The Pickleball Tournament Survival Guide with PIG’s Mike Hoxie: How to Skip the 4-Hour Wait, Spot the Good Ones, and Make It to Happy Hour on Time

What is the most chaotic thing that you've seen at a tournament? The most different situation I ever had was a dog was tied to someone's folding chair. And the owner was playing singles. And the owner won. And he started jumping up and down. He's all excited. Well, the dog was excited to see his owner jumping up and down. So the dog dragged the chair onto the court. The sound of that scared the dog. And the dog started to poop all over the court. as the chair was dragging the poop through the corks, trying to get to the owner. So what do you do, right? You're like, what do you stop this? Welcome to Dinks on Tap, where the pickleball meets the margarita. Or martini, because we enjoy a bit of both. We're your hosts, Casey and Lauren. And each week, we explore what makes pickleball so darn fun. Not to mention the community and the connection that's built along with it. All right, y'all. Our guest today is a man who has probably seen more pickleball courts than a Franklin pickleball, which is saying something considering those things never die. He's the mastermind behind Pickleball is Great, an operation that runs over 150 tournaments a year, which means he's either incredibly organized or deeply allergic to free time. He's dealt with every bracket, every player, every late check-in, and yes, probably that guy who swears he's a 4-0 but couldn't dink a beach ball. Please welcome to Dinks on Tap, the tournament titan, the bracket whisperer, the czar of court coordination, Mike Hoxie. So great to be here. Cheers. Thank you for joining us. We're so, so happy you're here. And as Lauren mentioned earlier, we'd love to just jump into your origin story and how you got into Pickleball in the first place, and especially why you thought it was a good idea to launch a event or tournament company as Pickleball is great. Sure. So I am a survivor of 30 years of retail management. I've ran the gauntlet, survived many Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year's, all these gray hairs of experience, as I like to say. I'm a zapper. Yeah. So I started pickleball back in about 2010. And I was part of a group that formed a club in the Portland, Oregon area called the Columbia River Pickleball Club. So that was back in 2012. Somehow I ended up behind the tournament desk at the very first tournament. And I found it interesting. And I kind of enjoyed it. So when the club did the next tournament, I was then invited to the Oregon State Games, their pickleball group. and their commissioners included people like Steve Peranto, one of the Pickleball Hall of Fame guys. So I helped them modernize from paper and pencil to using the computer and learning about how things were done originally and how they needed to improve. And it's been lots of fun. So fast forward till a couple of years later, I get a call from Melissa McCurley, another person, another Hall of Famer. And she had just bought Pickleball tournaments. Her and her brother couldn't be in multiple places at once. And so she said, Hey, if you have you ever thought about starting a company, because we hear great things about you. And we'd like to have you kind of run the Northwest on your own, but we'll work together on things. So I sat down with my son, we had a dinner meeting and talked about, sure, let's do this. What do we want to name the company? So we started making initials and thought of Ralph Lauren and Lacoste. And we're like, okay, let's go with a pig. So that's where Purple Balls Great started, because everyone loves bacon is what I tell everyone. I'd rather eat bacon instead of pickles. So everyone loves bacon. This is true. So that's how we started the company in 2016. It was just a side hustle doing it in between work. And I found out that I enjoyed it way more than work. And so eventually I ran out of vacation time. I had to go full-time into it, hired my first couple of people in 2019. And it's been an evolution since then. It's been kind of a race since 2021, 2022. And so we honestly focused on developing more TDs. So now we have 10 tournament directors around the country. We run a lot of weekends with four or five tournaments in multiple states to try to meet that demand. It's a lot easier to say yes today than a couple of years ago when it didn't have enough trained people. Sure. Yeah. And shout out to Brian Barclay. We know your guy here in Texas and we've played a couple of tournaments with him and been at a couple of events where he's he's been there and it's great operation he does a great job yeah he just suffered three weeks in hawaii with me too doing two tournaments back that was his reward for having such a great year is coming to work in hawaii and seeing how it's just a little bit different there when you're island style and working through everything and brian has done a great job yeah it's so cool to be able to bring in people that you enjoy that you meet that you really resonate with and can work together i mean your friends it's one of the wonderful perks of building something on your own, right? Just that. And it's a community, right? We all know each other. We all hear stories. And I've hired only pickleball players because we know how terrible it is to wait for a match. Yes. What's going to happen next? Are we ever going to get done? When am I going to get my awards? All these things that having a player behind the desk, we know what you're thinking. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're hoping you can give us a peek kind of behind the curtain as far as, you know, tournament operations. But really, you know, we hear so many of the rec players, you know, ask questions about how they get involved in tournaments. Why should they play that sort of thing? So we'd love to explore that with you. Yeah. So just to kick things off, really, for the rec player, we're curious from where you sit, are recreational players actually burned out on tournaments at this point? Or are they burned out on bad tournament experiences from your perspective? It's definitely the latter. There are so many people running events that don't have pickleball experience whether it's cities that are using basketball volleyball organizers or coaches that are moving over to run pickleball because it's so easy right and it's it's a challenge because once they come to our tournaments they realize how seamless it is and how it moves we use pickleball tournaments for about everything and the texting messages make life so much better so what we find is the people that are coming to our tournaments enjoy it so much that they come back and they bring family and they bring their friends that little ripple in the pond really happens so it is a lot of misconceptions there are tournaments out there with a lot of waiting time a lot of empty courts all these issues that we work hard to prevent does stain some of the tournament experience so i jokingly tell people we like to start early and early and get the happy hour on time there we go and cheers to that But you're our kind of guy. That's a simple recipe. It's a simple recipe. And listen, we've experienced your tournaments, of course. So we know that that's the case. It's a very efficient, well-run event for the player. And the player is at the heart of the game, it seems, at the heart of the tournament, which is very, very cool. It is. And because we work with multiple partners to offer different types of the tournaments, we have some that are senior focused. We have some that are focused on all ages. The growing segment is definitely pickleball for a purpose. So a lot of the fundraising, nonprofit-focused tournaments. So there's a lot of types of tournaments out there. I call ourselves a general practitioner. We can do any of them, PPA, USA, pickleball. It doesn't matter. The nice thing is that it gives the players a choice of where they want to go. So the big secret I tell everyone is just please read everything we post because we're trying to help you make the right decision. If it's not a match, then this may not be the right time to come to it. So reading the information is the number one recommendation for recreational players because it may be close, but you may have more fun 100 miles away when it matches what you want to do. So it really is a little bit of a buyer beware. We put a lot of information out. The big yellow button on the tournament webpage, I highly recommend anyone to use it. ask questions because when I'm in Hawaii, I forward those questions to my team so they can answer the questions. So we're quick about responding because we know what it's like to be like, what's happening? What, what do I do? How do I do this? So that's probably another giant tip is don't be afraid to email and ask. Yeah. That's so smart too. When you, you know, you're forwarding those questions to your team beforehand, so you already know what those players are thinking when they're coming in. So that's great. You mentioned, um, kind of these tournament organizers, like from various backgrounds, whether it's basketball or volleyball, do you have a kind of a signal in your mind that tells you, you know, a tournament's going to struggle before it even gets off the ground? In our pre-planning, it really is that trust that we build with our partners. So about a third of the tournaments we own and run ourselves. The other two thirds were hired or running for someone else, whether it's a facility or a club. And it's that trust of letting us do what we know is best for the player. Some new partners don't know us very well, or there's a change in board leadership. So it's earning that trust to say, and it's usually someone else on the board will come up and say, just let them go. They really know this piece. You don't have to look over their shoulder. And it's one of those things where I would do the same thing if I was the new president and don't know who this contractor is. So I expect that that's another one of those benefits of 30 years of abuse in the world. So that's probably the trickiest piece is how to earn that trust and let people know, really, we're trying to take care of the players because we know they're your members or our customers and putting that best experience. So they go back and talk about how great it was. You know, that's interesting, Mike. It's wonderful. You've said it a few times. You hire players to help run these tournaments. It's really player focused and player forward. So I'm just curious, what do you feel like the biggest mismatch between what a tournament director optimizes for and what the rec player actually experiences in a tournament? That's a good question because some of the operators out there design their tournaments for maximum court usage, which means probably more waiting or they will overbook so that they have, I call it a zero occupancy. The courts are 100% crazy the whole time. Yeah. So it's a money grab for some people. They're just chasing that. There's other operators that will set a schedule early, which they feel helps the players, but it leaves empty courts for two or three hours at a time. So it doesn't feel right when you're standing there like, why am I not playing? Why am I not on the court? So those are some of the, I guess, warning signs when you get out there. We do a dozen or so money ball tournaments that have prize money because that's a whole different type of player. It's not your rec player typically. Right. So we know when we have money on the line, the line calls are a little more blurry. They're not as accurate. So we have to pay some refs. The referee world knows that I dislike the current pay structure. So I'm constantly looking for alternate solutions. Okay. One day I'm going to find my own referee crew and they're going to wear a vest like NASCAR with 30 different logos on it. And it'll be Hertz and McDonald's and Burger King and American Airlines. And I'll be able to pay what they want. But until we find that person that's going to organize all those sponsors, it's really hard to just tack on that fee to every player that wants to play. So that was my question. I'm kind of curious how that referee pay structure does work. Not many players have insight into that. If you could just sort of highlight that high level. it there there's two or three main styles so originally five ten years ago you would literally put a five dollar bill on the clipboard or a ten dollar bill in the clipboard and they would go out and come back we had the you know venmo world start and then we started doing things electronically until someone started policing this six hundred dollar thing so now players have gone to a per day our referees have gone to a per day rate and with usa pickleball they have certified refs and level one refs and level two refs. Okay. But just to get into the program takes a lot of personal efforts. So the pay scale is based on their certification level. And what we have done is focused on the entry level refs to give them more experience The pro refs we need them for the pros the certified refs We need them for all of the big PPA MLP those types of tournaments But they can get there without practice So we focused on helping the newcomers or the developing referees on how to make those calls And sometimes as TDs, we have to help coach them on some decisions. But realistically, just having a ref at the net diffuses half of the arguments. Sure. Just a deterrent alone. Yeah. so the referee world is is really a challenge um and so we're i'm trying to figure out how to navigate it and looking for the right solution and um you know we just try to keep that same player focus right what do the players want and one of the secrets no one likes to talk about is that no ref is better than a bad ref yes well because that you said it diffuses the 50 of the hooking right right and standing there yeah just you know when someone's watching you sure well and the bad ref may, you know, not have the right pace. They may slow you down where you like to go faster on your serve, or they may not be sure on their calls. And then it creates doubt for everything else. So it's, it's a challenge. It's not easy being a ref. I did an interview recently where I said, if you were to create a thousand more referees tomorrow, they'd all be put to work. So it's severely understaffed, like every other referee position in every sport right now, we need way more than we have. Really? That's so good to hear. You know, it's interesting. I'll just interject and say that I had an experience with the ref for the first time at the world's tournament here in Dallas, Texas last November. And it, you know, it was haphazard. You wouldn't, there was no telling if your court was going to garner a wef or not before you got there. And some of them did and some of them didn't. So I happened to play on a court with my mixed doubles partner in, in, um, a game that was reffed and it changes things. I think considerably everyone tightens everything up, you know, even the serve and, you know, definitely the line calls, but you're just, it's like, you know, the teacher's watching. Right, right. The yips are contagious at that point where you just serve the ball in. It's a real deal. And if you don't have exposure to that in a regular way, then it's a little bit, it's kind of just more jarring and that the spotlight's on you just a hair more than typically. So yeah, it takes some getting used to, but how interesting that it's an understaffed kind of industry and that we could use more. That's great to hear. and we're we're working to develop referees in the parts of the country where we do more tournaments and building that relationship with people what's nice is that we do a tournament called the Huntsman in St. George Utah that's only for 50 and over it's been around for 20 years over a thousand players every year it sells out and it's a great senior tournament but a lot of referees kind of get fathered along and developed there because they have some a lot of experienced refs in St. George, Utah at their little valley complex. It's a great place if you need somewhere to get away. And the reps from there tend to follow us in different parts of the country. So there's some down here in the winter, some go back to Texas. And so it's neat as we do these tournaments to, I guess, have a following or people that know that we know what we're doing. Lawrence, I know this sounds dramatic, but you know I've been telling you that my sleep game has been so off lately. Like I looked at my Apple Watch the other day and it told me I've been averaging six hours per night, which is not enough, right? That's not enough, no. Yeah, so there's something that has changed the game for me. What is it? Forever changed. Cozy Earth Pajamas. Pajamas? The pajamas we got? Do you say pajamas? I do, dude. It's pajamas. It's pajamas. Anyway. No, we're jamming. When I tell you this has just been, I mean, I've been upgraded from my college t-shirt with the holes. I mean, I know it has sentimental value, but I have upgraded to cozy earth and I'm sleeping so much better. It's incredible. I don't wake up in the middle of the night. It's not, I'm not sweaty. I mean, it is cozy, lightweight. It's everything they advertise it to be. I've loved it. They're not hot, which is great. And it's that viscose bamboo. So it's extra, extra soft. Dude, I find myself kind of prancing to bed. Like I do. I'm kind of like, cause they're super cute as well. It's not just comfort. It's design. It's style. It's super cute. I almost tear up when I get up in the morning. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I slept so well. It's been amazing. So listeners head to cozy earth.com and use our code DINKS for up to 20% off. And yes, you won't believe this, but they have a hundred night trial and a 10 year warranty. Like who does that? No, it's amazing guys. I'm like literally just never sleeping in scratchy, you know, t-shirt and boxers again. Yeah. Goodbye, lame pajamas and hello, cozy earth. mike i want to ask you about just kind of the maybe call it a entry level tournament player i don't mean entry level as far as skill but someone that may be new to tournaments in general and because we hear this a lot we're on the rec scene we're integrated in the amateur community here in dallas and i'd say we're probably more on the competitive side but we talk to a lot of people that just have never played tournaments at all sure and they're a little skeptical And so what I'm curious about is just, you know, you're sitting at the bar, hanging out with these folks. It's like, what? And if, and if they are a little skeptical, what do you tell them? What, why should they play? So a lot of them, I encourage them to challenge themselves. You have so many hours of rec play. What happens if you play a little more serious and have a little bit of a competitive bug? A lot of former softball players or people that played volleyball in high school, they have that competitive itch, but it's not just those players. Some of it's funny because we have so many new players come to our tournaments. First time first timers that we know how to kind of ease that in. We remind them about the timeouts to help you catch your breath. If you're feeling fluttered, there's that fine line on coaching. Right. So we can give them tips. And then when the when the day is over and they were in their metal, then we kind of say, OK, so, you know, what did you learn? What did you like? And a lot of them are surprised at how there's essentially no rest in between matches at our tournaments. It's a lot of back to back to back. And we try to make you in charge because we don't we don't want you, you know, cramping up or, you know, getting distracted. But a lot of them, we just encourage them saying, look, you've you've come to a point now where you're comfortable with the game. So why don't you see how you do against others? Similar age, similar skill. So you can really see what other players do. And that's part of the nice thing is that the Dallas community is huge. There are a ton of pickleball people there. But there's also a ton in Houston and Austin and San Antonio. So a lot of times we see people coming to travel to either, you know, go to a birthday party and do a pickleball game. And, you know, I'm going to go see my aunt. And by the way, I'm going to play pickleball that morning. So it's nice when they can kind of merge the two together to really kind of see that pickleball is a big deal. There's everyone from all shapes, all sizes, all genders, all skills can have a great time if you're playing with the same people. So it's that art of keeping people in the right groups and not setting someone up for failure. Yeah. And I'm curious to real quick to kind of dovetail on that that answer. We see a lot of people or hear from friends in the community that say, you know, they wait to sign up to see because they don't want to go and play with their play their friends that they play on an everyday basis. What do you say to that? Like the tournament? Like, I'd love to see, and you know this from the industry that we work in, but how do we get players to sign up earlier? I haven't found that silver bullet yet. So I use a tiered approach for registration, early, regular, and late. And in Hawaii, I use very late registration. So because there are a lot of people. You're on Hawaii. Yeah. And very late registration is exactly double the early bird price. So it's a stiff penalty if you didn't pay attention. So a lot of players there I've trained to get on the board early, but around the country, there's a lot of people waiting till the last minute. And it hurts as an organizer to plan a successful event. How many courts do I reserve because I want to give back to the club or community? And it's a challenge. So I always encourage them to sign up early for whatever division you want to plan. Don't try to game the system or guess what's going to happen. Sign up for what you want to play. and then let us kind of bake the cake to see how everything fits together. But signing up early has become more difficult. And honestly, it's because five years ago, you could register for tournaments and not pay. So we spent half our time as a bill collector trying to get people to pay before they showed up on site or didn't show up at all. And then we're stuck with a hole in the bracket. So that all changed about four years ago. You know, and I tell people it switched from a rental car to an airplane. If you want a seat, you got to pay for it. rental cars you can reserve and not even show up and they know that's going to happen but airlines you got to buy your seat and your person can't sit next to you unless they buy their seat so it's it's a tough thing to you know have that change i'm just surprised it's still four years later difficult to get people to commit to tournaments early gosh it's so true and you know you you wonderful tournament directors have it hard and i also point to casey as you know casey runs a tournament as well here in Dallas. One. It's the one. It's a fundraiser, but it's one tournament, not 150. And you guys, I mean, it's such a fine line, right? It's this beautiful balance between getting, enticing people to play and then also making sure that there's matches that are worth playing when they enter, right? So we're matching people at the right levels. And then there's this idea of making it appealing to enter price-wise and not price people out. But at the same time, you've got to pay your facility back. You've got to pay your directors back, your referees and all of this stuff. It's just such a balancing act, it seems. And so if you drill down from the player perspective, right, one of the things that a couple of things that players specifically look for is this notion of guaranteeing competitive match, right? So I know that we talk to players often that go back and forth as to whether or not they've selected the right tournament that's going to give them the right competition. And, you know, we always suggest doing tournaments because it's always maybe, not always, but sometimes a different group of people that you're not used to playing with. So that's great. That's fresh blood. That's different styles of play. And isn't that going to help you in your repertoire and, you know, step out of your comfort zone, all these wonderful things. But what happens when, you know, it's not a well-matched tournament in the sense of it's not games that actually do give you the challenge you're after, right? And so if a tournament cannot guarantee competitive matches, what should it guarantee instead? So one of the challenges right now with all the different operators is I see different organizers offering a five or a six-game guarantee. but those are often rally scoring and 11 points so you're talking about five to ten minutes on a court instead of a real 20 to 30 minute game right so that's why i started early on by making sure they read everything posted because it's not on the flyer you have to go to the website to really see you could really be done in 45 minutes like a double elimination tournament and wonder what what happened. Right, right. So reading the fine print is very important, as we know. Right. It's all posted out there. It's just whether we take the time to read it. So the challenge is when the tournament closes registration, that's when a lot of options go away. So if someone's not sure, using that yellow button to communicate, asking questions is a big deal. And of course, no one likes to talk about ratings. You know, we're all in this duper world now. I have some clubs that don't want anything to do with duper. They want grandma to play with their grandson. And so they have no duper tournaments because they want to focus way on that side of the fun scale. Yeah. So that's another thing where if you really don't know and aren't sure, maybe that's the type of tournament you want to look for. If you're on the competitive side and you want to keep watching your metrics and having some analysis done on your matches, make sure it's duper, make sure it's required, make sure it's in there. Because I think that again goes to, are you playing at the right tournament? And it doesn't hurt to ask those questions. Yeah, that kind of, if I may just dovetail into, let's say, Mike, that, you know, you're talking to a group of young rec players, meaning young in the sport, and they know that they've heard tournaments are a way to grow and a way to you know add more variety to your repertoire How does one approach finding a tournament that matches who they are and their skill level and what they looking for from a tournament That's a good question because there are so many out there, right? So many. It's very saturated. Yes. The balance is how far are you willing to drive? You know, how many choices are within 10 miles, 30 miles or 100 miles? I've tried to build our brand so that when you see the pig you know what to expect you know it's going to start early end early all those early exactly so I want I've been trying to encourage people I'm worth the 120 mile drive instead of playing 15 miles down the road yeah and that's and but like you said it's hard to choose which one do you go with so you kind of have to read read the information posted Facebook you can find anything good or bad on everybody so it's kind of a hard recommendation to say go look on facebook but if you know a couple of tournament players you've seen their pictures posted you know i would say talk the community is small we all know each other so talk to another player who has played in the tournament you can start off by congratulating them on their medal they won six months ago it still feels good yes we will also say congratulations sure all of my hawaii medals are bottle openers so i tell them take it to the next bonfire so you can make more friends now that's a good medal i like it We can adopt that here a little more inland. I like it. Right. So it's, I would say, asking other players their experience, what did they find? What didn't they like? What did they enjoy the most? Those kind of simple conversations in person, I would say, are going to be way more valuable than asking online, you know, is this paddle legal? Or those kind of questions that just create an explosion of responses. Yeah, for sure. Do you feel like my, I know that you are really, it seems like you're really big on information and details and making sure that anyone looking is going to get everything they need to know about the kind of tournament they're going to experience in whatever space they're looking for. Do you find that that is a common thing? I mean, is that kind of information we talk about, is it leaning more fun? Is it leaning more competitive, right? This discernment piece, is that readily available across the landscape or not so much? Well, so I look at a lot of flyers online for ideas and to see what other people are doing. And you can see when they emphasize the money side of the scale, you should go into it knowing that that is their primary focus. You know, if they're calling out a nonprofit or a partner like that, that's a fundraiser, then it's, you can look a little bit more on the fun side. Duper or not duper is a great indicator, whether it's fun or competitive. But a lot of the information is there. If you just click one more link or try to go looking online. A lot of the flyers only have partial information. So you have to find the tournament page to really get there. It's not part of our natural world nowadays to click on a link. Everyone's afraid to know where it's going to go or how is it going to spam me. But really, it's that if you want to have a great time, it helps to do a little bit of research. Yeah. And just to clarify for the listeners, because I was actually talking to a really competitive player a couple of weeks ago. And she asked me, she goes, where do you go to find tournaments? And I'm like, well, I can tell you, uh, pickleball tournaments.com. And you run all of your tournaments on pickleball tournament software. And so when you're talking about that tournament description page, like when you click into pickleball tournaments and you look at recommended tournaments near you or whatnot, and you see pig and you click into that, there is a tournament description is what you're talking about. Right. And that can tell you all you need Yeah. Yeah. So we try to highlight in the top line and then we give you some more in the meat, the additional details so that you can see a lot of those examples. Like some clubs like to host a barbecue on Friday night after the event. So we'll try to be done by a time so they can have their host party. Right. Those kind of things, you know, you can't fit it all on the top of the page. Something's got to be in the middle. But going through and reading that will help you. even the simple thing of what ball are we using, please click on the information is right there. It just keeps scrolling, as I like to say. Yeah, yeah, it's important information. So listener, make sure and read that tournament description. You'll see all of that important stuff. That's so good. It's a reminder for me, absolutely, because, you know, I rely on my Pickleball Doubles partner here to do a lot of that research and decide which one, you know, is going to be resonant. And we've asked you, we've said on a couple of other episodes, you know, what do you look for specifically in a tournament? But I think that might be the first thing to ask yourself as a rec player going into tournaments, any tournament at any level, frankly, but certainly in the beginning stages of what do you want to garner? What do you want to get from this experience? And what kind of experience do you want to build around it, right? Do you want to travel to Hawaii and have this beautiful time in Hawaii plus a tournament to challenge your skills and meet some more people, right? Is it strictly to build community? Is it strictly to help your game level love? These kinds of questions seemingly are important to self-reflect before we go hunting, but then yeah, pickleballtournaments.com seems like a good spot to start. Well, and it's nice because there's a partners button under the search where you can find pickleball is great. So it filters out all of our tournaments. If you want to look for a senior tournament, there's U.S. Senior Pickleball, and that'll filter out all of the 15 over tournaments. So there's a couple different ways. Just by clicking around, you can find some shortcuts to make it easier to find what you're looking for. The upgrades have all been great. I meet with the team twice a month to try to help nudge some more things into it that I'm looking for. Like what? What would be one of those things that you want to nudge into the system? I've been leaning on them a lot to release an app so that instead of texting you a court assignment, have it as an app so that you can ask for a referee to show up or you can call for a medical person to show up where I would get notified at the desk so that you don't have to go yelling and screaming like we're on fire. You can just press a button and help will be on the way. Or if you're missing a team, how often have you been to a tournament where the other people haven't shown up, right? So it's a simple thing, but it's an elaborate thing. So I know it has to fit into the web of pickleball play solutions and everything else in the world. So I just keep pecking at it like a little bird on the side. How about this? How about this? I love it. I want to ask you a more esoteric question here, Mike, because I love all the technical answers. But from your perspective as a player and now as a tournament company owner and a director and a coach of other directors, if pickleball is supposed to add joy to our lives, which Casey and I constantly tout that it does, um how do we make sure competition does not quietly steal it uh that's a good question because there are some uh sore losers or people that win at all costs that does make it a little sour at times um i am a believer in direct communication so when i'm presenting awards i like to let people know this is your last 3.5 medal don't ever come back for another to let them know that you have to hold yourself accountable and play where your skills are even if the number doesn't match um i had a situation this summer where a player was really upset that someone's duper was 4.5 and they were playing in a 3.5 and i tried to call him down and say just play the person don't play the number put that away just play the person in front of you and he like ran over to find me he's like i beat him i'm like i i said i'm glad because it helps support the fact And now you believe me, it's just a number. So play the person across the net. It sounds so simple and zen-like, but really you kind of have to push some of that noise away when you step on the court and just play your game. Mike, that's so awesome. We've just recently been talking about Duper and what they're doing and how much we believe in it. And yet remembering that Duper, your rating is just a metric. It's not a mirror of who you are. It is a story about your journey. And so we've been encouraging our listeners to remember that. That again, it means nothing. Play the person in front of you. I love that so much. One of the things I was going to add is we have some of those players that may be having a bad day or maybe making it not so fun for others. One of the player, if you do the right research, you know, as a player, you can call a time out and go to the tournament desk at any time. But if you don't do your research, it's not a common rule that players know. So I've had to walk out there and bring all four players to the middle and say, okay, we need to talk about this is what's happened but more importantly we need to move forward and i asked does anyone want to forfeit the match and be done for the day and they all say no i'm like all right then let's move forward and i'll help get you started but i am not here to babysit i have lots of people to help so let's get this car moving in the right direction and it usually helps calm things down i know enough people that i can ask someone to hey can you just kind of watch this court to make sure that nothing gets worse. But it's really, it's unfortunate that it happens, but there's a lot of things happening in everyone's life. So you never know why someone may be off kilter today. I want to piggyback on that a little bit and ask you, Mike, how often you see people mismatched in terms of their brackets, in terms of their skill level. We certainly hear the rumors and have maybe even experienced a couple of players that are in the division that doesn't quite match their skill level. Usually they are playing down when they are quite good. So that sandbagging, you know, kind of deal. But I'm curious from your perspective, is that a very prevalent thing? And, you know, in terms of percentage of time that you see that occurring, is that a high percentage? Is it a low percentage just across the landscape? And secondarily, what do you do to address it at all if it is a thing? So the brutally honest answer is it happens every weekend in every state, no matter how we try to get in front of it. There's new players, you know, people that have multiple accounts. We have become strong enforcers of if you have a request and you have more than one account, we will not assist you until you combine your accounts, whether it's pickleballs.tournaments.com or Duper, if you have more than one account, we will not assist you until you fix it. So we're taking that approach of, if we catch you trying to gain the system, we're going to stop it. Every weekend it happens. And sometimes it's a painful learning experience for everyone. We'll always pull them aside and talk to them saying, you probably didn't have as much fun today because you were playing in the wrong division. A lot of our tournaments we do is round robin with playoffs. So at least the top three or four people go on to the playoffs and it helps identify those mismatches. When matches are being one lopsided, we can't move them in the middle of the day. But I've also, and these tournaments that are independent, if you go undefeated in the round robin with seven games and you win everything, I give you a gold medal until you go home and I then do the next four people play together. So I've done that many times. I'm like, I know this gold medal is important. There you go. You're in the A group. Now the fun group is going to go and play. Got some extras. so so that's one of the creative solutions we've done when it's so clearly a mess yeah it depends on if it's an independent tournament or a sanctioned tournament or all those sort of things but it happens every weekend and it's no fun when it happens i call it humble pie you know it's okay to eat one or two slices but not to eat the whole pie in one visit you know it's a lot to take in for the day sure oh yeah um mike going back to that player that was hesitant about getting involved in a tournament in the first place, then you get them there. What is your advice to those that like, how should they prep for a tournament? What should they do when they get there? What are, what's kind of some tips that you offer to make sure that they have a good experience? So I smile because the number one tip is to carpool. So your partner isn't late. So true. It seems little, but it's real, right? It is so real and it is so simple. But it's the The simplest thing you can do. Probably, you know, people practicing with their partner a few weeks before, it helps kind of knowing who's getting what balls. I always recommend the communicating the first five shots of the game Everyone should call mine or yours so that you know there no surprise whether you married or not it doesn matter just the first five hits just call it out so you know what happening and and then i tell them you know nascar is multi-million dollar company and they do a lot of these after 25 laps they all take a pit stop they all throw out the yellow flag or a caution and so that's like your timeouts if you need to stop at three points for your first couple games to kind of find yourself then do it there's it doesn't cost anything and then i joke with them except after five o'clock they're fifty dollars each but until then their timeouts are free no it's true the the mental part of being in a tournament is a real factor even if your tournament's seasoned right it's that it's certainly that first game and there's all kinds of noise and chaos and you just found your court and then you're sizing up the opponent and then you're warming up and then all of a sudden there's people watching and you know you're you're launching into the first couple of points with a lot more external forces at play. And so to know that you've got a time out coming to sort of recalibrate and recenter is a massive piece to remind those that are both seasoned and new to the game. And if the new player likes that info, I'll go on to say the simple things like show up an hour early so you can find a good parking spot, settle in a good place, bring your favorite snacks. Don't rely on anyone else but yourself. So if you like trail mix, If you like bacon, whatever you need to have a great day, bring it with you and bring your favorite hydration. Just hold on to the alcoholic beverages till you're done with your medals. Same thing, trying to keep everyone smiling, right? So that they're focused on, you know, enjoying the moment where you are. And you said something that I think is really underrated, but the snacks are so important. We've been in a couple of tournaments where we really messed up and did not bring, you know, nutrients and nutrients. That would give us energy. And yes, we ran on fumes. And so heed Mike's advice here, like bring snacks. And there's no shame on bringing a spouse, partner, someone to be your water boy to help keep you on track. Because if you're in the moment playing and you're competitive and you kind of get tunnel vision, you may not realize you haven't eaten in two hours and you need a little bit of something. So that's part of what makes pickleball so fun is when you have a whole community and you have like a campfire set up in this court. Like we're over here by court three, come and hang out with us. Those are the fun times. Those are the fun times. Mike, before we pop maybe over to some more fun questions, I just want you to, if you would, kind of bullet out and highlight reasons why, and be very, you know, boastful here. This is your Mike, so to speak, MIC. Why pickleball is great? What are people going to get? Why do we choose pig tournaments over other tournaments? I know you've listed a bunch of things, but if you could just highlight them again here. One of the first things I focus on is making sure that there is a good value. So we are typically half the price of a PPA tournament because we want you to play with a spouse or friend or family member. So there's always the pricing factor. We are very sensitive to your time, starting early, ending early, getting the happy hour. It's such a simple mantra. It's not easy to do. Real life things happen. You know, we have rainstorms and we'll communicate with you what's happening. Roads may be closed because of a parade or a bridge. So all these real life things, we're great at keeping in touch with you. So if you tell us, hey, I'm stuck, then we can make changes in real time to maybe give you a first round buy so you don't have to run in and get to the court. So we get it as a player. We've been there trying to get to a tournament to have a great time. And we all want to get you on the podium, but there is still only one gold winner every time. So silver is also nicknamed so close silver, so close to gold. So close silver. But that's probably the biggest piece is that we understand your time. We want you to have a great time. And we try to give you as much information to be ready for that. Mike, we always end our episodes with some fun, just really some pickleball related questions, some not. But this one's definitely pickleball related. I'm curious, just what is the most chaotic thing that you've seen at a tournament? it. The most different situation I ever had was a dog was tied to someone's folding chair and the owner was playing singles and the owner won and he started jumping up and down. He's all excited. Well, the dog was excited to see his owner jumping up and down. So the dog dragged, you know, dragged the chair onto the court. The sound of that scared the dog and the dog started to poop all over the court as the chair was dragging the poop through the court trying to get to the owner. So what do you do? You're like, what do you stop this? Drop the mic. That's pretty crazy. Thanks, dude. We had to close the court for a while. Fortunately, my teenage son was working that weekend and I said, hey, you're a little man on the totem pole. Congratulations. Go get a power washer. That's the weirdest chaotic situation I've ever had. It was just one court, but it was enough to really spread like, did you hear what happened on court 18 and blah, blah, blah. Oh, man. That's a, yeah. Spreading the word. Yeah. That is an unforgettable memory. I mean, you're never going to forget that tournament. I joke about having those bingo card moments where you would never expect it. Oh, there's a new box on my bingo card today. Let's just write this one down. Mike, as a player, we always ask players this or players and or guests biggest pickleball pet peeve personally what you got well so i struggle with people that are not on time that's my because it affects so many other innocent people that were on time yeah so that is clearly number one but not far behind it are the people that we tell you everything's coming by your phone but you don't bring a phone with you or you don't bring a charger or you don't you don't have a plan so literally i've had to assign a spectator to a player and change the phone number to the spectator saying, I need you to be his mom for the day. Can you please help them get to the right places? And then I go back to the player going, I would really recommend you buy this person lunch or something because they're going to help you get there. It's a singles event and singles players are different from doubles players. So it was one of those situations of being on time, you know, using the tools we're trying to help you to find places. You know, a few years ago, you had to always listen when you ran to the bathroom. Am I getting called or not? Or do the tag one in one out so that you don't miss a call. Yeah. And so I tell people the beauty of this texting now is you can sit in your car in air conditioning. You can take care of what you need to do, but you'll know when it's time to get the game back on. Consider it, Mike. Honestly, you can see it threaded through all of your approaches and the tournament in general and how it's run. It really does trickle from the top and it's the heartbeat of the owner. So thank you for being you and really just from a player's perspective, hosting really, really great tournaments. It's been fun building this team. You know, I enjoy, you know, we work together at different times of the year and not often, but we'll work together to make sure that we're learning the tricks from each other. It's great because a lot of my team will talk to each other without me. They know it's kind of open session. If you have a question ask what what did you see last weekend what uh what kind of uh what are you seeing from players now i'll share that equipment is becoming another hot issue on is it a legal paddle or not um that is now becoming you have to have a master's degree to figure out wonder good or not but that's a moving target there's a company that wants me to hire them a thousand dollars a tournament to come and test paddles okay i'm like i you find me a sponsor i'll hire you you know what i mean truly but it's not realistic so we're trying to start them off on some of the money tournaments to make sure that the equipment's all set to standards but even in maui we found three panels a day that were not current no day wow yeah no way really is becoming an issue that's crazy so i that's just something else for the rec players just beware if you find a paddle for 20 it really is not for anything else but rec play yeah good point really good point last question tonight who's your fab four dead or alive if you could form your fab four to play pickleball with who is it so i'm a little old school so you have to remember while i appreciate all the new guys and how great they are i'm gonna go backwards um do it for those that don't know me i only am right-handed i don't have the option to switch hands so i'm wes gabrelson one of the best alternate hands players oh yeah rique ruiz where every lob is in one inch from the baseline every single time. Wow. So those are a couple. And then, you know, I don't want to just name guys, but that's who I know the most. I, you know, I haven't gotten to play with any, any of the greatest female players. I don't know how I couldn't choose Anna Lee, right? I have to, I have to fit her in there. She's so good. It would be silly to skip over her. Yeah. I really enjoyed Wes Gabrielson, Enrique Ruiz. They're both in the Pickleball Hall of Fame. They've done so much for the sport before this world we're in now. And they are very humble, great players. And I'd encourage anyone to Google and find Wes Gabrielsen and Enrique Ruiz. They're not all over the place right now. They're still chasing their passions just where they want right now. Love it. Oh, I love it. Great foursome. I know, really great. I've watched that. I know, absolutely. I have an alternate answer on the great four because I'm also looking to create a Harlem Globetrotter style event. So I'm looking for a one-armed player who's missing his right. Let's go. That way our team will be called the bookends. Oh my god, yes. And then I'm looking for a couple of players missing a leg and we'll do a little Harlem Globetrotter show in between the different matches and we'll have the new mixed doubles, one arm and one leg, and we'll have the two arms and two leg tournament. And I think that I could really find the right people. and have a great time was the new fab four the new please do please do this don't stop searching well we can speak from experience we we love your tournaments you're definitely you're you're player focused player forward um you know you get things done on time and and uh you make sure that we're we're on time for margaritas which is most important important things so cheers mike again where do people find your tournaments i mean we've talked about pickleballtournaments.com but people want to find pig tournaments so i would recommend signing up for our newsletter because we do two newsletters a month the second one is always tournament focused the first one we cover meeting the tds so you can kind of see the different people on the team tips that sort of stuff our calendar changes regularly so it's it's good to go back and check often i think we had another five tournaments this week as other groups start to realize oh the summer's coming we need to get ahead and get planned um pickleball tournaments is the easiest place to go because there's a partners button where you can find this pig you'll see the pig is hard to miss yeah it is our 10-year anniversary so we're running more promotions congratulations very cool it's been lots of fun looking forward to the next 10 as i like to say but um it's amazing how the sport has evolved and we're on all the digital media stuff it's pickleballisgr8 because I'm a kid from the 80s. So it's pickleballisgr8, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of those things. You can tag us and follow us and see where the fun takes you next. And is that your .com as well? Pickleballisgreat.com. We did get the original. You got the original. That's GRE8. Someone else camped on the other one. So I'm like, fine, I'll just, I'll be the kid from the 80s and be GRE8. I love it. Here's to 10 more years and many more. We've loved chatting with you today. Thank you so much, Mike. Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it. Cheers. Thanks, my friend. Talk soon and play sooner. Cheers. Thank you. And that's a wrap on this episode of Dinks on Tap. Thanks for listening. And if you like the pod, leave us a review and share it with your favorite dinking buddy. After all, Pickleball is more fun with friends, both on and off the court. Thank you.