Welcome back to The Pickleball Clinic Newsletter!

Have you ever thought of going into business with pickleball? Today, we'll look at how many pickleball trademarks have been registered this year, go behind the scenes at an elite junior pickleball training academy, learn how to crush forehands during a firefight, and a whole lot more.

Let’s go! 👇

These days, if you want to become a professional athlete in a sport like tennis or gymnastics, there are academies all over the country that you can go to.

Pickleball has only been on the national stage for about 5 years, so it doesn't really have any junior training programs — not so fast.

The first one of its kind was created at The Fort down in Fort Lauderdale by Ken Herrmann, the founder of APP, one of pickleball's major professional tours.

And now a new academy has emerged (okay fine, it’s us behind it 😉), built under The Pickleball Clinic co-founders Aaron and Matt’s 3-location academy in New Jersey, Montclair Pickleball. This past summer, they launched the Elite Junior Academy for ages 10 - 17 and levels 3.0 - Pro. What started with summer camps is now a set of weekly clinics and matchplay sessions led by 5.0+ coaches, private lessons, weekly Zoom calls with pro player mentors, mindset training with Dr. Peter Reznik (Aaron’s father, a psychologist/therapist who has worked with thousands of patients including multiple Olympic athletes), guidance on playing tournaments and finding partners, help setting up their social medias, and even connecting them with sponsors (like how we got Leo connected with Franklin).

We even have two 10-year-olds, Chloe (check this out) and Halina, who are both currently homeschooled, as Halina just moved from North Carolina to New Jersey to train with us!

The future of pickleball is junior pickleball, and Montclair Pickleball (AND The Pickleball Clinic) hope to play a big role in it. Feel free to follow along with our Elite Junior Academy on Instagram or Facebook, and if you’re a junior or a parent, come out and train with us during your next week off from school, holiday, or summer!

Take Steps at the Kitchen Line — But Not Too Many

Find a medium between taking too many steps and taking too few steps at the kitchen line. Too many steps can put you off balance and waste precious time, and not enough steps will cause you to be reaching for the ball. I usually recommend taking 3-5 steps at the kitchen to adjust your positioning for a dink.

BY THE WAY…we have been working on our brand new podcast for months now, and our first-ever episode is dropping VERY soon on our YouTube channel!

If at first (or second or third or fourth) you don’t succeed, then keep on trying. 💪

Alien Pickleball Takeover

Picture this: an alien ship lands on earth, the aliens get out of their ship, and they just so happen to find a box filled with all of the JOOLA Pro IV paddles, including the Agassi Pro. So basically they find all the paddles below, but in a box. They take the paddles, get back in their ship and leave. As the aliens examine the paddles back on their ship, imagine what they think the paddles are used for.

They might deduce that we humans hold them in our hands to hit other objects. Heck, if they’re really smart, they could probably reverse engineer the entire sport and bring pickleball back to their home planet.😲 (Either that or they’ll conclude that the paddles are personalized trays made for baking small pizzas. 😀)

Well, unlike the aliens, all of you know what pickleball paddles are used for and why you need them to have the perfect balance of precision and power. (Or you can use them to cook yourself small pizzas — just don't blame us if your paddle gets burnt. 😉)

In this section, we often visit pickleball courts in warm, tropical places near palm trees and sandy beaches — basically pickleball paradises. But who ever said that paradise has to be tropical? We certainly didn’t. As long as we find a great court in an awesome setting, then it's certainly worthy to be a court of the week.

So today, we're going up north to the Twin Farms resort in Barnard, Vermont. Located on a vast, secluded estate on 300 acres of woods, meadows, and mountains, these two courts are set right next to a quiet nine-acre pond. As you might imagine, hiking, biking, and skiing in the winter, are other activities that guests can partake in when they're not playing pickleball.

How Many Trademarks in a Year?

We all know that pickleball is growing, but that's vague. How much is it growing? Well, today, we're going to look at some numbers.

The Business of Pickleball publication recently revealed some data it had collected in a few noteworthy categories...

Over the past year, the total number of registered pickleball trademarks rose from 351 to 477, representing a 36% increase.

But there are even more pickleball trademarks out there that are pending. In fact, there are 978 trademarks still pending that either use the word "pickleball" as a term in the trademark registration or mention it in the description.

Other data included the number of pickleball courts currently in the United States. About a year ago, there were roughly 68,000 courts in America: 46K outdoors and 22K indoors.

As of the beginning of September, there were about 78,000 courts (a roughly 15% increase from the previous year), with 52K outdoor courts and 26K indoor courts.

That outdoor/indoor court ratio reveals a slight increase in the rate of construction of indoor courts vs. outdoor courts. 

So whether you're building new pickleball courts, creating a pickleball business, or both, it looks like the demand is still there and growing. 💪

Is this really how we come off? 😂 (Make sure to click on the picture below.)

Get with the Times!

One sweet perk about being alive these days is that we can rely on thousands of years of human innovation to help us in our everyday lives.

If you want to visit your family out of state, you don't have to walk there, you can drive. If you're really hot, you don't have to just endure it, you can turn on your air conditioning. Need another example? No? Okay, well, the same thing goes for aches and pains. Why would you just grin and bear it when you don't have to by simply using a pain-relieving foam?

We all love pickleball around here, so let's play more and hurt less. Here's to playing for as many hours and years as possible! 🥂 For a limited time only, there is free shipping for any Picklebalm purchase — no minimum amount.

One of the big issues for players at all levels is the forehand volley. Now we're not talking about hitting slow-moving attackable balls because those are many players' best shots. No, we're talking about fast firefight balls that come at or near your dominant shoulder and either jam you up or get you hitting your forehand volley from behind your body. Well, do not fear because Matt is here to solve this problem.  👇  

Key takeaways:

• Don’t rest your elbows right next to your body. Instead, raise them up and forward.

• This positioning will ensure that your contact point is always out in front of your body, which is where you want it to be.

• From that position, all you have to do is open up your wrist, and you will be hitting your forehand volley.

Married veterans, Liz and Michael Tanji, are entering the indoor pickleball space in Colorado by opening a new Ace Pickleball Club, a 30,000 square foot facility in Aurora. The couple met while serving in the armed services together, and now they'll be serving it up on the pickleball courts. (See what we did there. 😉) Anyway, thank you both for your service to our country, and good luck on the new facility!

Hope you enjoyed the read. See you next week!

- Your Friends at The Pickleball Clinic

Join the conversation below! ⬇️