practice doesn’t need to be fancy. It just needs to translate. These five drills are built to help players sharpen the stuff that actually matters — dinks, resets, transition play, drives and hands speed — without requiring the perfect partner or a super specific setup. Simple, useful, and easy to steal for your next session.
🔥 Anna Bright: ‘I Take Pride in Taking Souls’
Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright faced Alix Truong and Layne Sleeth in the quarters in Vegas. At 11-0, 10-0, the top seed challenged a line call that would have busted up the double pickle. Result: they won the challenge, the point and the match in the most dominant fashion possible.
Since then, they’ve been catching some flak for lacking compassion. Anna Bright could not care less. As she explained to us, “I take pride in taking souls.”
Stop Practicing Hands Battles the Wrong Way
Rapid-fire volleys at the kitchen aren’t won because someone has magically fast hands. They’re won because those reactions have been trained at actual match speed.
A few ways to make that happen:
Start with a dead dink. Feed a neutral ball, then speed it up and play the exchange out. That recreates how hands battles actually begin in games.
Make the drill competitive. Don’t just keep the ball alive. Try to win every exchange. Pressure builds reaction speed and better decision-making.
Keep the paddle up and swings compact. Big backswings steal precious time. Short movements get the paddle back into position faster.
Aim, don’t just block. Placement matters as much as pace. Make the next ball uncomfortable for your opponent.
Drill against faster hands. Losing to better players in practice is exactly what forces your reactions to improve.
The goal isn’t to look smooth in a drill. It’s to make chaos feel familiar.
Your Paddle Gets Replaced. What About Your Insoles?
Serious players swap their paddle every few months, chasing a little more pop or a little more control.
But most never think about what's under their feet. That's a miss, especially when nearly 1 in 3 players deal with knee pain.
VKTRY carbon fiber insoles are customized to your weight and built to last, cutting impact force by up to 10% to take real load off your knees and feet.
Pro James Ignatowich wears them, and so do we.
How Good Is Your DUPR, Really?
Pickleball has a funny way of making everyone feel like they should be a 4.0 by now.
Turns out, that’s not even close to reality.
DUPR gave The Dink previously unpublished data showing how its active doubles ratings are actually distributed worldwide — and the numbers might make you feel considerably better about that little number next to your name.
The most common rating range? 3.0–3.49, home to 29% of rated players. More than half of the all rated doubles players fall somewhere in the 3s.
And things get exclusive quickly from there.
A 4.0 puts you roughly in the top 16%
A 4.5? Top 5%
And a 5.0 lands you in approximately the top 1%
Put another way: 84% of rated doubles players are below 4.0, 95% are below 4.5, and 99% are below 5.0.
So, no, everyone at open play is not secretly a 4.0.
The data covers active, globally rated DUPR doubles players — not every pickleball player on Earth — but it gives us one of the clearest pictures yet of where players actually stack up.
➡️ Go ahead. Check your DUPR. You may have just earned some bragging rights.
3 Power Paddles for $100 or Less
Not long ago, spending around $100 on a power paddle meant accepting some pretty obvious compromises.
Not anymore.
Braydon from Pickleball Effect has three budget bruisers that can legitimately hang with paddles costing twice as much or more.
His current favorites:
Vatic Pro V-Sol Tour: The fire-breather of the group. It ranks in the 91st percentile for firepower in Braydon’s testing, with a stiff, dense feel and excellent grit retention. If maximum offense is the assignment, this is the answer.
Ronbus Quanta Pro: The middle ground — serious pop with that classic stiff, hollow foam-paddle feel. It ranks in the 84th percentile for firepower and comes in multiple shapes.
Spartus Spitfire: The friendliest cannon of the three. Softer and more forgiving, with 95% grit retention in Braydon’s abrasion testing — the best mark of the bunch.
All three use modern foam-core construction, durable grit and direct-to-consumer pricing to land right around $100 with a promo code (try THEDINK at checkout).
The takeaway? Budget no longer means boring. We’re living in the golden age of affordable power paddles.
What a time to be alive — and hitting hard.
➡️ Watch the video.
Pickleball Is Booming. So Why Are Clubs Closing?
Pickleball clubs are closing, but that doesn’t mean people suddenly stopped wanting to play.
According to facility consultant West Shaw, the bigger problem is much less dramatic — and much more expensive: bad leases, oversized clubs and business models that were shaky from the start.
Industry data compiled by Johns Design & Consulting (yes, that’s those “Johns” for anyone keeping track) reveals the real, brutal math:
Smaller facilities average roughly $8,000 per court per month, compared with about $5,600 for clubs with more than 10 courts
Meanwhile, a typical 10-court facility can be carrying $30,000 to $50,000 in monthly rent before payroll, utilities, marketing or anything else enters the equation
That’s where things get ugly.
At a $50,000 monthly lease, Shaw estimates a club can need more than $1 million in annual revenue just to break even. Yet even if a 10-court club performed at the higher small-facility average, it would generate only about $960,000 in yearly pickleball revenue.
His takeaway: the sport is fine. The “build it big, hire a GM and collect checks” era probably isn’t.
The clubs with the best shot going forward may actually be smaller, leaner and much more hands-on.
Turns out the hottest amenity in pickleball might be affordable rent.
Headlines & Quick Hits
Jay Devilliers Is Building an Elite Pickleball Academy in Naples
The Pickleball Warm-Up Routine That Actually Works
Why You Keep Losing to Players Who Scare You
Highlights
‘Locked in’ on the double pickle
This crazy shot is perfectly legal
Topspin dink vs. roll
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