Pickleball Year In Review — Part One

We’ve finished off another year in a sport that’s continually morphing before our eyes, with seminal events happening almost weekly around the globe. Here’s a look back at the year that was.

Here was last year’s “Year In Review” posts, Part 1 and Part 2.

I realize it has been a while since we turned the page on this crazy year in pickleball, so here’s a quick reminder of where we were one year ago. As the calendar turned to start the year 2024 one year ago, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) and Major League Pickleball (MLP) had yet to finalize their merger, there was angst and unease amongst the 100+ MLP signed players about the state of their livelihoods, pro players had just been force-fed 40% pay cuts, there was no real plan for MLP for the year, USA Pickleball (USAP) and just finished holding its Nationals in Dallas in conjunction with the PPA, the Association of Pickleball Players (APP) had just announced an aggressive slate of events for 2024, and there was still almost no international presence of the sport outside of MLP Australia and grass roots initiatives in scattered countries around the globe.

We’ll divide this into two parts, since there is so much to recap. Here’s the first six months of 2024.

• 1/1/24: USAP’s new 2024 rules (announced 12/15/23) go into effect. There really wasn’t much to note here, as opposed to years’ past.
• 1/3/24: Jason Aspes of the Kitchen publishes perhaps the best comprehensive oral history of the “Tour Wars” issues ever created. Items discussed include Kuhn, Dreamland, Dundon, Vibe, Mergers, breakups, Kansas City, re-mergers, pay cuts, ousters, player collectives … this is a great read. It’s amazing, sitting here in December 2024 to think about how crazy the pro sport looked in mid 2023.
• 1/4/24: Tyler Loong reports on pickleballrumors.com that the USAP is changing the location of its USAP Nationals to Mesa, Arizona and the massive Legacy Bell Bank park. This is after a less-than-ideal experience at Brookhaven CC in Dallas this year, where many of the amateurs felt that their event was overshadowed by PPA’s involvement. As we’ll eventually find out, the PPA has plans to counter this move in a big way.
• 1/4/24: PPA officially announces a switch to the Vulcan ball, leaked in late Dec. On Picklepod, Zane Navratil and Thomas Shields report that the deal is a one year deal worth between $2-$3M, plus an 8% royalty on every Vulcan ball sold back to PPA. After some manufacturing tweaks and the expected complaints from some pros, the overall reaction to the new ball has been solid; they’re durable and play fast, suiting the pro game well.
• 1/6/24: word also comes out on the most recent Picklepod podcast that the PPA sent out some “serve modifications” to its players for the new year. The main impact is that players must release of the ball “downward” and must be released below the top of the hip. This tweak is seemingly meant to counter the “big servers” on tour like Bar and McGuffin, and when play begins at the first PPA event of the year, some players’ service motions are drastically impacted.
• 1/8/24: Long-time Pickleball Tournaments CEO Melissa McCurley, who retired from the organization in October 2023, officially joins the APP and becomes the executive vice president of the APP’s competition initiatives.
• 1/8/24: the Draws for the first PPA event of the year (the Hyundai Masters in Palm Springs) reveal some interesting items. MLP-exclusive players did not boycott the event enmasse as was worried (remember, at this point, the PPA-MLP merger is still up in the air). We get the PPA touring debuts of several big names: Jack Sock, Genie Bouchard, and Donald Young; all are given protected seeds into the main draw/round of 32 as per their contracts. Furthermore, the top eight seeds are given byes into the round of 16 despite more than 70 qualifiers competing for just eight spots in the main draw.
• 1/12/24: The APP, USA Pickleball, and UTR Sports announce the 2024 schedule of Golden Ticket events to qualify to Nationals, teasing further UTR involvement in the sport that’s to come later in the year.
• 1/14/24: All five Pro Bronze medal matches are forfeited in the PPA’s opening tournament, and despite some nebulous claims of injury the forfeits seem deliberate. This is the first event under the new “salary” contracts for these players, and clearly the incentives for playing a near-meaningless match were not present. Pat Smith takes to social media to dispute the supposed injuries claimed by players and the tour, and is suspended for the subsequent PPA event, but the PPA’s reaction was swift: penalties are immediately introduced for abandoning bronze medal matches going forward.
• 1/17/24: 35-Capital (co-owner of the Chicago Slice) has acquired both ProXR and Paddletek and is creating a new brand called United Pickleball properties (UPP). Also included is Boundless Pickleball, which has NCAA licensed pickleball products.
• 1/18/24: The APP announces that it is moving its permanent Headquarters to the newly opened “The Fort” in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This 43-court facility has a stadium built and the APP will maintain its HQ and training facilities there.
• 1/18/24: On KOTC’s Masters recap podcast, host Jimmy Miller floats an amazing tidbit: apparently the “Johnson Five” (JW Johnson, Jorja Johnson, Dylan Frazier, Gabe Tardio, Milan Rane) never signed the term sheet they negotiated during the August/September 2023 MLP/PPA signing wars, even though they were the last major holdouts. Which means, they have nothing on paper to “go back to” when MLP went to the players and asked for 40% pay reductions, and now the combined entity is refusing to honor those terms. A couple days later Jim Kloss also posts on the same on social media, while others with knowledge of the situation dispute these claims.
• 1/18/24: At the first APP Event of the new year, we see some competitive changes in the draws there, with singles going to rally scoring and changes to the back draws. The APP’s Ken Herrmann tells me that these changes are meant to shorten the day for its players; a full wraparound loser’s bracket was often forcing players to be at the facility for 10-12 hours, waiting for all the consolation matches to finish.
• 1/18/24: There has been another delay in the MLP-PPA merger when one of the owners floats a financial counter proposal to the board. This immediately halts negotiations and forces the MLP to cancel planned the January 2024 drafts. The impact is obvious: while the PPA keeps chugging along, the MLP continues to lose momentum due to its own indecision.
• 1/26/24: USAP officially announces The Arizona Athletic Grounds in Mesa, Arizona to be its host for the 2024 USA Pickleball Nationals. This announcement is notable since there is no PPA partnership mentioned, and the site is not at the PPA’s preferred Brookhaven club.
• 2/1/24: The Picklr announces Drew Brees has joined as a national brand ambassador, investor, and franchise owner. Brees, who’s already a part owner of the LA Mad Drops, will also be a part owner of Picklr franchises in the mid-west.
• 2/15/24: APP partners with The Dink to become the official apparel brand for APP Next Gen. In conjunction with the announcement, APP CMO Tom Webb appears on Zane/Thomas’ podcast to discuss what the APP has been up to, and the conversation turns into a fascinating discussion on the state of the sport.
• 2/15/24: The NPL announces that it’s expanding to 12 teams for the 2024 season. This is a sign of healthiness for the Senior Team-based pro league, who continues to draw investors to the sport.
• 2/22/24: PPA announces the PPA Tour Australia. They’re rebranding “Pacific Pickleball” and expanding internationally. This makes sense in that there is already MLP Australia, and PPA’s Pardoe has ties to the country. There is much more to develop here and its a year before we see events, but this is the first major international expansion of the PPA Tour.
• 2/27/24: PPA’s Sunday finals were broadcast on Fox for the first time, and the viewership numbers were great. More than 500k viewers tuned in, more viewers in that time slot than a number of major/conventional sports.
• 2/29/24: The PPA-MLP merger is finalized at last. Just a few hours ahead of their latest self-imposed deadline, when PPA commissioner Connor Pardoe reports on social media that the merger is complete. The merger announcement also reports that Bruce Popko has been elevated to CEO and names a five-person Board (Jason Stein, Al Tylis, Matt Turney, Julio DePietro, and Brian Levine).
• 2/29/24: The three main Pro focused podcasts (KOTC, Picklepod, Tennis Sucks) all leak interesting tidbits about player contracts and the merger terms. The new entity has bought out 20-30 players from their contracts, some players have refused to sign 40% pay reductions (including, notably, Riley Newman), and the Johnson Five are reportedly considering legal action to enforce their contract.
• 3/14/24: MLP releases an updated schedule, now that the merger is complete, that lays out the rest of the 2024 schedule. There is still not quite yet an official date for the draft, but the new schedule features eight Regular Season events, one mid-season tournament, and two rounds of playoffs in November.
• 3/15/24: with little fanfare and no announcement, the PPA has eliminated all remnants of a loser’s bracket/consolation draw in its pro divisions. Last week in Minnesota there still existed a “Points Draw” for early round losers to still compete; this week in Austin, and going forward, those draws no longer exist. This change is not noted until a month later on KOTC by Tyler Loong, but is evident by examining PPA pro draws from this point forward.
• 3/18/24: MLP announces its draft dates and formats. The Premier league will use a never-before-seen Dynamic Bid process, while the Challenger league will use a conventional snake draft. Previous plans to use 6-person teams in Challenger is abandoned officially.
• 3/23/24: APP announces an expansion to its NextGen by launching the APP Junior Circuit for 18U players nationally.
• 3/24/24: PPA announces a new set of “exclusive” signings that, per Jill Braverman, are essentially “clarifications” of existing MLP contracts. The impact though becomes clear: several former top APP players are now PPA exclusive.
• 3/27/24: The new unified MLP/PPA entity finally has a name: the United Pickleball Association or UPA. The recently announced “State Championship” Series will also be rolled underneath UPA, rebranded to be the “UPA State Championships.” Winners out of these state competitions will qualify for the eventual “UPA Nationals” event in November.
• 3/31/24: ahead of the MLP draft, a slew of players withdraw their names from consideration. In some cases they’re APP players who have conflicts with MLP events, and in other cases there are personal/logistical opt-outs due to work/family/injury issues. These opt-outs come back up later in the year.
• 4/1/24: UPA quietly announces that it has “acquired” two MLP teams and will be disbanding them/removing them from the challenger division for 2024. The two teams are the Austin Pickleballers and the Milwaukee Mashers, two of the original eight franchises. Austin was owned by Brene Brown/Charles Kiley, while the Mashers was owned by Lasry with James Blake.
• 4/2/24: on the eve of the MLP draft, the UPA announces that it has come to terms after months of dispute with the “Johnson 5.” Various outlets “reported it” but it was not actually finalized and signed (per their agent) until about an hour before the draft.
• 4/2/24: also on the eve of the MLP draft, Riley Newman announces a modification to his contract to enable him to play PPAs. Newman had initially been the highest profile player to refuse to renegotiate his MLP deal, and stood firm on being basically omitted from PPA events for the next three years.
• 4/3/24: UPA announced that DUPR will be the official rating system of MLP, PPA Tour, Pickleball.com, Pickleball Tournaments & Pickleball Brackets. This is a huge development for the reliability of DUPR, which has been plagued for the better part of the last two years with lack of data thanks to a disconnect between PB and DUPR’s algorithms.
• 4/4/24: The APP breaks ground officially on its new headquarters “The Fort” in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
• 4/7/24: Anna Leigh Waters wins her 100th career PPA title enroute to a triple crown at the PPA event in Cary, NC.
• 4/12/24: Connor Pardoe, owner of MLP’s Utah Black Diamonds, announces Utah Black Diamonds Pickleball Center in South Jordan, just south of Salt Lake City, Utah, a $25M facility done in partnership with the Picklr, Pickleball Central, and GCTM Investments . The facility will feature 36 courts (30 indoor), a 1,500 seat stadium court, two 500-seat grandstand courts, plus other amenities.
• 4/16/24: Joola announces the official launch of its Gen 3 paddle line, which features some controversial internal technology and significant power that will eventually lead to USAP banning the paddle, lawsuits filed, and confusion in the certification industry. A detailed list of news events with links to court filings is at this link so as not to clog up the rest of this article, but as of the end of 2024 we have little in the way of resolution in the case.
• 4/17/24: On KOTC in Mid-April, Tyler Loong notes that paddle challenges no longer exist on the PPA, officially. Paddle Challenges used to be a constant on tour, and now they’re officially gone.
• 4/18/24: UTR Sports officially announces a collaboration with both the USAP and the APP to collaborate going forward on software and ratings. This is a major division in the industry, as USAP and APP events will eventually move away from using Pickleball Brackets tournament software to use UTR’s platform, and USAP/APP events will eventually stop feeding into DUPR and instead will support UTR’s competing rating system, UTR-P.
• 4/18/24: At the PPA Los Angeles event, #1 Ben Johns takes another early round upset in Men’s Pro singles (his fourth such early round upset already in 2024) while #2 Federico Staksrud makes his 8th straight gold medal match to open 2024. This combination of events is enough to allow Staksrud to supplant Johns as the #1 ranked singles player on tour. This is the first time Johns has not been ranked #1 on the tour since its inception in February 2020.
• 4/21/24: the 8th annual US Open finishes up, with 3,200 players and nearly 4,900 divisions played. It is the final event for founders Chris Evon & Terri Graham, who recap their story here.
• 4/25/24: PPA announces a deal with Global Sports to do PPA India and MLP India.
• 5/7/24: MLP sends out the official 2024 competition structure. The major shift from years’ past is a scoring change: regular games will be rally scoring to 25, win by two, with no freeze, while DreamBreakers will go to 21. Player retention rules are defined, and service rules are defined that break from PPA’s more stringent “drop the ball below the waist” rule for 2024. Note: the “no freeze” is changed mid-year to go back to “you must win on your serve” as was done in years’ past.
• 5/8/24: after months of silence the crew behind NML Pickleball (Jeremy Comazzetto and Chris Ross, formerly known as Slim and Gritty) announces the reason they went silent. They were offered and took an opportunity to be co-GMs of the New York Hustler’s MLP franchise.
• 5/9/24: The UPA announces that it is scheduling its “UPA Nationals” in Dallas, at Brookhaven Country Club. The event will be an 11-day long affair that includes DUPR Collegiate National Championships, Pickleball Boulevard Block Party, Pickleball Business Forum, and the Deep Eddy Vodka Celebrity Pickleball Showdown.
• 5/11/24: Pro player Andrei Daescu is found to have foreign substances on one of his paddles, which results in a $50k fine and a 60-day suspension. There are questions about the paddle and whether it was ever actually used in competition (or was a training aid), and there are questions about the amount of the fine w/r/t Daescu’s contract status (he seems to have signed a PPA exclusive contract in the wake of this suspension).
• 5/12/24: Ben Johns gives an interview to CNBC and puts his annual income at $2.5M.
• 5/16/24: UPA-A officially announced with Jason Aspes (formerly of the Kitchen) as its President and self-proclaims itself to be a “Global Governing Body” in the sport. They also announce an Equipment Advisory Council and a Player Advisory Board. USAP issues a Press Release in response.
• 5/25/24: top pros and doubles partners Anna Bright & Rachel Rohrabacher post pictures from a photo session that shows them posing in hilarious tongue-in-cheek poses. Two days later, their good friends from Florida Travis Rettenmaier and Graham D’Amico (co-owners of the Florida Smash MLP team) do the exact same poses in a studio and post them, a fantastic parody.
• 5/27/24: The APP debuts a competition called the “Pro Shuffle” at the NYC open that is an instant hit; 16 players enter and are divided up into round robin groups and play three doubles matches, switching partners each time, and the points-leader advances. It’s similar to competition styles used in open play and smaller events to determine “the best” doubles player among groups. Megan Fudge & Jack Munro win the inaugural shuffle events.
• 6/1/24: The Johns Brothers lose for the third successive PPA event, while JW Johnson & Dylan Frazier win their third straight PPA doubles title. This is the first shot across the bow of the Johns brothers’ dominance in Men’s Doubles that would, by year’s end, result in the brothers splitting up.
• 6/8/24: A couple of embarrassing incidents at the PPA’s Sacramento Open lead to some fast changes on tour. In a “Hot mike” incident, the Johns/Waters bench is heard criticizing another player’s technique, while James Ignatowich is given a kitchen violation mid-match when his paddle certification sticker falls into the NVZ.
• 6/10/24: MLP team Seattle Pioneers owners announces a rebrand and a “move” of the franchise to be located in North Carolina (Dundon’s home town) and will be known going forward as the Carolina Pickleball Club.
• 6/10/24: News starts to leak out from various brands that, in the wake of the Joola delisting situation, that their paddles are going to be delisted as well. This includes the Vatic Oni and the Ronbus Ripple, but specifically not the powerful Gearbox paddles nor any other brand. Nothing official is ever announced, but the USAP had been experimenting with a new exit velocity test and reportedly informed “outlier” companies that they were manufacturing paddles that were just “too hot” for competition.
• 6/20/24: A rumor comes out on the Dink that the UPA-A is planning on charging companies $100,000 a year to participate in their certification program along with $5,000 per paddle. A predictable firestorm arises on line, and UPA-A’s president Jason Aspes denies these details in Facebook comments. Eventually there is a cost announced for UPA-A’s certification program, but the details do not come out for months (see Part II for more).
• 6/21/24: The first MLP transaction period occurs, with more than a dozen trades and waiver claims. Multiple players who previously opted out of MLP made themselves newly available, providing a major boost to the challenger teams at the top of the waiver priority. The “big five” in the Challenger division: Susannah Barr, Megan Fudge, Bobbi Oshiro, Jill Braverman, and Yana Newell all get claimed after initially opting out. This has a pronounced impact on the Challenger competition; teams who eventually finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the league all replaced players with one of these top females.
• 6/25/24: UPA-A makes an announcement related to paddle testing, announcing that their partnership with Pickle Pro Labs (PPL) will add include a collaboration to come up with a certification program. Later in the year, PPL’s competency is challenged by one of the leading brands of the sport.
• 6/27/24: OWL signs a deal with the APP to provide its newly released ball for APP’s UTR Sports Pickleball Leagues, APP Signature Events and APP Collegiate Events. There are now at least four “official balls” in use by the various sanctioning organizations in the sport (Vulcan, Franklin, OWL, and Gamma). In fact, the only major ball manufacturer not in use is Dura, who was supplanted on the PPA by Vulcan.
• 6/30/24: Ben & Collin Johns are upset yet again in a PPA Pro Doubles draw, their fourth successive upset, and the combination of their quarter finals exit and the #2 Frazier/Johnson team making the finals will knock Ben Johns out of the #1 ranking for Men’s doubles players for the first time since September 2020. Johnson, who has slightly fewer points than Frazier due to having played fewer 2024 matches, will surpass Collin for #3, which will guarantee that Johnson/Frazier will be the #1 seeds at the next PPA event. This is a seminal moment on the tour and is the second time that the sport’s long-time “Number 1” male pro has been supplanted at the top of the rankings.

Check Back for part Two, with news items from July 1st to the end of the 2024 year.