This Week in MoCo Pickleball · Issue #4
This Week in MoCo Pickleball · Week of June 16, 2026
Quiet local week, loud equipment week. Check your bag, fix your third shot, and stop wasting your serve — here's the rundown.
Where do you play in MoCo? Tap your area to add yourself to the map: Down-County · Central · Up-County · Eastern · Western → See where MoCo plays
🔥 The lead
USA Pickleball quietly moved several paddles "under review" — check your bag.
This one didn't get a press release, but it matters more than the next celebrity match: USA Pickleball has flagged several paddle models on its compliance list. One was removed from the approved list outright, while two others — the Speedup Tide 14S and the Proton Series Three Peacock — are under investigation but still approved for now. "Under review" isn't the same as banned, but it can pull a paddle from tournament-legal play, and the delistings get a fraction of the attention the shiny new releases do.
Here's what matters for you: if you compete — and with summer tournament season here, more of you will — take 30 seconds before your next event and confirm your paddle is still in good standing. If you only play rec, you're fine; nobody's checking your bag at Bauer Drive. Either way, don't panic-buy. Chasing paddle tech is the most expensive way to not get better.
Read what USA Pickleball flagged →
📍 MoCo pulse
Direct MoCo news this week: None crossed the wire — and no fresh DMV story either. Seven straight days of scanning: no court votes, no facility openers, no rec-league bulletins out of Montgomery County. That's the third quiet local week in a row, and it's still mostly good news here — the courts are full and nobody's fighting about them. If something's moving on your courts that we missed, reply; that's how this section gets sharper.
Regional / national, with a MoCo lens:
- National headlines say the pickleball boom is "cooling." Axios reported court growth across the 100 biggest U.S. cities slowed to about 4% this year, down from 13–14% the two years prior — some metros are even pulling shared-use courts back out. Read that, then go stand at a MoCo court at 6 PM. The "slowdown" is an oversupplied-sunbelt story; here, demand still outruns supply, and our 69+ free public courts aren't going anywhere. A national cooldown is when local communities matter more, not less. Read the Axios piece →
- Anna Leigh Waters made TIME's inaugural "100 Most Influential in Sports" list — at 19, alongside LeBron and Caitlin Clark. Every time the sport breaks into mainstream press, a wave of brand-new players Googles "pickleball near me." When that's a neighbor of yours, the welcoming move is simple: bring them to an open-play session and don't make them feel like the worst player there. We all started at zero. Read the coverage →
Got a MoCo story for next week? Reply to this email or post in the MD Pickleball Facebook group.
🎯 Coach's Take of the week
The popped-up third shot is the single most common point-leak I see at 3.0–4.0 — you drop it, it floats, and the next ball comes back at your chest. The Dink ran a good breakdown on fixing it with a topspin drop this week, and they're right about the mechanics. But the part most players miss isn't the spin — it's the order of operations: push the ball forward for depth first, then brush up the back for spin. Get that backwards and you either dump it in the net or float it for a put-away. I wrote up the cue I give every student trying to break into 4.0, plus the one thing that's actually making your drop pop up.
→ Read the full breakdown on Link & Dink
💪 Drill of the Week
The 3-Target Serve Drill — turns your most-wasted shot into free points in about 10 minutes, solo. Most rec players hit the same lazy serve to the same spot every time, telegraphing it with their stance. This drill puts three cones on an empty court (middle, T, wide) and has you run the exact same motion to all three, so your serve looks identical no matter where it's going. No partner needed — just you, a bucket of balls, and any empty MoCo court.
🏆 Pro Tour storyline
Major League Pickleball ran Stop #4 at the Austin Pickle Ranch this past weekend (June 11–14) — the season's first outdoor event, played in real Texas heat and humidity that slowed the ball down all weekend. That's the thing worth stealing on the replays: watch how the top teams adjusted their shot selection when the ball stopped popping. Fewer hero speed-ups, more patient resets and drops — exactly the third-shot discipline in this week's Coach's Take, just played at 5.5+. Conditions change; the fundamentals that win don't. The Dink's event coverage →
📅 On the calendar
- Find your home courts on the map — linkanddink.com/map — 69+ MoCo courts, filterable by lighting and amenities, and growing.
- See where MoCo's playing right now — the community map shows where readers are checking in this week.
- Next Popup Pickleball (P3) — grab a spot on the next bracket. Player-funded, level-honest, capped fields.
- MoCo Rec & Parks summer programming — adult clinics, leagues, and court info on ActiveMONTGOMERY.
✦ From the Link & Dink desk
A national outlet ran a piece this week on why "social sports" — pickleball, now padel — are the fastest-growing thing in fitness, and the honest version is one I say all the time: the paddle is the excuse, the people are the product. I've taught hundreds of players, and almost nobody stays for the sport — they stay for the people they meet on the court. That's the whole reason this exists, and why the core community is free forever: no take rate, no premium tier on the things that matter. If you already run a regular game or want to start one, that's exactly what Coach Up is for — member organizers earn cash, free play, and a path toward certification for building community around them. Reply if you want the details, or just reply and tell me the one thing that would make this newsletter more useful to you. Every email reaches me.
— Sam · Link & Dink / MoCo
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