Welcome back to The Pickleball Clinic Newsletter!

Do couples that pickle together stick together? Today, we'll look at the pros and cons of playing pickleball with your partner, check out how one of the best athletes in the world lost weight with pickleball, discover how pro pickleballers talk to each other while playing, and a whole lot more.

Let’s do this! 👇

We all know the power of pickleball when it comes to making relationships.

The ability for pickleball to create communities is one of the biggest reasons why it has taken off so much over the past few years.

But what about significant others? What is pickleball's impact on those kinds of relationships?

Well, according to a 3 year study we conducted, married couples that play pickleball together are 2.5 times more likely to stay together than couples that don't. OK, we totally made that up. 😂 

But hey, we've definitely heard that it brings couples closer together, and we know for a fact that many people have met through pickleball and then gotten married.

As for the benefits of playing with your significant other, you definitely have to work to communicate with your pickleball partner — and that's an important part of relationships, right? 😉

Plus, if you're playing pickleball as a team, it allows you to do an activity together that's fun, healthy, and outside of the house.

Now those are the good parts of playing together. On the flip side, one might get too competitive for the other one, or jealous, and that could lead to constant arguing, which isn't good. 🥲

So should you team up with your significant other? You're going to have to figure that one out for yourself. If it works for you, then that's great. If not, that's fine too — just make sure to play separately, and you'll be just fine. 👍

Dink to Your Opponent’s Backhand

It’s generally a good strategy to dink to your opponent’s backhand. Most players are less comfortable attacking off their backhand side, so dinking there will usually keep the rally neutral or even help you go on offense.

Now THAT’s how you win a point — and pump up the crowd! 💪

When the Fog Lifts

As pickleball gets faster and faster, protective eyewear is becoming an absolute must-have. But not all protective glasses are the same. Not all eyewear has durable elastic frames with options for clear, prescription or UV-protection lenses. But BLUE CUT glasses do. 

And here's something else they do… get rid of FOG. When you're trying to follow the ball on a return of serve (let alone a hands battle), the last thing you want to be worrying about is your glasses fogging up. Well, thanks to BLUE CUT's FogEX™ Anti-Fog Ventilation Technology (here’s how it works), air is allowed to come in through precision-cut ventilation holes, which in turn removes the fog. Get yourself a pair of BLUE CUT glasses today and use this link for 20% off.

We’ve shown you some pickleball courts by the beach on remote islands, and we’ve shown you courts on rooftops in big cities, but today, we’re showing you some courts in the mountains! We’ve featured some mountain courts in the past, but snow-capped mountains? That’s a bit more rare, and really cool! ❄️

Welcome to the Sharon Park pickleball courts in Orem, Utah. Now those are some pretty pickleball courts. 👇 Plus, there are 6 of them AND they’re public. So the next time you find yourself in Salt Lake City, take a short drive south and play pickleball in this beautiful mountain setting!

A Superstar’s Secret Sauce

Since professional athletes play a sport for a living and they often have tons of money to afford personal trainers and nutritionists, it's assumed that they would all be in perfect shape.

Not so fast. Professional athletes are not all in perfect shape because after all, they are still human.

And as many of us can attest to, a stubborn 20 pounds is not so easy to shed. Let's cut to the chase and reveal who we're talking about... Luka Dončić.

If you don't know the name, then you're definitely not a basketball fan because Dončić is an NBA superstar — like easily one of the top 5 players in the league!

Even so, Dončić has spent much of his career a bit out of shape. That's frustrating, not just for the fans of his team, but for basketball fans in general who are left to wonder how good he could have been if he were a bit quicker and had a little more endurance.

Well, it looks like Luka finally decided to commit to getting in better shape over the offseason. 💪 How did he do it?

First off, he decided to stop playing basketball for a whole month. This was a big deal because he had never done anything close to that before.

Instead, he filled his time with a weight-lifting routine and… pickleball! (Evidently he played some padel as well, but we don't talk about that sport around here. 😉)

When asked about the transition between sports, Dončić said, “At the beginning, it was hard. I can’t be without basketball. There were a lot of angry moments, too, when we would lose,” he says. “But I didn’t lose much.”

Happy to hear that Luka is enjoying his pickleball, and good luck this season with your transformed body!

Now that’s just not very nice. 🤣

Onwards and Upwards!

You know the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Well, that's a good motto — but up to a point. Because if you never try to improve upon something, then you don't grow and innovate. At JOOLA, they're kind of giving you the best of both worlds. How? Well, their newest line of paddles (the Pro IVs) still come in the models you know and love, like the Perseus, Scorpeus, Hyperion, and Maximus.  

But the JOOLA Pro IVs introduce Tech Flex Power (TFP) technology, a new foam layer in the throat area designed to enhance feel, flexibility, and forgiveness. Plus, JOOLA introduced an Agassi model, which has a new shape that increases the sweet spot toward the corners of the paddle. Check out all of JOOLA's paddles right here.

The Brooklyn Pickleball Team, one of MLP’s professional pickleball teams, stopped by and played an exhibition match. Yes, they were having some fun, but they were also playing at a really high level, and they were mic’d up! So you’ll get to hear what pros sound like while they’re playing. Check it out below. 👇

Key takeaways:

• Take a look at how many 3rd shot drops were hit vs. 3rd shot drives. (It was WAY more drops.) This isn’t to say that drives don’t work too. But drops also work at the very highest level.

• Notice how many lobs were hit. Also notice that almost all of them were hit when all four players were up at the kitchen line.

• Pat attention to how one team got down by a lot, but then came back to tie it up! Did they complete the comeback and win? You’ll have to watch above to find out. 😉 But the point is the same regardless — don’t give up because pickleball is very streaky.

According to Christie Dedman at @NastyNelsonsGear, pickleball courts have been added to the popular kids' video game, Fortnite. That may not mean much to you, but it does represent yet another milestone in pickleball's astonishing ascent from virtual obscurity to being at the top of the cultural mountain.

Appearing in the background of Fortnite may not be the shiniest of pickleball’s pop culture accolades — as pickleball has been featured in Super Bowl commercials for back-to-back years, on Times Square billboards and in a recent Lil Wayne song. But it still is a big step, especially as it pertains to young people and the future of our sport. 💪

Hope you enjoyed the read. See you next week!

- Your Friends at The Pickleball Clinic

Join the conversation below! ⬇️