Hi friends!

We’ve got a packed email for you this week!

Two Tales from the Ball Cannon segments this week. I finally got the Starrett machine in the basement (only took two years) and started lining up texture loss against spin loss. Spoiler: positive correlation, but one paddle in the lineup breaks the pattern in a really interesting way.

I also did something I've been sitting on for a few months. Pulling back the curtain on how affiliate commissions actually work in this space, what the spread looks like, and what I've quietly done about it. Reload's Nick Bicanic wrote a post that finally pushed me to put it on record.

Let's dive in!

In this week's email:

PICKLEBALL NEWS

Tama Shimabukuro is 15 years old. He came from skateboarding, not tennis. His backhand looks like a shovel. He doesn't lose his cool when the crowd chants his name, which they’ve been doing since his standout performance in Atlanta.

He made the singles final at PPA Atlanta and the men's doubles semis. He beat Hunter Johnson before running into Chris Haworth, who's a beast right now.

Eddie and I called Tama a 2026 rising star earlier this year. I did not see this coming this fast. His paddle face stays closed and pointed down. You don't know if he's going crosscourt or down the line. He's got a Ben Johns-flavored loop on the forehand that lets him speed up at any moment. He runs down balls that should be by him. Fan favorite waiting to happen.

Apollo Sports Capital just dropped $225 million into a new umbrella entity called Pickleball Inc. The CEO running it is Al Tylis, and the consolidation list is wild: PPA Tour, MLP, Pickleball Central, pickleball.com, Pickleball Brackets, Pickleball Play Solutions (the bracket software), Just Courts, and Pickleball Tournaments. All under one roof.

Tom Dundon and the Pardoe family stay on as majority shareholders. The five-person board is Al Tylus, Connor Pardoe, Jason Stein, Zubin Mehta, and Brian Levine.

Worth noting: UPA-A is no longer wrapped into this. They’ve recently received their nonprofit 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, and are currently going through this transition. Good timing on that move. You don't want the regulator under the same umbrella as the league it's regulating.

The interesting question is where the money goes. From Connor Pardoe’s interview with Dave Fleming during PPA Atlanta, a lot of it is earmarked for content. New shows on Pickleball TV, more storytelling, more documentary work, more spectator-friendly programming.

I think that's the right call. Pickleball already works as a spectator sport in Asia. The crowds are nuts. We've got the games. We just don't always tell the stories around them.

I watched the first two episodes of Partners before last week’s podcast, and I binged the other four episodes this weekend. And I’m a fan. The production value is essentially cinema-quality, and it’s some of the best pickleball viewing I've seen.

What I love is that it doesn't read as a PPA promotion. It feels independent. There are candid moments where they're openly admitting the league is losing money and they need to fill seats or it doesn't work. Anna Bright comes off as exactly as wild and unfiltered as you'd hope, deadpan and then animated and then deadpan again. The Connor Pardoe segment felt genuine.

My one critique: the Anna Leigh Waters coverage in the first episode felt sanitized. They went a little deeper into her personality in later episodes, which I was grateful for. We've all watched her lose her cool on TV. She's a mental beast and an uber-competitor. There's more there that’s bound to come out.

But the rivalry coverage is fantastic. Anna Bright and Rachel Rohrabacher breaking up. ALW and Catherine Parenteau breaking up. Christian Alshon convinced he was about to take the number one spot from Ben Johns (then losing to Ben and Gabe in the rematch). Anna Bright looking the camera in the eye and saying "Rachel's not a big fan of me right now, but this is game theory, man." That's the access pickleball has been missing.

And yes, they covered the Paris Todd and Hunter Johnson breakup. Lock in.

Reload's Nick Bicanic wrote a blog post this week titled, more or less, "can you really trust paddle reviewers?"

His point: the standard affiliate commission disclosure ("I get a small commission if you use my code") doesn't tell you that some brands pay way more than others. And it doesn't account for the pressure that creates over time. Even unconsciously.

Chris Olson covered this on Pickleball Studio podcast last week. I want to add my voice to it because I think the whole space is at an inflection point and I think some transparency is important right now.

Here's the picture nobody's been painting publicly. My average affiliate commission is 15%, meaning when you use my code or link to purchase a paddle, I get a 15% commission on average. A few brands pay 10%. A few pay 20%. And a few offer more. I’ve been offered up to 30%. And that’s totally fine for paddle companies to decide how much value they place on reviewers. And I still feel that I can be unbiased with different commission rates, but I worry about the state of the reviewer community when brand commissions vary by magnitudes up to 3X.

At the start of this year, I voluntarily capped my commissions at 20% for every brand. Chris is even lower than me, capped at 15%. None of us have to do this. Brands aren't asking us to. The market would let us take more. But the spread keeps widening, and the bigger the spread gets, the bigger the risk of subtle, unconscious bias creeping into a top-10 list.

The bigger risk is what comes next. Bigger media platforms with established subscriber bases are going to enter this space. Some of them will sell top-10 list spots to whoever pays the highest commission. That has happened in every other product review category, and it's coming here. Reviewers like me, Chris, and Braydon have built a culture around honesty over the past few years. I want to keep guiding the ship that direction.

Eddie's in a fortunate spot. He doesn't take any commissions. He's on the show as a co-host, paid a flat rate, and that's it. Which means he can pick up any paddle, hit it, and call it whatever he wants without a single financial pull in any direction. Worth pointing out, because it's part of why his takes mean what they mean.

On sponsored trips: I've been on a few. Adidas flew us out for their paddle launch a while back. And nobody who attended came back with a stellar review, because it wasn't a stellar paddle. Gerald Undone in the camera review world stopped accepting paid trips three years ago because the excitement leaks into the reviews. And the same dynamic could happen here. So far I've only ever taken reimbursement of travel expenses (not payments or stipends), and the moment I see brands or reviewers exploiting trip dynamics, I'll step away from those too.

The TL;DR: I cap commissions at 20%. Chris caps at 15%. None of us have to disclose this. We're disclosing it because the space is changing fast, and you should know.

PADDLES OF THE WEEK

$170 before code. Both Eddie and I expected to dismiss this one as a toy. We were wrong. It might be the most fun I’ve had with a paddle this season.

This is the Gen 4 of the original Pop N Pink. It uses a dual-density full foam core: an MPP center with a wavy EVA band instead of the interlocking notches you see on something like a Honolulu NF core. It also has upgraded white microcellular foam that’s designed to reduce shrinkage. The paddle is 16 inches long, slightly under 8 inches wide, and comes stock around 7.0 ounces with swing weights in the 80s to low 90s and twist weights in the mid 6s.

The biggest design choice here is the handle. It has a custom 4.02-inch grip circumference versus the standard 4.25. Tiny. The paddle is marketed toward women, but both Eddie and I ended up playing some of our best games of the day with it.

The lightweight stock build, huge sweet spot, and dual-density core make it wildly forgiving while still being surprisingly powerful. I added 3 grams per side. Eddie went even heavier. He compared it to a souped-up Bantam ALWC with a much bigger sweet spot. I had an absolute blast playing aggressively with it.

Pickle Poppers Pop N Pink (15% off with code JOHNKEW)

The Draco Hybrid was a great paddle with one flaw: the texture and spin left something to be desired. The new elongated and widebody fix that. Same build, new shape, way more spin.

$180 before code. 30-day trial. Limited lifetime warranty. It uses a nanocellular polymer foam core, which reads to me like a flavor of MPP, combined with a CFC layup. Microcellular center, wide EVA band, expanding edge foam.

Specs:

These are now the highest legal KewCOR scores I’ve measured outside the Body Helix Flik F1 (0.459). They don’t hit quite as hard as the Body Helix, but they’re firmly in elite-power territory.

They land in the stiff/hollow quadrant, but not as extreme as a Boomstik. The sweet spot is excellent, and the balance between firepower and controllability is one of the better ones I’ve played with in a while. Eddie added 6 grams on each side at 9 and 3, and even then the elongated version never felt unwieldy. That’s rare for an elongated shape.

For $180, these are hard to beat.

Gherkin Draco (10% off with code JOHNKEW)

$150 before code. EPP center, EVA floating ring, edge foam. Under X-ray it looks very similar to a Bread & Butter Loco or a Selkirk Boomstik. Probably the same factory.
The interesting part is what they’re calling the “Aerofusion” surface. To the eye, it looks like standard peel ply. Their claim is that it’s a wear-resistant coating layered over the carbon fiber with a 5x to 8x increase in grit lifespan. I’ll get it under the microscope and into the wear protocol soon. UPA-only certified, not USAP.
I really enjoyed this paddle. It’s softer than the Draco with a denser feel, landing roughly in the middle of the dense-versus-hollow axis. Its strength is control through transition and at the kitchen. Imagine a Loco that’s been softened and stripped of the fiberglass layer.
Eddie wasn’t a fan of the handle. The pallets feel soft, and the grip feels thicker than 4.25. Worth knowing if you’re sensitive to handle shape or wrap your grips tightly.

Warping Point Sophon (10% off with code JOHNKEW)

$189 before code, $170 after. Elongated, 7.5 oz stock, 112 swing weight, 6.3 twist weight. Lead strips at 9 and 3 explain the low swing weight. MPP based.

These rip. Stiff, hollow, powerful, very Boomstick-adjacent. Elite power without paying Boomstick money. Eddie noted (and I picked up too) there's a sweet spot within the sweet spot where the feel softens and gets really pleasant.

Handle is excellent: 5.7 inches long, perfect circumference. Branding goes from simple to a fun dragon theme.

Spin: stock raw carbon territory at around 2,250 RPM. The new Nanograph version promises longer lasting grit, which I tested in the next section.

Aireo Cyclone Nanograph (10% off with code JOHNKEW)

TALES FROM THE BALL CANNON

Two new durable-grit paddles went through the wear protocol this week. Same setup as the last study: clamp the paddle at 30 degrees, fire 100 shots at 70 mph into the same one-inch square, then measure spin using the high-speed camera before and after.

For context, here are the existing durability tiers:

That ~20% raw-carbon drop is where spin loss starts becoming noticeable on court. Roughly a 300–400 RPM drop. That’s the point where many players start shopping for a replacement.

The new results:

The Thrive Ignite appears to be roughly twice as durable as standard raw carbon. The Cyclone Nanograph lands around 1.5x more durable. Neither reached Tier 1, but both are meaningful improvements.

One important note: I want to extend the wear protocol further to see whether these surfaces degrade linearly or eventually cliff. If “Clear Fusion Grit” is truly a coating layered over standard peel ply, then once that coating wears through, you’re effectively back to raw carbon. That’s the next test.

I finally bought a Starrett - that little machine that measures surface texture on the paddle.

It drags a stylus across the paddle face and gives you two measurements:

USAP regulates both. Maximum average RZ is 30 microns, and maximum RT is 40 microns. For scale, a sheet of printer paper is roughly 100 microns thick. A human hair is around 70.

I’ve now tested around 50 paddles on the Starrett. Only a couple of them pass. Most are USAP approved. At some point USAP either needs to raise the limits or start enforcing them consistently. The current status quo helps no one.

The bigger question is whether texture loss on the Starrett correlates directly with spin loss on the cannon. I plotted percentage RPM loss against percentage texture loss across every paddle tested. Initial R-squared came in at 0.5832. Positive correlation, but not airtight.

One paddle sat far above the trendline. I removed it and reran the numbers. R-squared jumped to 0.84. That outlier was the Chorus Coda.

The Coda lost a significant amount of measurable texture during accelerated wear. The Starrett showed dramatic smoothing. But spin loss on the cannon was only about 10%, right in line with Infinigrit and Thrive Ignite. If texture and spin were perfectly linked, it should have lost much more.

Under the microscope, the explanation became obvious. The peel ply itself had smoothed out where the ball was impacting, but grit particles were still embedded throughout the layer. They weren’t just sitting on the surface. There appear to be multiple layers of grit distributed through the peel ply itself. So even as the surface epoxy wears down, fresh grit remains exposed and continues doing its job.

Matt at Chorus mentioned they weren’t chasing maximum out-of-the-box spin. They were prioritizing durability through depth. This is the first test result that really validates that approach.

Bottom line: grit matters, but grit alone isn’t the whole story. The way the grit is layered into the surface matters too. The Chorus Coda appears to be doing something fundamentally different from everyone else.

People are playing with disbonded paddles and not realizing it. Let's fix that.

Visual test: Press your fingers into the paddle face. It should feel stiff with no give, bubbles, or visible indenting. If the face feels squishy or compresses easily, that’s a warning sign.

Audio test (the dead giveaway): Bounce a ball on the face.
A healthy paddle goes “thunk.”
A disbonded paddle goes “clap.”
That clapping sound is literally the face layers slapping against the core because an air gap has formed between them.

Disbonding is when the entire face layer separates from the core as a single unit. Delamination is when the layers within the face separate from each other. UPA-A’s rulebook uses the term “delamination,” but in practice they’re mostly talking about disbonding. True delamination is actually pretty rare.

Right now, I’m seeing disbonding most often in MPP paddles: LZ Inferno, 11Six24 Power 2, Speedup Tide, and a few others. My current theory is that it relates to the manufacturing process. MPP is created by injecting gas bubbles into the foam. If that material isn’t fully off-gassed before molding, residual gas pressure may slowly push the face layers away from the core over time.

EPP can disbond too. I have a Proton Peacock prototype where you can literally see the air bubble through the face. Proton has since fixed that issue in production.
And this matters because disbonding is not a beneficial break-in process like Gen 3 honeycomb core crushing was.

Core crushing basically turned your paddle into a tennis racket — ridiculous power, but still playable.

Disbonding just kills the paddle. Once it starts clapping, performance falls apart fast.
The good news is that every major MPP brand I’ve dealt with has been very good about warranty support. David at 11Six24, for example, will often replace a paddle from a quick video clip alone. If your paddle is clapping, send it in.

KEW & A

Empirically, there’s no hard data yet showing that one consistently produces a larger sweet spot than the other.

That said, many of the paddles that feel like they have giant sweet spots have been MPP-based. But I suspect a lot of that may be perception rather than measurable performance.

There’s something about MPP’s vibration profile that creates a stronger sense of dwell, and that often translates into players feeling like they have more control or a more forgiving sweet spot. Almost everyone I talk to who loves MPP mentions that dwell sensation.

So the short answer is: right now, this probably has more to do with feel than measurable sweet-spot size. But we’ll keep testing.

This is the lateral-thinking gray area I was talking about in last week’s spin-ceiling segment.

Quick recap:

Traditional friction-based paddles seem to cap out around 2,400 RPM at 60 mph and 30 degrees.

The ping pong rubber I glued onto a Babolat Striker produced roughly 4,300 RPM.
That’s almost double.

The reason is that rubber adds energy through tangential snapback, not just friction alone.

So the question becomes: could you tune that snapback down enough to stay under the spin ceiling, while still retaining enough elastic recovery to dramatically improve texture durability?

In theory… maybe.

The challenge would be passing PEF, deflection, and spin-rate testing simultaneously.

A lot of commenters pointed out that some of the newer “nanotech” surfaces may already be flirting with this idea. Slightly tacky, slightly elastic. Nowhere near actual ping pong rubber, but also not behaving like pure friction-only surfaces either.

The key question is whether those surfaces are producing any meaningful snapback effect or whether they’re still operating entirely through friction.

A few things I'm chasing in the next two to three weeks:

Our podcasts are regularly going over 90 minutes these days. We're testing more paddles than we ever have, the lab keeps getting more capable, and the questions in the comments and this newsletter keep getting sharper. That last part is the thing that pushes the methodology forward more than any new piece of equipment. So keep them coming.

See you in the next one. Cheers.

—John

Save with code JOHNKEW on every paddle mentioned this week: