Pickleball Finals Are Season 8 of Game of Thrones

[00:00:00] It looks dumb, so dumb. Everybody says that. Nico, pause. Pause. Okay? Pause. Connor Pardo, if you are listening, send us the keys to this event. We'll fix it. We're keeping Toys R Us as the sponsor. You guys nailed that one. But we're changing everything else. Alrighty, guys. Welcome to a late episode of The PicklePod. That's on me.

[00:00:29] I flew from a bachelor party in Nico, stayed at Nico's Airbnb, directly from Reno to Kuala Lumpur. The airline said it's never been done before. And here we are, 10.40 a.m. here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. What, 7.30 p.m. your time, Nico? That's right. Insane. I don't know how you survive. Honestly, I don't even know how to wake up the next day from a bachelor party, let alone

[00:00:55] wake up at like 4.30 a.m. the Sunday morning you have to leave and then fly across the country to do professional pickleball stuff. This is some superhero stuff right there. At 3.30 a.m. Dude, so I woke up. They're like, check in for your flight, Zane Navratil I'm like, oh my god, my name is so screwed up on this thing. So that's actually why we were over in Lake Tahoe. I call up Nico. I'm like, Nico, I've got to get to the airport like two hours early for a 6 a.m. flight from Lake Tahoe,

[00:01:23] which is like an hour and a half away from the airport. Dude, I know you've got some Airbnbs in the Reno area. Can I come crash at your place? And Nico, I'm kind of surprised, let me. And so yeah, we got that all sorted out. Nico, it was a nice place. You're not slumming it over there in Reno. That's right. It is nice. I mean, you got the best of the Airbnbs. And I will say, I said yes, because it's always nice to have a favor in my back pocket, you know? So

[00:01:48] Zane, just be ready at any given moment when I need to redeem said favor. It won't be easy. Oh no, this is your redemption right now. We're shouting out your Airbnbs. So now we're even Stevens, right? Oh my gosh. Exactly. Go check out my Airbnbs. You can't find them anywhere, but wherever. I don't know how to even search them up. Just go to Reno and then they're usually at the top because they're actually pretty good. But yeah, and I went Zane this morning. I told Zane, and I was like, Hey, like if you guys actually make it like not a mess, I don't have to charge

[00:02:17] you a bunch for cleaning because the house is like relatively big. So it's like $400 for cleaning. So I was like, I don't want to charge you that. And I also don't want to clean it myself. Went over there this afternoon and you couldn't even tell that anybody was there. So it's an incredible Zane. Like I actually, I will say like, if I were to expect like maybe anybody on the PPA tour to leave like an Airbnb better than it when they arrived, it would probably be you. So I feel like you strike me as like a neat freak. I don't know. Is that true? Or am I way off?

[00:02:43] It's true. My room here in Malaysia, I've been here for like 10 hours only. It's spotless. I unpacked, put everything away, like bed made, all that stuff. So yeah, I'm definitely a, definitely a neat freak. So glad, glad, glad I'm not getting, uh, getting the Airbnb cleaning fee. You are not, you are not. But, and that doesn't surprise me either. The unpacking, like, I think there's two types of people. There are people that when they travel, they live out of their suitcase. And then there's people that as soon as they get in,

[00:03:12] they take their packing cubes and they unpack them from their suitcase and they put them into drawers and they hang up their clothes. And Zane is definitely the hang up his clothes, color coordinate, packing cubes kind of guy. Now, see, here's the thing. I don't believe in folding clothes or hanging clothes. I put them in their spots. I'm very organized, but I'm not like, yeah, I, that's probably why all my clothes are always perma wrinkled, but, uh, yeah, I don't believe in it. Wow. So, well, yeah.

[00:03:39] Zane, any, any, um, anything of note happened at the bachelor party? Like tell me, tell me what was the Zane bachelor party like? We're pretty, pretty tame. I mean, look, I've been with my, my wife since 18 years old. So like, I'm a pretty boring, like I am not like a go out to the clubs or anything or, you know, type of bachelor party guy. And, and, you know, I was going with my future brother-in-law. So, you know,

[00:04:05] it was, it was tame. We did a lot of hiking over in Tahoe. We did some whitewater rafting, which was a lot of fun. We did go to the casino and lose immediately. So we were there for like 15 minutes. Um, and, uh, yeah, so pretty tame, eat good food, do outdoorsy stuff. We did this really cool hike on the, on the final day up through the snow to the top of this mountain on Lake Tahoe, which was, which was a ton of fun. Lost one of our brothers along the way, but, uh, he just quit.

[00:04:34] He quit on us. So yeah, pretty tame games, outdoor activities. That's a Zane bachelor party, but I'm curious from the outside looking in Nico, who do you, whose bachelor party on the pro pickleball tour would you want to go to? And you can't say Ryan share. He's everybody's first. All right. Let's think about this. I was about to say, I was like, where's the Mount Rushmore here? Zane, you're definitely not even close to the mountain. You're, you're not basically not

[00:05:01] even invited. Um, absolutely not. No, I've got my own sort of like carve out. Like I think there are plenty of people that would enjoy a Zane bachelor party. That's just filled with activities. The itinerary was, you know, top tier, but you know, probably not the, the standard male bachelor party. Yeah. We need to think about what, what players have their bachelor party itinerary consists of beer. That's probably the start. You know, they don't have an itinerary. They just have drink at

[00:05:28] certain locations at certain times and play, uh, you know, flip cup and, uh, you know, can jam and all that stuff. I think, I think, uh, I feel like Jaume, especially after watching the partners documentary and basically every experience I've ever seen of him, he's got to be like towards the top of the list, like the perfect guy to have. You've got to go. I think the clearest one has got to be a Tyson McGuffin. Tyson has got to be George Washington on the Mount Rushmore of bachelor

[00:05:54] party. No, Sherry is George Washington on the, on the bachelor party. Tyson is, you know, give me, give me Teddy Roosevelt on, on there. You know, I think maybe Tyson might just be like too, uh, much for me. Maybe, maybe that's where I'm at my old age. Like I'm feel like if I end up at a Tyson bachelor party, we're, we're like seeing midget wrestling and you know, a bunch of other weird shit that, uh, I, I don't know if I, if I can handle anymore. So, uh, yeah, I just feel like

[00:06:23] Tyson's has no, no boundary. That that's my, my expectation for his. So I'd be a little bit afraid. Yeah, that's true. But, but I feel like you've got to be a little bit of afraid going into a Mount Rushmore of bachelor parties, right? Like if you think Tyson, what about Sherry though? You probably don't know too much about Ryan Sherry. I don't, I don't. So anyway, he would throw, you would, he would make a, a Tyson bachelor party would be insanity, but Ryan Sherry, bachelor party would put that to shame. He, when we won major league pickleball back in 2022 with

[00:06:51] team BLQK, he threw us a huge party. Cause I think he was friends with like Paris at that time. He brought a, uh, a limo to come pick us up out in the country in, in Texas. We limoed to a bunch of different like spots in Austin. I had a 5am flight back to Wisconsin. Of course you did. Um, so I just stayed out with them the entire time. Funny enough, actually that's a crazy coincidence.

[00:07:16] That is where that MLP and that night was where my buddy, Matt and Jenny's sister, Stephanie actually met and got together. And that was the bachelor party I was just on. So we can actually thank Ryan Sherry for, uh, you know, for, for part of that night. Wow. All right. Well, Ryan Sherry back in the pickleball scene through bachelor parties, which is right where you expect him to be. Yeah. But I think, I think to round out our much Mount Rushmore, you got to imagine Greg

[00:07:44] Dow is a pretty elite hang on a, on a, on a bachelor party. So Sherry, Tyson, Jaume, Greg Dow, do we have any honorable mention of pickleball bachelor party hangs? For some reason, I feel like Matt right in the day. I said that right too. And that's like, either he is the most dad bachelor party or the most fun. I don't know. It's like he is one or the other. He is

[00:08:09] not in between. Yeah. I'm looking through their rankings here. Yeah. I'm liking, I'm liking the, the Matt right honorable mention there. Me too. Yeah. I like it. It could backfire and he could end up being on our Mount Rushmore of, uh, worst bachelor party hangs, which include you, uh, Christian L. Sean, Riley Newman, Matt, right? Right. Okay. Well, there we go. Mount Rushmore of bachelor party hangs. Let us know what you

[00:08:37] guys think. I think I'm a fun bachelor party hang, just not a traditional bachelor party hang. So you mentioned, uh, Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Nico, go ahead. This is your show. This is my, yeah, exactly. Uh, and you know, before we get any further, once again, if you like my show, please like subscribe, leave comments, let us know who the people are that should be at the bachelor party. Let us know if you're inviting Zane or if you're inviting me or neither or both, uh, all answers are accepted. Um, but I had mentioned, you know, you know, now I lost my train of thought, you know, I think I have run my course of being

[00:09:07] a co-host or host of this show. Uh, should we talk about the partners documentary? I have, I have no segues, but, uh, I did, I did get to watch, you know, we, we talked a little bit before the show about how I'm always at like my kids sporting events. And so I had like eight hours of drive time over the weekend as I always do. And I caught up on the entire series of partners. And, uh, I was actually, I was surprised at how good it was. Like it might've been slightly overhyped because everybody talked about it being basically the

[00:09:37] best thing since the last dance with Michael Jordan, but, um, it was really good. Yeah. I thought it was solid. I just, my, my question is who, who is the, and I think that this is, you know, maybe a problem for them or something that they need to figure out for season two, who actually is the audience, right? So I feel like they went a little bit to pickleball for somebody who doesn't really know much about pickleball and they didn't

[00:10:02] go drama enough for somebody that already knows some of this stuff. So there, there wasn't an insider sort of target audience that I feel like didn't already maybe know about some of stuff. Obviously there's new details on, on all of it, but I feel like, you know, I was actually texting with Pardo about this. I gave it a B plus. I said like, if, if they went 10%

[00:10:26] deeper on their hot button issues, which was the Anna and Catherine breakup, Jaume and Hunter and Paris drama, all that stuff, if they go 10% deeper on some of these things, I think that turns into an A like, you gotta get, you gotta get these people to, I think, open up ever so slightly more, right? Ever, you can tell most of the players were still pretty buttoned up. You gotta break them down a little bit, right? I want to, I want to see Anna Lee,

[00:10:56] you know, a little bit more casual and a bright, a little bit more casual, you know, Paris, Paris gave us some tears on, on camera. So, you know, I think they, they got there with her, but yeah, that was my main takeaway is like, in order to really kind of hit the pickleball audience, I think you gotta go a little deeper. Yeah, it was interesting. I think they, they luck out to me, just like the general population of people that play watch pickleball are not

[00:11:21] maybe the same people that are watching Love Island, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and The Bachelor. So you might have more of like the golden bachelor generation where you don't necessarily need it to be as insane to start, but I agree. I would like a little bit more. I also would like a lot less pickleball. Like, I think Chris Callie said this is like, sometimes you almost watch like an entire match. They're like, all right, it's one, one. Now it's two, two. Now it's three, four. I'm like, why are we going all the way through game

[00:11:51] one in such detail? I agree. We don't need to see any of that. But yeah, so we could take that out. You can make that like 15 seconds as opposed to five minutes and then add more drama, which would be great. To your point, you know, my wife, when she was watching it with me and she said, well, we were talking about biggest winners and losers and we'll talk about this in a second. But she's like, well, it's like Annalise. Like, I know that she likes pickleball. Like, that's basically what you know is like there's, there's so surface

[00:12:19] level information about some of the big players. I wish more of the players were like Gabe and Hayden when it comes to just really saying whatever they want. Right. You sometimes you think you got to protect, how can you protect Hayden and Gabe from themselves? And it's impossible. Like Gabe is watching slots repeatedly on his phone. It's like, what do we know about Gabe? Well, he likes watching slot play on his phone. They like saying fuck all the time.

[00:12:49] They said it so many times. And I saw so many comments, you know, on Facebook groups and some of the YouTube comments like, oh, this really just destroyed the image I had of some of these players. I'm like, they're 20. What do you expect? You know, you should hear how like my, you know, 16 year old speaks, right? Like it's, it's just normal. That's who they are. And that was the best part about it. And hopefully more players can be like that. I mean, they were kind of the only ones that really did let loose. And so, yeah, they're going to piss some people off, but like they're also, you know, is, you know, is Sue from the

[00:13:18] Facebook comments really going to not watch Hayden's next match? Is she going to boycott? No, she's not going to boycott. Like she's got, she's going to mouth off on Facebook and, and whatever. But no, those Hayden and Gabe were probably the only guys that you really felt like, okay, I actually do know these guys a little bit more as a result of this. I don't know Anna Lee better. I don't know Anna Bright better, Ben better. I don't really know any of these people all that much better. And that was kind of the, the intent.

[00:13:43] You got some of the, you got what the writers and what the players wanted you to get with the exception of Hayden and Gabe. We're like, yeah, this is us. We like to say fuck and do whatever. I think my, my, one of my, there's two, two Hayden game moments. One was when they're just like Hayden's in the middle of playing like a championship Sunday and Gabe's like, I need a cookie. And he's like, I got a left, it's like I got a leftover quesadilla here for you. He's like, oh fuck yeah, I'm hungry. I'm like, what are you guys doing in the middle of championship Sunday? And then the other part is when they're riding like the ATV

[00:14:13] and then, and Hayden's riding it at first and then Gabe gets in the driver's seat and he's like, I'm gonna flip this thing. And Hayden's like, oh no. He's like, we're going to fucking die. He's like, oh, that's not good. But that was, that was probably one of the, one of the top moments. But I got to ask you Zane from the series, were there any, uh, who are you like your biggest winners of the series? That was obviously Hayden and Gabe. Anybody else stand out to you for like winners of the series? Somebody that either, uh, improve their image, you know, you got to know more or enjoy their time.

[00:14:43] Yeah. I would say Hayden and Gabe. And then I would also say like Anna Lee. I mean, I think that, I think that a lot of this while we didn't really get to know her all that much better. Right. I think it really portrayed her very favorably. Like not to say that she doesn't, not to say that like she doesn't deserve that or whatever. Like I think it was a nice piece for, for Anna Lee and it made her look, I think really good. And I think she deserves that. So I would, I would consider her to be a winner. A lot of the storylines

[00:15:11] were surrounding her. Yeah. She would definitely had the most, uh, camera time and story time, I would say. So. All right. All right. Let's flip that question then. Who are the losers from this one, Nico? Oh my gosh. Ah, you know, that's just the hard thing. And this is, I almost like wanted, I wanted more losers. Like I needed a villain or something. And it was so hard is that I'm watching, maybe I'm evil and my wife is the same, but we're

[00:15:37] watching episode three, the Paris Hunter Jaume love triangle. And I ended, I ended up liking Jaume the most out of those three by far. I'm like, this guy seems awesome. Like we were like justifying it. Like, Oh, like my wife's like, you know, he just lives by like a different set of rules. So like, even if he's cheating, like he doesn't see it as bad.

[00:16:00] So it's not bad. And I'm like, I think you're right. Like he's just a man of, of a vagabond man of the earth, nomad, like fucking old ladies and going to their house. And he's just like, I'm just here for a good time, you know? And so I really enjoyed it. So maybe the biggest loser is Hunter. Um, just because, you know, he, because that whole situation, but no, I don't think, I don't think there were too many losers other than I think every Christian Alshon soundbite

[00:16:29] was pretty rough. And the amount of times he's like, I've beaten Ben repeatedly. And I don't know who the number one player in the world is as was rough. So I think a limited time Christian had was bad, but I don't know. I can't think of anybody else that was like, got the shaft. How about you? Yeah. Same. I think if there was a loser, it was probably the Hunter in Paris on that. I like, yeah. And, and probably, you know, I think the Facebook commenters probably aren't loving Jaume, but if they met him in person, they would. That's the thing.

[00:16:56] He was opening up her house to Jaume for sure. Oh my gosh. It's like, he's the person I want to hang out with most, but I want my wife to hang out with least. But like, I, you know, I understand, you know? Uh, but, uh, no, so I think so too. And, and back to the winners, like, you know, even like, I think they, I liked the fact that, you know, they showed Kay going to a sports psychologist and, uh, working on herself that, you know, that showed strides. And it was interesting, like hearing her balance. I'm an animal, I'm a beast. I need this anger

[00:17:25] and I need to figure out how to control it. Like, that's kind of like the whole Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader dilemma right there that you got to watch in partners. And like, maybe she is the Darth Vader of a pickleball, but she, you know, she's just like, look, I got all this rage and how do I channel it to be better? So I like that. And, and I will say I got like the most emotional I got, I would say really emotional because I have no emotions, but just watching Fed's ascent and then his struggles with Hayden all the way up until worlds where

[00:17:54] they make a change. They beat Ben and Gabe, they win it all. And then he doesn't get to see it through because Hayden switches partners, uh, which I totally get, but like Fed is a very compelling story. I think, and I think some people hate him because of some of its antics and singles, but I can't get enough of Federico's daxtrot. Yeah. Well, and then, you know, let's call him a loser from this because he didn't, he didn't demonstrate like the, the, the real Federico person like Fed is

[00:18:23] off the court, like a very unanimously liked guy. He's like zero stress, zero, like so totally chill. And I don't think we saw any of that, maybe a little bit of golf, right? Like we saw them hitting some golf balls, but like, yeah, they didn't follow Fed around in his natural habitat whatsoever. So like, Mel, because they saw the, the viewers saw the one side of Fed and, you know, we all get to see him

[00:18:47] being like just constantly goofing around and, you know, in the parole lounge and, and whatever. So yeah. Zane, I, were there any of, what was your favorite moment of the whole season? Any, anything that you, uh, stood out to you? The one that stood out to me was when QD's dad was asked if he was proud of, of QD. And that was just a wild, proud of his accomplishments. And he's like, no, not really.

[00:19:15] I'm proud of how hard he works though. I'm like, oh, okay. I guess that's good. I think I see where you're, you're going here, but yeah, I guess I was pretty, I was excited to see a little bit more of, of that. Again, I feel like you didn't get the full, full story of things from either Connor or from QD and his dad, but like, at least we, at least we covered that. That would have been, that would have probably been, you would have, I would have classified this as a PPA propaganda

[00:19:43] piece if they didn't go into, into that. Right. And some of the, some of the challenges that the tour faces and whatnot. So. Yeah. You know, and QD's dad speaking for every minority parent on earth, it seems like, you know, I think if you asked my dad the same question, he'd be like proud of Nico. He works hard. Can you, can you, can you please say you love your son? I mean, I love what he's doing.

[00:20:09] Love is, it's tough. I'm like, gosh, you know, so maybe it's just me, but, uh, I see this all the time, but it was funny to see it from, from QD's dad and, uh, just the difference in kind of like, you know, he, he's, I don't know. I, I was, I'm trying to think of him in that situation. Like I kind of feel for, for QD because he's, he's kind of doing what his dad does. Connor doesn't want to deal with his dad, which he said, literally, I would,

[00:20:36] I will only bring QD back basically if I negotiate with, with QD and not with his dad. So tough situation for him. We'll see what happens. I don't know, but, uh, definitely not working out super well on the AP, AP tour, not getting the quality reps. And I feel like probably getting worse. So, um, yeah, I think that he played that APP tournament a couple of weeks ago and I don't think he meddled. No, I don't think so either. So the, um, the other,

[00:21:03] the, one of the funniest moment that I had, it wasn't actually funny, but once again, you know, my wife is getting a lot of airtime here today, but there was a part where we were talking about, they're talking about the top four men's doubles teams. Right. And how everybody is getting the semis, winning bronze, silver, but you come on and you say it's tough because nobody wants to be the fourth best doubles team. And then I'm like, I just hear my wife on the side and she's in the car. She's just like, I bet Zane would like to be the fourth best doubles team.

[00:21:33] I would take it. I would take it. You know, tap me in. So that I was dying. I was like, wow, any opportunity to Roseanne was great, but it's mutual. Don't worry. That's pretty funny. That's touche. That's pretty funny. I would take that in a heartbeat, but those guys don't write those guys, the top four players. If you are at the top like that, it is a thousand percent Ricky Bobby. If you're not first, you're last. They do not care. They would rather be, they would rather finish,

[00:22:03] take a risk and finish fourth every time than, than have no, as opposed to having any upside at first. Right. It is truly like, if you're not walking around with a gold, with a gold that day, like who cares? So, and honestly, like, I don't think that's that wrong actually. Like when you are a competitor like that, you know, people make fun of the, if you're not first, your last thing,

[00:22:28] but we all want to be first. That is, that is so true at the top echelon of sports. I think you'd be hard pressed to find athletes at the top of your game that don't think that way. You know, Anna Lee thinks that way. If you're not, if she's not first, she is last. Right. So I don't know. I think Ricky Bobby stumbled on something that really is pretty true. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's definitely different for those, for those four teams. Um, and I'm interested to see, we'll talk

[00:22:54] about this probably a little bit more later on in the pod. So stay tuned. But if there's any shakeups that need to happen to, to get a breakthrough, you know, like they started partners, the documentary with those teams kind of, there was no clear number one. I think Christian even said that, you know, Hey, well, I'm not sure who the number one team is, you know? And at the beginning of the year, last year, it might've been team power forward. Right. And, um, we saw wins from CJ and from,

[00:23:24] um, JW, you know, we saw Hayden and fed and now it's, I don't know how many in a row, um, for the, for Ben and Gabe, but we'll have to see. And I think they're at like 12 or 13 in a row. That's crazy. That's great. Like I, you don't, I don't hear about it very often. I'm not sure why I don't hear the number in a row that they've won, but it's a lot right now. I mean, so what they've won everyone this, I should know this. I put it in my recap videos, but I, maybe it's not 12 or 13

[00:23:49] because they lost worlds. Yeah. So world's world, it was a bunch, right? Probably there's like since Atlanta, worlds. So anyway, finding a doctor you actually like feels like discovering a diamond in the rough. Sure. You want somebody in network nearby open time slots, but honestly, that's just the start. You also want somebody who listens, make you feel comfortable, calms your nerves,

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[00:24:41] you love today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash the dink, ZocDoc.com slash the dink. Thank you, ZocDoc, for sponsoring this message. And I need this because honestly, I don't know anything about healthcare. I need their help. I'm checking out ZocDoc as well. Yeah, that gets into the PPA Tour Finals with the Toys R Us PPA. Toys R Us.

[00:25:07] Epic name. I loved that. And it made me think, all right, what should we name the Tour Finals next year? I'm thinking we go Red Lobster Tour Finals. I'm thinking we go Enron 2.0. Blockbuster Tour Finals. Or, my personal favorite, I think we go Dunder Mifflin Infinity Tour Finals.

[00:25:35] Dunder Mifflin Infinity to Infinity Tour Finals. The Dundies. Oh my goodness. I like this. I don't know where... So Toys R Us is still around? Is that what the deal is? Like, are they on online? Yeah. What do they do? Do you know? So I actually looked this up because I was like, I thought Toys R Us was bankrupt and they were. But I think they're coming back in some limited physical locations as well as like a pretty big online presence. Hence getting back into the game. And so I joke about it, but like,

[00:26:04] I think that's great. I think Toys R Us is a cool company. Like, I have such fond memories of going into Toys R Us as a kid. And so, yeah, I'm glad that they are so back. So back Toys R Us. So back. Toys R Us. If you want to sponsor the podcast, I will gladly get on here and talk about Pokemon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Harry Potter decorations, all the stuff that I used to buy as my parents used to buy as a child. I never really got a ton of things from Toys R Us. It was always like, it was always the

[00:26:32] most expensive place to buy toys, I feel like. But every time I went there, I'm like the dork that would go straight to where they had the video game controller that you could like test out video games. I was like, yes, I want to like play Game Boy or whatever. Because I never really had any of those video games at home. Like, it was like, the video games were on lock all the time. So Toys R Us, oh, that was great. And also, Gak and Slime. Oh, those are my favorite things to buy at Toys R Us. You ever have those? It was like Nickelodeon, Gak?

[00:26:58] I had a little bit of the slime for my Hot Wheels collection. All the tracks on those. Yeah, I used to go to town making those. So Toys R Us. And they had the draft there the entire time. Yeah, they had the draft handing out the trophies, everything. I mean, what a comeback for Toys R Us. They're the big winner of the tour finals, I think. I would agree. I would agree. Because everything else was, you know, here's the thing. The 500 point tournament

[00:27:28] that went on at the same time, I thought was more entertaining than the tour finals. Because the tour finals were more of what we already saw. The PPA does not have a quality of pickleball problem. Every match, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is elite, right? Great play. Play is getting better every single time. The problem is that it's the same results every single

[00:27:52] time. And I think the PPA tour finals really just put that on full display, actually, right? This is supposed to be the most interesting, most entertaining. All the top teams playing against each other, they all have the ability to basically pick their own partners based on rankings. And what happens? They all pick the exact same people. They all have the exact same results. And we have the exact same winners. With the maybe exception of women's singles where Kate Fahey won, but Kate Fahey usually wins when

[00:28:21] Annalise is not there. So it's the same, the exact same deal. And I think that's the problem. I don't know how we solve for that for PPA Championship Sunday, but I do know how we can solve for that for the tour finals. And it needs to be solved for the tour finals to make it seem like something different. So my proposal is based on rankings, you get your picks, right? So if you're the number one ranked

[00:28:49] player in your division, you get the first pick, but you can only pick from players nine through 16, right? So the way that we, I looked at this is like, okay, Ben gets, Ben or Gabe get first picks. They'd have to flip a coin or something or another to determine that because they're tied in points. But let's say Ben gets the first pick. Ben would go Dylan. Gabe picks Eric on scenes. Christian, I think,

[00:29:14] picks Riley because they've played well together. Hayden is up next. He picks Noe. Andre picks Tyson McGuffin. JW picks Jaume. And then CJ is eighth. He ends up with Jay Devillier. And I mean, I'm liking Ben and Dylan as a favorite in that, but it's obviously like not super, super, super clear. And then you do this on the women's side too, right? So you go Anna Lee. Anna Lee gets first pick. She

[00:29:40] probably goes with Megan Dazon. Anna Bright picks her MLP teammate, Kate. Tyra picks Tina. Georgia, Lacey, Paris, Alex Trong, Catherine and Jamie Way, Rachel Rohrabacher, Zoe Wong, Jade Kalamoto with Caitlin Christian. I mean, like this is exactly what people want. It's new partnerships and more parody. You, I think any of those, any of those teams other than, you know, the six, seven, eighth

[00:30:05] ranked teams could come away from these weekends winning them. I like it. Totally nerf the advantage of being number one in the rankings. You get to pick the best partner when you are number one. It's not like one. I thought about it doing this way. Like one gets paired with 16 automatically to with 15, but no, then you don't have any in there's no reward to being number one or number two. You actually get punished for being higher up in the rankings. All right. So I like it.

[00:30:32] Here's the immediate like thing that you have to figure out how to navigate. I'm going to throw the wet blanket on this one is one. If you are the nine seed, you are in a much better place to win rankings points and or dollars than the eighth place person. So people eight through, you know, five through eight get the shaft when it comes to this. But I like the idea of mixing this up in some way. So you got to figure out maybe they're not worth points. I'm not sure how that works, but

[00:31:03] something needs to change where you can't just let the two top players in the world play together. I agree. Yep. Yeah, I agree. And you know, eighth player gets gets shafted a little bit. Yeah, you're right. I'll fight for ninth place. It's like tanking. It's tanking. CJ Klinger takes a month off. But yeah, you know, like one through four can pick five through nine. Right. And then you get or something like that. Right. Some sort of limitations on who they could pick. Like if you're

[00:31:31] number one, you can't pick anybody in the top four. Okay. So yeah, I don't know how you do it. But two other things. First off, I think there needs to be a wild card. Give me frickin Tama in this, right? Or or somebody who's up and coming that doesn't have the points yet. So give me like a wild card. And then last but not least. Give me a fan favorite team. You can vote the people can vote

[00:32:00] in a fan favorite team. So then you have two pools of five teams instead of two pools of four teams, you can avoid all of the nonsense with advancing based on point differential a little bit more because there were a couple pools where there were three people tied and you go based on point differential. And that kind of sucks because a win's a win and as a loss is a loss. And you have three teams that are all one and two or three teams that are all two and one like advancing on

[00:32:27] point differential kind of sucks. That gets the people involved. It's something different. Yeah, I think that the PPA finals has so much potential, but you just can't make it the same exact thing as every other weekend. I like the fan the fan favorite or like the fan vote. I thought about this. I was when I watched women's singles, I said, how is Kiora Kunimoto not in the top eight? Like, how is Liz Trulock, the eighth person in this event? I didn't I didn't understand. Right. And

[00:32:55] obviously points. But if Kiora is in the finals or she's in the tour finals, is she in the finals of this event or, you know, at least the semifinals? I think so. Right. Like, yeah, so who knows, but 500 level event that was going on at the same time. Yeah, she didn't. And to your point, the 500 level was was much more exciting. Zane, I have I do have a question, though, about the 500. One is I didn't realize what was happening. Is this the first I think is the first time they've done that. But I looked and I was like, at first, I looked at the people that were signed up for the tournament.

[00:33:24] I was like, why is Zane playing in the tour finals? He's not top eight. And I saw it said that you were registered to play with Travis Rettenmeier, which definitely didn't happen. I wonder if Travis knew. But but anyway, my question is, does that does the tour finals 500 count as a PPA gold if you win it? Is that a PPA gold? Is it a PPA gold with an asterisk? Or is it just does not count? It's like a challenger. I don't think you can say it doesn't count.

[00:33:49] I think that you could say a challenger doesn't count. But this is a PPA event with a massive, massive asterisk. So like a huge asterisk. But again, I don't think it should be that way. I think I think you should make this event 500 points. You know, why would I show up or Travis or most of the players didn't show right? You should make this event worth more points

[00:34:14] for the top people, more points for the bottom people and make it really like a best of the rest tournament because that would be interesting, too. Right. You know, are Scarpa and Dow going to have a really good run? Right. Is it is it you know, is it who knows who is that ninth best team? Could be interesting. I like it. And how about this? We're going to we'll add another wrinkle here. You run that tournament before tour finals and the winner gets to go into it's like the play in game

[00:34:44] in NBA. The winner of each of those cure gets to go. Tama gets to go. Tama and Yuta are in the finals. Everybody would want to see that. And then that team becomes like the Cinderella story of the finals. And maybe they get blown out. Maybe not. But then you get the hottest team at the end of the season playing along with the people that were good for the whole year. Connor Pardo, if you are listening, send us the keys to this event. We'll fix it.

[00:35:10] We're keeping Toys R Us as the sponsor. You guys nailed that one. But we're changing everything else. Everything else. Now, this event really, I think, has a ton of potential. I think that they probably recognize like, all right, we got to do some sort of a switch because otherwise it's going to fall flat. And I think that I think that we're close. I think there's some details that probably need to be sorted out for something like this. But like, I think we kind of have a couple of pretty interesting

[00:35:34] ideas on this. And yeah, now we go full MLP mode. We've got PPA Malaysia this week, which basically like nobody's playing other than me, I think. And I mean, at least of like the American players, there are very few American players coming over. And then following week kicks off MLP Columbus. MLP. Zane, are you partnering with NOM again? I am not. So I was supposed to actually, but NOM is not a PPA contracted player. So he got

[00:36:03] put in qualifying for singles, which is wild. Understandable. It's their rules. If you're not assigned that you have to be in the qualifiers, I guess. But like, he was like, dude, I'm not doing that. I'm like, I kind of get that, dude. I can't worry. It sucks. But I'm partnering up with another Aussie, Mitch Hargraves for men's doubles instead. And so that'll be a good time.

[00:36:28] But since NOM dropped out after the deadline, I now got put in qualies as a result. I've got to go play qualies tomorrow, which is a pain in the ass. I've never played qualies at any pickleball event ever. So this will be my first time. So you're playing singles qualies? No, I'm still in the main draw for men's singles and mixed doubles, but just men's doubles with Mitch, we got put in qualies. Men's doubles. That's crazy. Okay. But you're in the main draw for singles. Yeah. Make it make sense.

[00:36:56] But no, it's their policy, which also I do appreciate. Like, you've got a policy. Stick to it. Don't make exceptions. I respect that. Definitely. Yeah. Not for two-time PPA champion. Two-time? Zane Navarillo? Two-time. Back-to-back? No. It was back-to-back. Back-to-back. That's right. I remember it was a trivia question one time and nobody got right. Fuck you, Nico. I remember the back-to-back. Give me Federico, Christian Alshon, Ben Johns, obviously. Oh, fuck. Who else could it possibly

[00:37:26] be? Tyson. Not even Zane remembers. Oh, my goodness. No, I remember. Fuck you, Nico. Of course I remember. Is it on YouTube? Can I watch it? I know that the one against Tyson, the finals in Vegas was on YouTube. Texas Open over where it would be J-Dub. I mean, I'm sure you can probably find it. Yeah. That's impressive. J-Dub and Tyson. Back-to-back. Zane Navarillo. Impressive. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. You should start a school.

[00:37:54] I've got one, bro. It's the transition zone. Sign up already. All right. Zane, can I just ask you one question before we jump into MLP or all these other things? I just want to take one more detour back to my favorite spot, which is Championship Sunday. I just want to ask you this. Can we fix Championship Sunday by just making it two out of three instead of three out of five? I like three out of five, but I do think that Andrea Koop has a good idea. I think you also

[00:38:22] need to differentiate the cups from the slams, right? Or the slams from anything else. I think that three out of five Championship Sunday is maybe a little bit monotonous and it leads to fewer upsets, right? So you would have more upsets if you went to two out of three regularly. And then the slams three out of five shows that it's something different. But what are you going to do? How are you going to then, you know, fill up the rest of that day, right? Like what else do you put in

[00:38:52] Championship Sunday? Do you put in maybe a couple of juniors matches? Like how do you fill the rest of that day? I don't know. Nothing. That's the hard thing is I know there's a lot, but my question is if you said, hey, your Championship Sunday viewing experience in pickleball is four hours, not seven hours or whatever that is, would more people actually watch it in the shorter period of time? Like it might actually be beneficial. Like, you know, football games, if someone said, hey, our baseball game is

[00:39:17] going to be seven hours today, like no one wants to watch that, right? So maybe it'd be fine if it only lasted, you know, 65% as long. Yeah, interesting. That's an interesting take. I think that they want enough programming to obviously sell the tickets. I think people online take and take these pieces of matches and very few people, I think as a percentage actually watch live, right? You see

[00:39:45] the live viewership sometimes and it'll be like, you know, 10, 15,000 people. But then these same matches on YouTube will show up as have had, you know, hundreds of thousands of views. So I think people watch at their own sort of convenience, actually. Which is wild because I've never done that with any other sport ever. I'm like, I don't watch it live. I'm not watching it pretty much. I agree. Yeah, I am too habitually online also to not know that find out the score before the end, basically. So I just don't know how to avoid it. And then it

[00:40:12] would ruin it for me. So I have to watch live. But yeah, I think you could do that. I think you could even you could move Championship Sunday or something like that to primetime hours, put the bronze medal matches first, Championship Sunday afterwards happens at nighttime happens like Sunday night football. It's a spectacle under the lights. Maybe that works. And to for me, really, the biggest reason is two out of three. You see more upsets. Yeah, so I suppose, yeah, you could just put all of the bronze stuff first, then all like that's the

[00:40:41] morning session. And then all the Championship Sunday, that's the afternoon session. And I think, you know, the only risk there is players not going 100% at bronze, right, which we see pretty frequently. So that would that would be the one thing that would need to change. I think you need to incentivize bronze maybe a little bit more. Yeah, I don't know if I totally agree on this one. I just think there's some practical constraints. But I like where your head's at, Nico, for once.

[00:41:08] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's just like you with the the top eight, bottom eight, whatever. Tons of practical constraints, but it makes sense in theory. So we'll see if we can make something like this work. You know, I just keep there's got to be something that makes this exciting on Sunday that makes the tournament like, I don't know, it's just like it always ends with like, you know, it's like a TV show with the worst season finale or series finale. It's like Game of Thrones. Every pickleball season or every pickleball tournament is Game of Thrones. The first seven seasons are great.

[00:41:37] Season eight, just awful. So Champions of Sunday is the season eight of Game of Thrones. That's a hot take and a pretty good one. That feels like a good social clip right there. So I just turned 39 and I just started going back to the doctor. Oops. Yeah, I've been trying to get a check and a handle on my health, right? And I didn't realize there's like a lot of things that you need to monitor. One of the most important things being your blood pressure. I didn't realize,

[00:42:02] but apparently like 50% of adults have high blood pressure and I don't want to be one of them. And so I found this product, 120 Life, that guarantees that you take their product for 14 days and your blood pressure will go down or your money back. So basically step one, get the drink, test your blood pressure. Step two, for the next 14 days, take it. Step three, check, see if your blood

[00:42:29] pressure has improved, get your money back. If not, but it seems to work for a lot of people. And because pickleball is such an inclusive sport where anybody can play from like age five to age 90, I want to be able to enjoy that till the bitter end kicking and screaming. So if you're like me and you want to do the same, you want to get a handle on your health, but you don't want to take pills and a ton of different prescription drugs, try 120 Life. You can go to 120life.com and use the dink

[00:42:57] and get 20% off. Check it out today. Good shit. Okay. Nico just took a poop. Now we are back to talk about the UPAA rule changes. We good with that? Perfect. I do, I do do that from time to time. So he's been known to. All right. So UPAA released their own rule book. I made a full YouTube video about it. I don't know how much about that. Do you know Nico? I know that they talked about,

[00:43:25] you can't blow the ball over the net. Uh, that's bullshit. I am pro blow. Zane has been pro blow ever since he found out blowing was an option. So always been pro blow. Always been. Yeah. So that's all I, all I knew. I, I, I know Onisha was like part of or headed up creating this. Uh, but outside of that, is there anything specifically that's different? Yeah. I mean, there are about

[00:43:55] probably 50 differences or so from the USAP rule book. Some of them are pretty, you know, mundane. Some of them are decently big. A couple of things that I've been suggesting for a while. I'm stoked. We're switching sides at six every game, as opposed to just in game three. So switching. And by the way, a lot of confusion on my YouTube video, even though I felt like I tried to explain it as best as I could, this only applies for UPA events. And even within UPA events, there are differences between

[00:44:22] the pro game and the amateur game. So confusion, but that's okay. This applies for UPA events. So amateurs and pros or no amateurs and pros. However, there are also additional modifications to the amateur rule book for pro play for some of this stuff. But at the UPA events, everybody's switching sides at six every game, which I think is great blowing, not allowed anywhere serves.

[00:44:47] This is where there's an amateur and pro difference serves at the amateur level. You can still use the drop serve, but the ball can only bounce once. I know Shea Underwood was making some of those. Yeah, probably the Shea Underwood rule. Pro level, you cannot use the bounce serve or the drop serve. And they made some modifications to the rules as well as the way that referees interpret them.

[00:45:11] So this will probably be the biggest change that we have. But essentially, if the referee is unsure whether a serve is legal or illegal, currently, they have to be 100% certain that it's illegal in order to call it. Now, they have to be 100% certain that it is legal to not call it, right? So they shifted that if they can't tell if it's legal or not, it's illegal. So do you like that?

[00:45:39] No, because they didn't really address the problem. The problem is that you can't tell whether any of these things are legal or illegal in real time, right? You can't tell whether the person is going on, you know, hitting upwards at the point of contact. You can't tell where the contact point is. You can interpret it however you want, but there's still no good way of enforcing. And you know, some of the wording that they use, like it can't resemble a horizontal swing motion. The fuck does

[00:46:06] that mean? Like, what does that? What does that mean? Tell me what that means. That's going to mean something different to everybody. They didn't address the core problem, which is that the serve rules are inherently unenforceable. You know, I still think it's inevitable that in order to fix serve rule problems, we've got to go to a drop serve at some point or another. It's the only rule that's actually enforceable, regardless of what you think about drop serve or not. It is an enforceable rule and we need enforceable rules. So anyway, that's never going to happen. I will that a hill that I

[00:46:36] will die on is that they will never go to a drop serve ever, never, ever. Like you're like, inevitably, we got to go. That will never happen. I mean, I don't understand why it's specifically a rule that you can't do it in UPA. Like that doesn't make sense at all. Like you should at least be able to do it. It looks dumb. So dumb. Everybody says that. Nico, Nico, pause. Okay, pause. Everybody says it looks dumb because every time you've seen somebody hit a drop serve,

[00:47:04] it's probably some 74 year old guy who is hitting and then chopping a backhand like this. Like everybody who uses the drop serve does look dumb. I agree. However, it doesn't have to be dumb. I've got these videos of me hitting them and you can actually make it look very athletic. You drop it, you can step into it, you can crank the serve. Like it looks good when you have a pro doing it. Chris Hayworth, guarantee you, he will be doing his happy Gilmore drop serve. Like it's going to

[00:47:31] look good. The argument that it doesn't look good is based on never seeing a pro actually go and do this. If you said that you could only like, if your sample size for whether a pickleball serve looks good is players at the rec park play, rec play doing it, no serve would ever look good. You know, it's, it's, you got a point there and I think there's no respect on the drop serve.

[00:48:00] One of the best players, if not the best player in Reno exclusively hits a drop serve. You know, five Oh plus player hits drop serves and immediately the opponents like I'm not losing to this. And then they end up losing and they're embarrassed and they're frustrated. They're like, I can't believe I lost to a guy that has a drop serve. But I think what we need is maybe like the top 20 players to be willing to have themselves videoed hitting a drop serve. Well, one, we'll see if we can get all 22 agree to that and we'll see how cool it actually looks. One, there's no way it looks as cool as a

[00:48:29] regular serve to I just like, I don't know, I feel like whether or not there's wiggle room, and it's not enforceable. I don't really care. Like for the whole past year, I don't think it's really been a problem. Like, there's only been a few times that I've seen people call or say, you know, questionable reserve that I thought the problem was gone. I feel like we're resurfacing old issues. Fair enough. Let me pull up a let me pull up a video of me hitting a cool drop serve.

[00:48:55] Oh my gosh. The only person that can make a drop serve look cool is Zane Navarro. Yeah. And if I can make a drop serve look cool, anybody can make a drop serve look cool on the pro tour. So yeah, I mean, I think going back to the rule change thing. First off, there's there's two things pro pickball needs different rules than amateur pickball because they're different things, right? Pro pickball needs to look good on TV. Amateur pickball needs to be fun to play. So the fact that we are actually having a different rule book, I think opens us up for a lot

[00:49:23] of potential, right? I still think in pro play, you need to widen the net post. I think there's a bunch of other things that you could do to make pro pickball look more entertaining without, you know, changing what amateur pickball looks like because amateur pickball, I think is in a really, really good spot. People love it. But pro pickball has it solved for how this looks best on TV, right? And then second, I mean, I think this is just another data point for no confidence in anything

[00:49:52] USAP is doing from UPA. You guys can't test battles. That was true. You guys aren't making a good rule book. I don't know whether that's true or not. I think it certainly isn't ideal again for for the pros in some ways. But yeah, I think that that's another it's another area that UPA is sort of stepping into. Yeah, I also, by the way, I think that UPA needs to have some kind of public service announcement about the difference between pro and amateur play because between the

[00:50:21] rules and the paddle, like people are like, oh, I can't play with the RP this RPM paddle anymore. I can't play with this paddle is not UPA approved. My you play three Oh pickable. It doesn't matter. You know, so you can play with the paddle anywhere. No one's checking your paddle anyway. You can play with an illegal paddle that's completely blasted. No one's going to check it no matter what. But even at PPA events, you can still play with pretty much any UPA. You can play with any USA Pickleball approved paddle doesn't have to be UPA anyway. So I think that actually

[00:50:48] next year, I think you have to be UPA even an amateur play with it. Okay. But I mean, this stuff is out there like it's not that hard to find. Yeah, too many, too many acronyms in pickleball that I don't actually know what's happening. Zane, one thing when they were talking about the rules, they were like trying to define like unsportsmanlike conduct or it being a direct like foul or yellow card or orange card. Is there any are there new specific rules

[00:51:14] around unsportsmanlike conduct for be like becoming a straight point? Like I know like if you hit a ball into the crowd or out of out of the out of the confines of the stadium, it's like an automatic point deduction or something like that. I didn't I didn't see that. I mean, they just kind of changed the wording around for for the cards and stuff. And I still think like blue and orange card, I've never taken the time to learn which one is which because it just bothers me so much that they don't just copy soccer and do yellow and red card because that's what something that everybody knows.

[00:51:43] So I think a blue card is a warning and a orange card is a foul. But they changed those wordings around now there's like mark and foul or something like that. Oh, I don't know. It just didn't really change all that much is mostly the wording changing. All right. Well, I the more I kept thinking about like the unsportsmanship unsportsmanlike conduct and even though I want to see more balls will leave the leave the facility. I want to see more people smash paddles against their knees or whatever. And I know that's

[00:52:10] trying to crack down on some of this bad behavior. I wanted to ask you cracking down on paddle throwing. I think paddle throwing should be cracked down on. Yes, I think that paddle smashing should be encouraged. Yes, agreed for entertainment purposes, right? Oh, yeah, we don't need to be on our best behavior all the time. But speaking of best behavior. My question here is we're getting into MLP season and MLP kind of lives by a certain different set

[00:52:37] of unwritten rules than PPA and pickleball is very similar to tennis in kind of their rules and their expectations specifically of fans, which is way different than like basketball or football or baseball or any team sport. And so my question is, should fans be allowed to cheer more or during points? Should they be allowed to heckle? Like, do we want to be more like tennis and golf?

[00:53:05] Or can we be more like basketball? Or the NFL? Like, why do you have to be like tennis? I've been on this one for like five years, probably since I've had a podcast. I've been saying fans got to cheer during the point. We're not tennis. We're not golf. We're pickleball. Like points are long. Somebody makes a crazy get in the middle of a point. Cheer for that. That's part of the thing I liked about in Vietnam. Like somebody did a crazy get did a crazy get people will be like, oh, yeah,

[00:53:31] perfect. Like, yeah, do it. So yeah, I mean, I think this is a clear to me. Go for it. Also, it's not distracting to players when it's a constant roar. It's only distracting when it's silent. And then somebody like in the middle of a point and then there's a distraction. And then, you know, there's the inevitable like conversation about is it a replay? Is it a you just play on is a distraction, whatever the

[00:53:57] hell? Like, no, just have the constant roar. This is pickleball pickleball. I think fans absolutely 100% should be allowed to cheer heckle do whatever during a point. Good. Okay, good. You know, I haven't I am not familiar with their game, Zane, but I am glad that that is your stance. It's also my stance. And specifically with heckling. I put this on X and I think somebody had said, oh, you know, I think there should be more cheering, but heckling is classless. And I'm like,

[00:54:27] meh, is it classless? I'm like, every sport has fun heckling like and it has bad heckling for sure. But like if you send the outfield of any baseball game, they're just like yelling the whole time, like, you know, what's the matter with Zane? He's a bum, you know, and then they'll say something, you know, like and he sucks at bachelor parties. And then that, you know, and everybody has fun. The whole outfield is basically shitting on one player at the same time. If you're kicking a foot, you know, kicking a field goal, the whole crowd is shit talking you and yelling at you as you're

[00:54:56] trying to kick a field goal. Like, I don't actually think it's classless. I think it's just like normal behavior, but it seems classless in the confines of like in the respects of tennis. Yeah, bring it on. Like, I want people yelling with it when I'm going up for overheads. I want people doing air horns, whatever, like, I don't care. Like, actually, probably not air horns. That could actually more like affect you got to be able to hear the other person hit. But like,

[00:55:20] yeah, do do your worst. I love all that. I think that's would be so huge for pickleball, to be honest. Yeah, if anybody thinks otherwise, go to like a youth volleyball tournament that has like 80 teams. They're the most ruthless people I've ever heard in my life. The actual teams, they are cheering against the person. They're yelling side out as the person is serving the ball. Like, there's no rules. There's no like respect. And it's so much fun. Like, honestly,

[00:55:47] it's so weird. Like, I'd never been involved in volleyball until my daughter started doing it a couple years ago. And yeah, if MLP, if PPA was more like volleyball, had the cheers, had the chance, even had the opposing team, you know, yelling at the other team, that's fine. And I thought it was funny. Chris Callie said, I'm all for the fans yelling whatever they want the players. And I'm all for the players yelling whatever they want back at the fans. Which I, that is like, you can't do that. But at the same time, that's probably what should be allowed. Like if you could say anything,

[00:56:17] they can say anything. But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, the athletes are held to a different standard. But like, we're also just people out there too. Now, is it smart to engage with the fan? No, because that clearly just shows like, okay, that's actually working. And if I'm an asshole fan, I'm just going to double down on that. Because I'm also, you know, like, I'm good at that game, right? Like, I heckle from the bench, the other team. And as soon as they acknowledge my

[00:56:42] existence, oh, it's game on, right? Like, so for your own purposes, you probably shouldn't just shouldn't do it. But also, if you do, who gives a shit? Like, somebody's yelling at you the entire time, you should be able to say whatever you want to them. Yeah. So, you know, I think we, we certainly share that the PPA actually did that a few years ago. I think they bust in some like frat boys or something. And they were like, yeah, it was in Texas or Austin. Was that Austin? I don't think it was Austin. I think it might have been Texas Open or Atlanta or something. I don't remember. But it was great. They were talking shit during the point.

[00:57:13] And like, it was great. I loved it. And then there happened again. Yeah, that's yeah. All right. So let's do it. Bring back the hype guys. Make them heckler guys. Zayn, if he's not playing, starting on the MLP team, you know, midway through the season, he can be on the bench yelling at the other people. I would do it. I'd be a full time heckler, pick a ball heckler. There's going to be a postseason push trade. The fives are going to trade back to get Zayn just so they can have him on the bench so he can talk shit

[00:57:40] and do the chant and everybody's going to be on tilt. And that's not the chant for the fives is not heckling, but it is definitely puts everybody on to everybody hates it so much that like the opposing team, the opposing fans, everybody that they they're no longer able to play their game because that shit's so annoying. Yeah. But you know what? The fives, speaking of the fives, they just released their new logo and

[00:58:06] I got out of there just in time. I'm not a fan of it. Come on, like the clown. Okay. Maybe it was like ugly or whatever, but it had character Nico. I'm sick of all of these, you know, corporate logo overhauls to make them simpler and stuff. Right. Nobody's logo looks better now than it did five years ago. Right. I don't like it's now just a, a five hand. It's like a glove. This looks like a,

[00:58:31] like a, like a feminine hand. It's kind of long. It looks a little creepy. Um, like Slenderman style or something. I don't know. But, uh, it, to me, it looks like Silicon Valley, like tech startup slop. Like, I don't know how to describe it. It's like very simplistic. I don't know. You ever watched Silicon Valley, the TV show they had like the company Pied Piper anyway, remind me of that. They're just shitting all over their logo, but like, it's just, it just says the fives. It's two colors

[00:58:58] with a small hand. I don't understand. I'm like, yeah. And you know my favorite thing is I wonder how much they paid for that shit. Either too much or not enough. Um, yeah, you could, you could, you could go the way of the Nashville chefs when they basically outsourced it to Fiverr and got the first look logo so bad that they had to do a competition to, uh, to get a second logo. Um,

[00:59:25] or you go the corporate route where you get a consulting firm to tell you how to do the logo and you come up with maybe what the fives came up with. All right. Anything else? Zane? No, let, we'll talk about the new Pickler financials next week. Um, that was pretty interesting, but first I think, uh, guess my duper a couple of comments and we'll get out of here. Let's do it. Alrighty. Let's do this. All right. We are not at college nationals. We're looking at

[00:59:53] this guy. Is this a kid? I'm like, how young is this? Is this juniors? Oh, look at that. He did not think that was coming back. Hitting the ball from behind him a little, but he's kind of got a little CJ Klinger ish game. I also, I also saw the Andre with like the handout while he's hitting that backhand slice. Good duck. Good duck. Okay. It looks like he's playing with, uh, how old is it? He's playing with a Kalamoto. All right. Short return, but

[01:00:25] dude, relax. He's like 13. Come on. I need him to take, I need him to be taking more balls in the middle. Oh, that's a tricky little flick. That's a better, that's a better two handed backhand than I've ever hit in my life. So okay. Interesting. What's your thoughts, Nico? All right. So you look good. All right. Here's my thing. The juniors always have like low dupers. I feel like, I don't know why they just like,

[01:00:50] maybe they haven't played enough people or whatnot. So I'm going to say like four, two. He also looks like somebody that right now, like you said, he wasn't moving a tremendous amount and mixed. And so his mixed now that duper has both mixed and gender ratings, I would, I would guess that is mixed might be a little bit lower duper than maybe like a men's doubles. So I don't know

[01:01:14] if that's in effect yet or, or what, but I'm going to go, you know, actually a Franklin ball in those conditions also makes players look a little bit better. I'm going to go 4.5, just straight up 4.5. All right. 3.8. No, that's cap. That's, that's cappuccino. What's going on? No, that's no, no, no, no, no. Wrong. Wrong. It's wrong. He's definitely better. But that's

[01:01:42] the thing. It's like the juniors just always have the lowest dupers. Like there's this junior player who I played against. And now she's like, she's won like every junior match. Her name is Jing Robinson. And I think she won like three events at the tour finals, every single under 18. I think she even won five Oh women's and she was like a four six. I'm like, I mean, she's probably higher now, but like, I just don't understand. So that's why I don't play against anybody young because they play like five Oh's and their duper is a three eight. But, uh, yeah, so duper is wrong

[01:02:11] on this one. Sorry, duper. I know this is, this is for you guys also, but, uh, we've you guys, that rating sucks. Just kidding. Yeah. Well, our guy needs to put in more duper matches. Cause obviously like he is that duper will go up if he plays some more. Maybe he did the duper reset. True. All right. I want to go through a few of the comments from last episode who we fam on Instagram says cheaters should have ranking point deducted. Everyone fights for ranking points. Just deduct them once a hook is confirmed and they'll drop their seeds eventually. Yeah.

[01:02:39] I think that's not a bad idea, right? If you, if you have a certain amount of hooks in a match, you don't get points for it, right? Like if you challenge a paddle and that paddle is illegal, they don't get points from that match. So maybe if there's a certain amount of confirmed hooks in a match, you don't get points for it. Brittany says finished partners and can't wait for part two. Is there a release date? I don't think we know that yet. Do we? What was that? If what? If there's a release date for part two of partners? No, I didn't even know that it was a thing until I finished episode six. So no release date.

[01:03:08] Yeah. Mr. G Bustamante says the best thing about pro pickleball is how easy it is to watch and all the access. If you get a TV deal, it'll ruin it. You know, I suppose that's a, that's a good point. You know, putting everything out there for free on, on YouTube and whatnot, like the fans love that the most, but at a certain point, like they got to start getting

[01:03:30] paid for, for that too. So a couple of people have mentioned that we have VAR wrong. It's the most accurate rating system and moves players rating as games are inputted along with other data. That sounds like you dooper. Exactly. It's dooper with a human aspect that is, is, is fallible and multi-level marketing.

[01:03:55] Ooh. Here's a good one. Bick, Klee, thief, bis, bis, oh, it's bicycle thief. When you read some of this stuff and it's one word, it looks funny. Like Bick, Klee, thief, oh, bicycle thief. Okay. Remember when Nico predicted Anna Lee would drop Ben for Hayden by the end of

[01:04:18] the year. Yeah. I don't remember. Uh, that, that, that has been a, oh, you're on here. He commented back. Guy was dead wrong. Guy was dead. Dumb take for sure. Uh, someone says Nico's takes our classic example of why argue with an idiot when you can just wait. But I want to say has Ben won a singles gold? No. Has any tennis player? No. I'm right more than I am wrong. So you guys can suck it. Uh,

[01:04:44] I saw this one said, stop being soft, weak millennials to be the best. You got to beat the best period. Yeah. Uh, someone sounds like, yeah, stop. Is that, is that referencing? What is that referencing? I think it was just like, um, probably somewhere around the, the idea of like, we needed to nerf the top teams or we wanted to change the PPA finals or not have championship Sunday be boring. I don't know. That's probably my guess. This person said, Hey Zane, don't bring

[01:05:13] in Ben's fire at Q. You were aiming the same way. You're just much shorter than Jack. That's the best you could do. So with your, your body bag, basically we're talking about how QD was about to get his face blown off. Right. And then you were doing exactly the same thing. That, well, I, Ben hit it way higher than I hit. Yeah. I guess I'm just saying that if you were tall, like Ben, you would have hit it higher too. All right. That doesn't make sense. Next. I also don't think

[01:05:39] you're as short as people think you are. Thank you. I'm five nine. I'm not that. It's like a, it's like a totally almost average. So Zane says, Zane, if you come back to Sacramento, I would be happy to show you some great eateries. Let me stop you there. I was just reading that one too. Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. It says, I would be happy to show you some great eateries that may help you think differently. If you still want to be a hater of us here after that, I will gladly or accept defeat

[01:06:06] graciously. No, I actually would say that was a good redeeming quality of Sacramento. The meals that I went to on my own and not that random, you know, like a strip mall place that we went to go watch the pickle slam. I went to tower cafe downtown. That was really good. Had some good stuff. There are a few different good eateries. I just really disdained the idea of having to go ask the attendant at a gas station to unlock the, uh, the drawer so I could buy deodorant. I was like,

[01:06:32] that's just too much. So yeah, the food is actually, I think was pretty solid in, in Sacramento. So Patty V I'll hit you up for some recommendations next time. Appreciate that. Zane, I have a quick question for you. What should I do here? Some guys, this is not a comment, but this was a DM. This guy messaged me and he said, he sends me a, of course it's an AI generated image for a flyer for a pickleball tournament. He says, can I fly you out for this? I think we win

[01:06:58] easy. And I'm like, okay, where is this? And he says, Staten Island, New York. I fly you into Newark, 15 minute right from the airport to the tournament, quick five and O and you're free. How great would it be? Like, would I have to be a complete psycho or is this a missed opportunity for me to have a random fly me out across the country to play a money ball tournament in New York? I think you got to do that, Nico, a hundred percent. The hard thing was, I'm like, all right, when's the tournament? Next weekend. I was like, okay, one, you got to give me some kind

[01:07:27] of heads up. And then I didn't, so I asked where it was. I didn't actually respond. Uh, and then he messaged me again and it's an image of, uh, from pickleball lifetime pickleball, New York. And it's like, it says, you want to play with the ninth highest duper player on earth. And it's got a picture of Riley Newman. It's like, he's hosting three and me's. And the guy's like, actually, if you do let me fly you out, we can do a three and me the day after with Riley Newman already confirmed the 4 PM slot. And I was like, this is quite the offer. So I'm not shooting

[01:07:55] on this offer at all. I'm just like, this is impressive. Uh, this guy is ready to sign us up for a three and me's with Riley Newman. And I don't even know how much a flight from Reno, Nevada to New York is. I think I probably have to pass. Cause I probably have some kind of kid sports this weekend. But, uh, if you guys want to fly me out to a random place to play pickleball tournament and not kill me, like I'll take my chances. Let's try to win some money. I'm in Michael. I'll also figure it out. I'll take Nico's chances on that offer.

[01:08:24] So I think you should have done it. If you got no kids stuff going on, I think that's electric and great, great contents. Give us something to talk about next week. All right. If I say, if I survive, podcast will be on Monday pending survival. Uh, let's, let's, that's what we should try and do. We'll just see it. We'll have a segment of Nico or Zane puts themselves in precarious situations based on DMS and comments that get sent online. Hey, you want to come to my house and sleep on my couch? Okay. Let's, let's, let's try it. Let's not say no. We'll see how long until we get, you know,

[01:08:51] kidnapped. Yeah. Well, that feels as good of a place as any to, uh, say pickle pot. Pickle pot.