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

It’s a big news day, so buckle up. An MLP pro played through a bloodied face to take a critical, must-win game. At long last, USA Pickleball has released its new spin test years in the making. And we take an inside look at how facilities can thrive now that the land-grab phase is behind us.

In This Issue:
— Who owns Team USA pickleball?
— How to fight spin with spin
— USA Pickleball’s big announcement

This one’s a doozy.

With the Pickleball World Cup approaching, there appears to be a competition between various organizations, including the PPA Tour, for who will roster Team USA’s official squad. It’s all happening fast, and nobody really seems to know what’s going on. Zane and Nico discuss.

A Reddit thread is building momentum after putting open play culture on blast: Why argue over line calls, target weaker players, or leave the court upset “when the game literally means nothing”? Counterpoint: that game means everything. But we see their logic.

New to the MLP Mid-Season Tournament: a low camera angle shot from a moving track low behind the baseline. It’s a fun new look that helps convey and speed and agility on-court. It’s also just a bit cheeky, if we’re being honest.

A wave of PPA Tour pros are coming to the end of their multi-year contracts. And not all of them want to, or will be offered to, re-sign with the league. Flying Frenchman Jay Devilliers is among the first to announce his departure for the APP Tour (more on him below). Will other marquee names follow his lead?

Top pickleball coach Austin Hardy has been posting a series of instructional videos on his channel PickleballPlaybook, covering critical skills like drives, 4th shots, drops, and more.

In his latest, he covers the return of serve, focusing on five actionable steps you can take to use it to your advantage, every time.

We cover them all in depth, but he zeros in on a concept that’s worth spending a little time on: mastering the art of spin continuation.

Remember Newton’s Law of Motion? We’re paraphrasing here, but basically an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force.

In pickleball, that plays out on nearly every shot. And when it comes to spin, how much outside force is required is everything.

The point here is knowing what’s coming at you should have a huge impact on what type of shot you send back, and when.

In the context of a heavy serve, it’s always easier to slice heavy topspin and hit heavy topspin against a slice. Got it?

➡️ Newton would be so proud.

You know a Selkirk when you see one. Black and red. So their new Canyon Court collection is a bit of a double take.

Dusty clay and desert-sky blue, the whole thing inspired by red-rock country, is available across gear, bags, shoes, and apparel.

We’re talking the Boomstik and Omni paddles, the Legacy Pro and Courtstrike shoes, and more. Basically a head-to-toe desert kit if you want it.

The catch is the usual one with a drop this good-looking: it's a limited run, and when it's gone, it's gone.

Shop the Canyon Court collection and use code ADV-THEDINK to earn up to $50 at checkout.

For the past few years, the pickleball club business ran on one instinct: plant a flag. Find a warehouse, pour the courts, get open before the operator down the road did. Demand far exceeded supply, and that setup rewards speed to market over almost everything else.

That era is ending. Not because the sport is cooling — it isn't — but because the easy white space is gone. Courts that were scarce in 2022 are common in 2026. When supply catches demand, the game stops being about who builds first and starts being about who operates best. Every maturing industry reaches this point. Pickleball just reached it faster than most.

So the interesting question isn't whether pickleball consolidates. Maturing industries always consolidate. The interesting question is what kind of consolidation we get.

I see two playbooks. They lead to very different clubs.

Playbook One: The Rollup — Buy clubs below replacement cost from owners who are tired, over-levered, or simply ready to exit. Renegotiate the leases. Install a common brand and a common playbook. Centralize purchasing, software, and marketing. Wring out the duplicated overhead. Sell the scale.

Playbook Two: The Network — Here, operators who already share a vision come together. Each club keeps its local character. Each gains resources, systems, and programming it couldn't afford alone. The buyer isn't hunting a discount; they're buying something that's already working and making it work better. Value creation, not just value capture.

The pickleball facility gold rush rewarded a single move: build first. What comes next rewards a range of them — independent, franchise, rollup, network — and the winner in each will be decided by execution, not by which category it sat in.

There's more than one way to get bigger. There's only one way to matter: stay worth belonging to.

➡️ Read Ben’s fantastic full article.

Watching many of the best soccer players on the planet flop around the field at the slightest whiff of contact on the world's biggest stage, you might be led to believe that professional athletes aren't tough. That they don't embrace a little pain. That shedding a bit of blood is reserved for tougher endeavors like hockey, football, or MMA.

Enter: Jay Devilliers.

In an MLP matchup yesterday between his team, the Atlanta Bouncers, and the LA Mad Drops, Jay found himself on the business end of partner Jessie Irvine's paddle.

It didn’t end well for Jay, who suffered a cut above his eye that poured an impressive waterfall of blood down his face and off his chin and ultimately needed five stitches to close. Pretty dramatic stuff.

Jay played through the pain. And Atlanta battled back after going down 0-2 to bring the match to a Dreambreaker, where they ultimately fell 21-17 to LA.

➡️ See the bloody aftermath.

Franklin dropped their first-ever pickleball shoe. Selkirk raised the bar on an already popular one. Nike signed Anna Leigh Waters and entered the conversation. Stria came out of basketball with something nobody expected.

The market exploded. Which means there's a right answer for your game (and a lot of wrong ones).

We tried and ranked nine pairs of women's pickleball shoes so you don't have to guess.

Find the right pair for you.

On October 1, 2026, USA Pickleball will implement a new Spin Rate Test years in the making.

Rather than simply measuring a paddle's surface grit, new procedures will measure RPM based on a dual-camera system called PaddleVision.

The new threshold: 2,100 RPM.

If that number means nothing to you, you’re not alone. USAP hasn’t outwardly enforced a spin limit in the modern era of rec pickleball. The rare model might fail for excessive surface grit, but that’s rarely publicized so the masses remain none the wiser.

Now, there’s a clear line in the sand toward which every paddle brand on earth will likely engineer toward. And 2,100 RPM is high, make no mistake.

USAP's commitment as the sole equipment testing standard for recreational and amateur play hasn't changed since its launch in 2010. But paddle technology has progressed at light-speed within the past few years alone.

It won’t happen overnight, but your local games are about to get a whole lot more interesting.

➡️ It remains to be seen if that’s a good thing or not.

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.