About Pickleball Science
Pickleball Science provides you with scientific and technically correct explanations that will increase your understanding of pickleball and improve your game.
About Pickleball Science
Pickleball Science provides you with scientific and technically correct explanations that will increase your understanding of pickleball and improve your game.
Have you ever wondered about the speed of a pickleball serve, or the effects of spin on ball trajectory, or what and where the sweet spot on a racquet is? Learning the technical subtleties of pickleball can help you to improve your game or select equipment suitable to you and your style of play. We will cut through all of the misconceptions and marketing hype to give you honest, technical correct explanations of various aspects of the game and equipment in hopes that it will give you an advantage to increase your understanding, improve your skills, and ultimately increase your enjoyment of the game.
The menu bar at the top of each page is linked to different categories of articles:
Recent Posts provide the last 10 articles published to the website. We will try to add new content monthly.
Product Reviews looks at different pickleball paddles and equipment with an emphasis on upcoming technology.
Paddle Science provides information about the paddle sweet spot, weighted tapes, structural dynamics, paddle construction, face friction, spin capability, and materials.
Pickleball Dynamics discusses factors affecting pickleball acceleration, velocity, distance and time of flight for serves, drives, dropshots, dinks, overhead smashes and volleys.
As the blog grows and if there is reader interest, I’ll add more topics. If you like what you see so far, please bookmark this page and tell your friends about it. Also, feel free to Contact Us to suggest other topics of future interest or to obtain clarification on past topics. In the meantime, I’ll see you on the court!
Our Philosophy
This website is designed to provide you with the fundamental knowledge about the science behind pickleball to help you determine “what” needs to be accomplished. As you gain this knowledge, it will help you formulate “how” to develop your techniques to best accomplish your objectives. Our philosophy is that knowledge and technique go hand-in-hand — knowing what to do is a pre-requisite to learning how to do it when you are on the court.
Playing pickleball is like playing the game of chess. On the surface both games seem very simple and obvious (i.e., capture the king or hit a winner). When you first start out, the games are very fast because you don’t understand how the different pieces move, or you focus too much on the end result (i.e., you lack patience), and you make a lot of mistakes. However, as you start to master the different elements, it becomes a more strategic and complex game of cat-and-mouse. Games last longer and become more enjoyable, regardless of whether you win or lose.
We will explore several topics, such as how the ball behaves when it interacts with the racquet, ground, or aerodynamic forces. Fortunately, many of these interactions can be explained through a study of the science behind pickleball. While it will not always be possible to avoid technical complexity, I will attempt to explain the science in a manner that will be easy to understand, interesting, and entertaining to both technical and non-technical readers.
If you like this blog, please bookmark it, send me some feedback through the Contact Us page, and tell your friends about it. Thanks, and I’ll see you on the court!
About the Author
I’m an average pickleball player and although I am a relative “newbie” to the sport, I have been a long-time tennis player. I started this blog because as I was learning to play, I found only a few articles or videos on the Internet that were actually useful, interesting, informative, or technically correct.
As for my background, I am a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) and have three degrees in the field of engineering. I have over 30 years of work experience as an engineer, scientist, consultant, and technical writer in several industries, including aerospace, defense, semiconductor, and biomedical.
Studying and analyzing the technical aspects behind the science of pickleball has boosted my interest in the sport, and I hope that it will do the same for you. If you have any suggestions for future topics, or if you would like clarifications about past topics, please feel free to visit the Contact Us page and send me a message. Thanks!
Affiliate Disclosure
Some of the embedded links in the PickleballScience.org website are affiliate links. This means that, at no cost to you, Pickleball Science will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Purchase through these affiliate links will help support the website so that we can continue to provide meaningful content to our readers.