The internet’s favorite pickle drills

Tips 💸

• Summer Skill Series: How to set up and predict an Erne (PCKL Instagram)
• Fun fact: In nature, an erne is an eagle known for its impressive aerial maneuvers, like its ability to swiftly dive down to catch its prey. Pretty athletic, but can it hit a third shot drop? In pickleball, an Erne is a flashy shot that surprises your opponents and makes for a good highlight reel — or a good laugh if you fail. We share tips for timing your jump and knowing when to use the shot in a game. 
• The internet’s favorite pickleball drills (Reddit)
• Have you heard of Dingles? Us neither. It’s a four-player game where you start with two cross-court dink battles happening simultaneously. As soon as one of the balls dies, a player shouts “dingles” and the remaining ball becomes live for all four players. A team must win the dink battle for both balls to score a point. Are the losers called dingleberries?
• 5 reasons you should drop serve (The Pickler) 
• Hitting your serve off the bounce isn’t a move just for n00bs. It’s nice to mix things up. The drop serve also has fewer rules, allowing you to create different spins on the ball and rip a two-handed backhand. The summer is the best time to drop it like it’s hot.
• How to disguise your dinks as speedups and vice versa (The Dink)
• Playing with the same people gets easier because you can learn to read them like a book. One of the easiest shots to read is a speedup. Many of us make the mistake of winding up for our speedups like you wind up the toy your nephew got for Christmas. Senior pro champion Steve Dawson shares a tip to help you disguise your dinks and speedups: use the same form. 
• A mistake you’re making with your speedups (YouTube)
• Mark Price, 5.0 Georgia state champion, points out the common mistake we make with speedups: hitting the ball too hard. The goal with a speedup doesn’t have to be to hit a winner. A well paced and placed speedup to the hip or shoulder can lead to an error by your opponent — giving you the opportunity to attack. 
• Summer Skill Series: Five tips for mastering the ATP (PCKL Blog)
• ATP should stand for All The Patience. Because that’s the virtue it takes to pull off one the coolest shot in pickleball. Sure, it gets the oohhs and aahhs, but it also gets you points. We break down the five steps it takes to add the ATP to your arsenal.

More pickleball content 📝

• Get your daily dose of pickles (Pickleballer)
• If 11 pieces of pickle content isn’t enough for you, add our friends at Pickleballer to your inbox. More than 20,000 picklers subscribe to Pickleballer’s daily newsletter. They’re good folks, and they want to help you improve your game every.single.day. 

Travel 🌴

• Pickle in paradise (Pickleball Cayman)
• It may be too late to make summer plans, but it’s the perfect time to book an epic end-of-year trip. Pickleball Cayman boasts a 12-court (shaded) facility with lights, pro coaches, daily round robins, and a bar and restaurant. Oh, and if you ever get tired of pickling, you can walk into the ocean and snorkel with stunning marine life. 

Watch This 🖥️

• How we secured a $2M investment to launch PCKL (YouTube)
• Our CEO Mike Gottfried sits down with Building Pickleball to share our founding story. You’ll learn what it’s like to raise funding for starting a pickleball brand and how to become a top pickleball seller on Amazon. 

Celebrities 🤩

• Elon Musk sees the writing on the wall (Twitter)
• Add Elon to the long list of billionaires who see the growth potential in pickleball. Rocket man Musk thinks pickleball is headed to  ̶m̶a̶r̶s̶  the moon. In only nine words, he blasted the spirits of tennis players by saying pickleball will “crush” their sport. His reasoning? Pickleball is too convenient to lose. 

Pros 👔

• Meet our first professional pickler: Dan Granot (PCKL Blog)
• Dan plays in the National Pickleball League (NPL) for the Denver Iconics. Probably similar to you, Dan quickly became obsessed with pickleball. He now gets up at 5 a.m. to practice (probably not similar to you), and he’s ranked in the top 10 for players over the age of 50. As an Atlanta native and early adopter of our Pro Series paddle, Dan makes for a great pickup for Team PCKL.