Transcript
00:00
What’s happening Pickleball Nation? Dave Fleming here with Connor Pardoe, the CEO of the Carvana PPA Tour and Brad Carroll, the president of Acrytech Sports Surfaces.
00:11
And we are so excited about bringing some standards to our sport and making those courts perfect for you to play on. I know you guys love playing so Connor,
00:21
let’s start with you. How did you get involved with Acrytech and what has this partnership enabled the tour to be able to do so that you have great courts for these wonderful pros to play on? Yeah, I mean that’s a great question, Dave.
00:35
And it’s really been a long history with Brad and his team in Acrytech Sports Surfaces and they’ve done a lot for the pickleball community. When the PPA Tour was started, one of the big logistical issues were there wasn’t enough pickleball facilities and places to hold the tournaments that we were looking to hold and be able to create the environment and atmosphere we were trying to create. And so one big thing that we’ve done is we’ve come in and
00:58
we’ve retrofitted so many tennis facilities, big, big tennis facilities that hold big tennis events throughout the years where Brad and his team they’ll provide the paint and the material and help us coordinate with an install crew and we’ll actually flip these tennis centers over to pickleball venues for the weekends. You know, obviously we’re very fortunate that the sport has grown so much over the past three or four years that now all these
01:25
facilities are starting to be built and you know, Brad and I kind of looking at each other like we need to create a standard, we need to make sure that we’re keeping the integrity of the game and something that we can really put a stamp of approval on so we can make sure that this rapid growing sport that all these courts and these new parks and facilities and locations where we will hold events will really meet official standard that should be set for all
01:48
pickleball players that get to play on those courts. No, I love it and I think you know as a player myself you want to feel like from tournament to tournament your experience is going to be the same. So Brad, what areas are you looking to standardize so that as municipalities, as people even in their individual homes we’re seeing that crop up everywhere. I love it. What are the areas where you say this is what we’ve got to have and where are those standards going to be?
02:14
Absolutely. So from a court standpoint what we found over the years is that when players would get on courts that we did not surface they would complain they’re a little too slick and based on the specs for our surfaces with tennis we found that players in pickleball thought that it was a little too slick.
02:33
So getting the right amount of texture in the product which varies from court to court. Standardizing that, making sure we’re consistent and the sand that we ship and how much goes in it. I know it doesn’t sound like much but when you’re mixing water and paint and sand if you don’t get the ratio right it can be much more smooth than you would like and that was a big complaint even when we were out here this time the the lines are a little slick so we’ve been working
03:01
with the PPA and with Connor directly to make sure that we’re developing products specifically for them that meet what the pros like and what they’re used to so that no matter where they go to play it’s the same surface time and time again. So you’ve got what the court surface is like I know there’s a lot of other things that we would want to see standardized here so take me into the width of the quarter because I have actually shown up at way too many parks
03:32
I hate when I see it no one knows pickleball so you literally have the baseline and then two feet and there’s a fence and you can’t even play and it makes me so sad to see a great place to play and it’s playable. Absolutely so many of these facilities as Connor was saying they were designed and developed for tennis and when we go in and try and fit enough pickleball courts in there to meet their demand it gets tight so a lot of this is going to come
04:01
down to it it’s just going to take time and planning is finding the facilities such as lifetime to have big enough areas where we can get the courts in there and make them fit. You can get four pickleball courts on one tennis but that’s not going to meet a pro standard so we have to be careful and how many we we put in and where they are. Yeah I think another another thing to look at is we want the sport to continue to grow and to be able to grow fast and obviously
04:28
it’s a no-brainer that retrofitting tennis courts has been something that has been able to help the sport really skyrocket because we’re talking about being able to repurpose something that maybe wasn’t used as much as it should be rather than starting from the ground zero so for us we understand that we need to keep that integrity because we want the sport to continue to grow but it’s how can we help these facilities how can we help you know these cities and
04:51
states and individual private builders understand how much space they need to have while still making it possible to retrofit courts and move forward and so I think we’re looking something kind of like a good better best as well where there’s kind of a minimum-standard a standard-standard and then a professional-standard that will be outweighing for everybody here. That’s exciting and I think you know we don’t want people guessing so that’s what we’re gonna be
05:17
looking at here is get the information which will be coming out in the next couple of months from these experts and then you’ll know how to do it now Brad I know you have something else so we let’s tease it a little bit we’re not ready for the full announcement but you have an exciting extension to all this, don’t you? We do actually so we’ve been working with Connor and his team and the PPA to put together a cushioned surface for pickleball and it’s been a long time
05:46
in development and we think we have finally achieved that we debuted just a little bit last year a couple of courts who rolled out at the Vegas tournament and Mandalay Bay and it was a huge success we put in a few at some private facilities and some private residents and got a bunch of feedback from some pros and they seem to love it so it’s coming.
06:09
Connor if you want to announce it, you can or we can wait? Yeah so the PPA tour will be endorsing an official cushioned court surface which will be provided by Acrytech and it’ll be our official cushioned surface of the PPA tour and also of the pickleball.com groups and it’s something we’re really excited about because it’s gonna help with longevity it’s gonna help be a little bit easier on joints of people that are playing pickleball and
06:35
obviously the most important is that it plays great, it plays wonderful and I think we’re gonna see a lot of facilities putting these in over the next few months. That is awesome I played on that court I know how good it is so I’m with you as you want my endorsement you’ve got it. So and the other great thing about that obviously the the play and the wear and tear on the body but also as you mentioned we played that in a convention center at Mandalay Bay so there’s so
07:03
many new places as we’re looking for where can I play pickleball everybody wants to play we’re gonna be able to put these down in a lot of different places. Absolutely we have a lot of clubs we’ve already been out to spec and look at and they’re excited about it so as those roll out I’m sure we’ll be making announcements as they come in. So we want more courts these guys are gonna help deliver them so you do it right listen to these guys they’re the experts so
07:28
thanks so much so much more to come on this topic thanks for watching.
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