Hi friends!

Fun fact: this episode almost didn't happen. I woke up the morning of the scheduled recording convinced there was no show, and six hours later the itinerary had exploded. A text arrived while we were playing that afternoon with the biggest paddle regulation news in years, two paddles everybody and their moms have been asking about showed up, and we ran a serve experiment where Eddie put a prediction on the record and the radar gun had other ideas.

Let's dive in!

(And stick around - there’s new material in this newsletter that we didn’t cover on the podcast, like the spin durability results of the PAKLE Fuse)

In this week's email:

Read time: 7 mins

PICKLEBALL NEWS

The website now has a dedicated Radiology Lab! This took a little more than a weekend of vibe coding this time, and I've been dying to get this information out there for ages.

What it does: The lab will show the paddle next to its X-ray, side by side, zoomable, with a breakdown of the core materials below and a relative hardness scale for the different foams and other core materials. You can see EPP versus MPP, EVA bands, edge foam, all of it.

The homepage also now shows trending paddles, the top five most viewed over the last 24 hours, the last week, and the last month. Right now the 11Six24 Ultra sits at number one, with the Coral Pro Hybrid and the Honolulu blue grit family right behind it.

This is the news I've been waiting a couple of years for, and honestly I was worried it would never come. USAP sent paddle manufacturers the details this week: starting October 1, 2026, paddle legality will be determined by directly measuring spin output. The limit is 2,100 RPM.

Here's what changed. Until now, USAP approved paddles by measuring surface roughness and friction, which are stand-ins for spin. Under the new protocol, they clamp the paddle, fire a ball at it with a cannon at 40 mph and a 30 degree paddle angle, and track the outgoing spin with a two camera system running around 1,500 frames per second. If it spins under 2,100 RPM, it passes. Roughness and friction still get measured, but there's no hard cap anymore. Your surface can be as gritty as it wants, as long as the ball comes off under the limit, and the certified values become your measurement of record that production paddles have to stay near.

A few details worth knowing:

The part that makes me happiest: UPA-A already tests at 40 mph with a 2,100 RPM limit, so both governing bodies are now aligned on close to the same methodology and the same number. That kind of standardization is exactly what this sport needed. It even has me wondering whether I should drop my own ball cannon testing from 60 mph down to 40 so we're all comparing apples to apples.

Volair has settled with JOOLA in the propulsion core patent lawsuit, which makes three defendants who have now settled, after Proton and Paddletek/ProXR. This one caught my attention because, of all the paddles named in the suit, the Volair looked like the furthest reach to me.

I pulled up its X-ray in the Radiology Lab on the show: the core-plus-EVA-plus-sushi-roll-foam sequence the patent describes only shows up in about a two-inch strip at the neck. The rest of the paddle is bands within bands.

I reached out to Volair for comment and they confirmed that they’ve officially settled with JOOLA, which was part of the reason for the price drop of the Shift. So if you love the Shift, better grab a bundle because once inventory is sold, it’s gone.

So the precedent is building in JOOLA's favor, and the remaining defendants have a real decision to make. I do know of a couple of companies planning to fight it out, but that's not mine to share yet.

GIVEAWAY: RAINBOW CORAL PRO

Six Zero is releasing a limited edition rainbow colorway of the Coral Pro, and we're giving away three of them together with Six Zero (a correction from the podcast, where I said one). Even Eddie called it pretty, and Eddie does not hand out compliments to gradient edge guards.

It gets better. Everybody who enters is also pooled for something genuinely rare: a handmade Coral Pro, one of only 10 ever made, with colored sparkles infused right into the grit peel ply alongside the diamond dust. Hand finished at Six Zero's factory in Australia. That one will never see a court. It's a wall paddle, and it's spectacular.

How to enter: head to the Instagram post below and follow the instructions there (follow Six Zero and me, leave a comment, tag a friend).

Quick backstory on why Six Zero is doing this with me: when the Coral Pro launched, my discount code broke on launch day and the paddle sold out before it was fixed. They wanted to make it right, and this is how. Classy move. The rainbow editions launch in both USAP and UPA-A versions, with the UPA-A only versions arriving on or around July 13.

PADDLES OF THE WEEK

Good lord have people been asking us to test this one. The Fuse showed up in my mail the night before we recorded, we took it straight to the court, and I get why everybody and their moms wanted to know.

A few weeks back we played a guessing game on the show: which brand ships the first budget paddle with real durable spin? This was my guess, and it has all the ingredients. The new Duraspin surface is seriously gritty, and under the microscope it's not a peel ply. It's grit particles sitting over what looks like unidirectional fiber, closest to Selkirk's Infinigrit in structure but much grittier in hand.

On court it's as low and hollow sounding as anything we've tested. Eddie's review on the court was, is the core missing out of this paddle? And the sweet spot is massive. Power everywhere on the face, that pocketing feel on drives that reminds you of a tennis racket, and we were both whacking winners from just past the kitchen. I'd put its power at the Luzz Inferno's level, maybe slightly above, and it's softer and hollower than a Boomstik.

So, how durable is PAKLE’s Duraspin?

Since recording the podcast, I've completed the full controlled spin durability testing on the Fuse. I know this isn't the news many of you were hoping for, but the paddle's spin loss placed it in Tier 4 (>20% spin loss), alongside traditional raw carbon fiber paddles. Tune into the podcast later this week for more details.

That said, this is an accelerated laboratory test using a ball cannon and a clamped paddle to produce controlled wear—not months of real-world play. We'll need to see how these paddles perform in players' hands over time before knowing how closely the lab results translate to on-court durability.

PAKLE Fuse (15% off with code JOHNKEW)

Ronbus's newest paddle launches at 9 a.m. ET Friday, July 24. The name is the tell: tenon, as in mortise and tenon, the ancient joinery technique that locks beams together without nails. On the X-ray you can see exactly why. Straight notches of the central EPP core extend out into the surrounding EVA foam band, locking the two together like tongue and groove.

The standout is not the spin. It's the feel. The Tenon sits in the soft and dense quadrant of the Feel Chart, right in the neighborhood of the Coral and Coral Pro, and Eddie was in heaven. Plush and buttery is his whole thing, and his exact words were "the feel all day on this." Here's what surprised me: I'm a stiff and hollow guy, the opposite corner of the chart, and even I am a fan. It's just a gratifying, predictable response every time you hit the ball.

And the KewCOR curves back up that word predictable. These are some of the flattest curves I have ever measured, consistent across the whole long axis of the face. Big sweet spot, no hot spots.

Against its sibling: we brought the Quanta out in the same shape and traded paddles all afternoon. Eddie's take is that the Tenon starts where a weighted-up Quanta ends on forgiveness, with room to add more. The Quanta stays stiffer and poppier. The Tenon is softer, denser, and has sneaky power, which brings us to the experiment later in this email.

The grit is a conservative grit-infused peel ply, and durability testing is coming. Watch this space.

Ronbus Tenon, launching around July 24 ($20 off with code JOHNKEW)

GEAR OF THE WEEK

It's good to see a budget option in court eyewear. These are the same Tifosi brand that survived our ball cannon dummy head testing, where nothing broke until roughly 60 mph impacts, and even then it was the temples, never the lenses.

Playing in them, I see the tiny nose piece and nothing else. It's the closest thing to wearing no glasses at all, and the lens clarity beats most I've tried at this price.

Now the honest half, because Eddie's been wearing them for a few weeks: this exact pair did not fit his face. The temples floated behind his ears and the lens sat against his eyelid. Tifosi makes multiple sizes and shapes, so get the one that matches your head, not mine.

Tifosi Vogel SL (10% off with code JOHNKEW)

IS PICKLEBALL DOOMED?

Entrepreneur Michael Girdley makes rise-and-fall case studies on industries like Topgolf, CrossFit, and GoPro. His latest argues pickleball is next, and it's closing in on half a million views.

His case: the pandemic boom is fading, investors overbuilt clubs and franchises, more than a thousand paddle brands ship from a handful of factories, the boomers who fueled the growth are aging out, and indoor facilities have brutal economics.

The part he gets right is that gyms survive on members who never show up. Nobody skips pickleball, so courts have to run nearly full just to clear margins that barely beat a savings account. If I had a couple million dollars, I would not be opening a pickleball facility.

But here's the data he doesn't have: my own audience.

And in person: the kids at PPA events used to sulk on their phones next to their parents. Now they show up in packs, they dominate, and college teams are forming everywhere. You don't see that in a dying sport. You see it in a globalizing one.

Our verdict: a maturing market, not a collapsing one. A shakeout of facilities and copycat catalog brands is not the sport declining, it's the field thinning. Eddie's word for it: cautious optimism. Maybe I'm wearing rose tinted glasses, but I'm comfortable with the prescription.

This is my favorite kind of segment: a theory, a prediction on the record, and numbers to settle it.

The theory: muted feel reads as weak power. Loud, stiff, hollow paddles (think Boomstik) crackle, and we hear that as firepower. Soft and dense is where the old control paddles lived, so when a new paddle feels calm and muted, our brains file it under all court, whatever the ball is actually doing.

The new full foam paddles in that soft, dense corner, the Coral, the Coral Pro, and now the Tenon, keep measuring as power paddles: the Tenon's KewCOR is 0.412 to the Quanta's 0.407, and my radar gun firepower score has the Tenon at 77 to the Quanta's 73.

The test: Eddie served 10 times with each paddle, same stroke, Stalker radar gun on every ball. His prediction, on the record: the stiffer, poppier feeling Quanta by about 5%.

The result: Quanta 53.6 mph, Tenon 53.9 mph. A wash. The soft paddle actually came out a hair ahead. Eddie's own summary: the power is being generated differently, but the end result is the same. In game play he couldn't tell them apart at all.

The takeaway for your next demo day: a muted, controlled feel is information about vibration, not firepower. It's why the Owl gives people fits, no sound, no warning, ball on you. Trust the measurements over your wet computer.

Check out the short-form video on this topic here.

DEEP THOUGHTS

Deep Thoughts is fast becoming one of my favorite segments, and this week it earned its name. Last week's minimalist Notace shoes sent Eddie back to one of his favorite books, Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, about the Tarahumara runners of Mexico's Copper Canyons who cover ultramarathon distances in what are basically thong sandals, and hang with elite athletes in the latest gear. His point: human biology is set up to perform at an absurdly high level if we stop encasing it in super squishy, super supportive casts.

And that gave me an excuse to bring out my old career, because before paddle testing I was an archaeologist. A 2005 study by bioarchaeologist Erik Trinkaus found the earliest anatomical evidence of supportive footwear, and it's written in our bones. Bones respond to load like muscle does. Around 30,000 years ago, human toe bones suddenly got thinner, specifically toes two through five, the stabilizer toes, while leg bones stayed just as robust. Same walking, same hiking, less work for the toes. Something supportive had come between foot and ground. Meanwhile Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest, mostly barefoot or in moccasins, kept thicker toe bones than Europeans from 30 millennia earlier. Your Nikes have a Paleolithic prologue.

Our shared takeaway is balance, not barefoot purism. People evolved for minimal footwear, but they also mostly died in their 30s, and 60 year old feet appreciate some help. Wear real court shoes for pickleball, always. Then take the dog to the park barefoot or in something minimal, and let those stabilizer toes remember what they're for.

WHAT'S UP NEXT

The Ronbus Tenon's grit will go through the same accelerated wear gauntlet before its late July launch.

I'm also weighing a methodology decision: moving my ball cannon spin testing from 60 mph to 40 mph so my numbers line up directly with both USAP and UPA-A. And a piece of news arrived mid-recording that we're saving for next week, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, and for being the kind of crowd that will follow us from a patent lawsuit X-ray to 30,000 year old toe bones without blinking. That is our kind of nerdy.

See you in the next one. Cheers.

- John

Use code JOHNKEW for discounts on the gear from this episode: