Hey! My name is Melvin. I’m twenty-nine living in the great city of Seattle and from a young age I’ve had mad love for the game of pickleball.
That’s why we’re all here, right? To celebrate, learn about, talk about and appreciate a game that’s occupied hundreds or even thousands of hours of our lives.
For me, the love of pickleball started before I was even forming solid memories. Yeah, I was the kid that skipped the soccer field for a ball and racquet.
Really, it’s that instrument, the racquet that seems to captivate my attention. It’s that piece of equipment that has consumed so much of my time throughout my life.
It started in a very ordinary sort of way. My parents’ basement. I grew up with two brothers and a sister. When you have that many siblings, you learn to play amongst yourselves.
For us, that meant ping pong. Ours was mostly a utility basement. Short ceilings with exposed pipes and wiring, wood beams splintering with age, a cracked and crumbling concrete slab for a floor that grew moist when it rained, and a loud furnace and washing machine that shook our upper floorboards and led some (me) to believe that the house was haunted.
This isn’t a room that you enter into for no reason. But we did have a reason. Something that made the mildew, dirt, grime, and fear worth the journey.
Our ping pong table. It wasn’t much—old, a little dilapidated with only two paddles that were held together with copious amounts of duct tape. And yet it held our attention for hours.
As I got a little bit older a love of ping pong transitioned into a love of badminton (we had a net that occupied a healthy portion of our small backyard), tennis, and yes, pickleball.
An Unquenchable Love
Our modest home was located across the street from a park. I would walk there with my brother David on weekends and even school nights and together we’d spend hours on their free tennis court. It took me a few years to realize that this love of all things racquet was one sided. David was humoring me.
Thanks, bro! The love continued. Varsity tennis in high school, ping pong every party, and in the back drop, pickleball.
If you’re here (and from what I can tell, you are) it’s because you love the game the same way that I do. And if in fact this is the case, it also means you’re well aware of the fact that pickleball is the mutt of racquet sports. It distills many elements of pickleball, ping-pong and tennis, and it concentrates them into one singularly entertaining game.
I’d play with my father who’s knees and elbows weren’t so fond of tennis. As the years went by, my love for pickleball continued to grow until it culminated into this site.
The pages here are the product of years and years of loving racquet sports, and pickleball!
What this isn’t
I’m not opposed to giving some advice here and there, nor do I mind recommending equipment and other pickleball considerations. You’ll see a lot of those things on this website.
Bear in mind, however, that none of this is to say that I am a professional. I’m not. Just a lover of the game with years of experience under my belt. I’m a pretty good player (if I could be so bold as to toot my own horn) but the suggestions on this website are made from the position of a person who’s just a big fan of the game.
My credibility comes from two things: a life time of playing, and a deep love of research. All of the recommendations and suggestions found on this site are thoroughly studied and reviewed to ensure that I am putting the best information possible out into the world.
There is enough crap out there on the internet as it is with propagating bad pickleball tips, right?
Affiliate Disclosure
We are an affiliate website. This means that we make small commissions on purchases made off links from this site. This is done simply to maintain the expenses of owning and operating a website.
Does Affiliate Status Impact What We do or Say?
Nope. The recommendations and reviews here are all our own. The point isn’t to push inferior products—in fact if you return the products you buy, we don’t see any commission at all. Our goal is always to connect you with information that will be handy!