Blog

Delamination is the bond between a paddle's face and its core coming apart, and it makes a paddle hotter than the one that was certified. Here is how to hear it early and what the testing bodies actually measure.

The rulebook has one ball specification, not two. Outdoor balls sit at the harder, heavier end with about 40 holes, indoor balls at the softer end with about 26. That difference changes how your paddle feels more than most paddle swaps do.

A backup paddle only helps if your hands cannot tell the two apart. When a second paddle is worth buying, how to match a pair properly, and when the money is better spent elsewhere.

An edge guard is a durability part, not a performance part. It protects the seam where the face meets the core and costs a few millimeters of face inside a fixed legal footprint. Here is what the rulebook says and what you can actually feel.

Cold makes every paddle play firmer and every ball play harder, and both reverse when the gear warms up. The real winter risks are a cracked ball, a paddle left in a freezing car and a player gripping too hard.

Paddle surface roughness is a measured, capped specification, which makes cleaning the one maintenance job where doing it wrong is both a performance loss and a rules problem.

USA Pickleball caps a paddle's combined length and width at 24 inches, so every inch of handle comes off the hitting face. Here is who that trade favours and who it costs.

A 45 minute on-court protocol that tells you whether a paddle is right for you, and why the first ten minutes with any new paddle are the least reliable ten minutes you will play.

Weighted tape is legal, cheap, and the easiest way to make a paddle worse. Here is what each placement actually changes, how to dose it in grams, and where the rules draw the line.

Grip circumference is the one paddle spec your hand actually touches, and almost nobody measures it. Here is how to find your size, and exactly what the rules let you change.

Quick answer: Vincent Rettke won the men's singles draw at the 2026 Wisconsin PPA Challenger on August 2, beating his opponent 11-5, 3-11, 11-6 in the final. The gold medal moved him from No. 17 to No. 5 in the...

Quick answer: Luana "Lulu" Stanciu is a professional pickleball player from Bucharest, Romania who competes on the PPA Tour and plays for Eleven Zero. She came to the United States on a college tennis scholarship, played tennis professionally, discovered pickleball...