What the mountains do when the snow is gone.
The warm-season column. Pickleball first - the fastest-growing amenity in resort and wellness travel, and the game quietly building a second season for ski towns - then wherever else the off months lead. Played, not reviewed.
Mizuno Wave Exceed Tour 7: I Paid for Cheap Shoes Twice
A bargain pair of court shoes, a near-broken ankle, and the light, stable Mizunos that replaced them — why chunky shoes roll, what the Wave plate actually does, and how the red colorway came in at $93.
Read the review →The LT Pro 48: I Normally Don't Think About Balls
The official ball of the PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball, and the night it changed our game — why 48 holes matter, how long any ball really lasts, where dead balls go, and why our group bought a hundred.
Read the review →Honolulu J6CR: The Paddle I Didn't Plan to Buy
Two JOOLA paddles that would not clear the manufacturer's own verification check, and the $195 paddle from Hawaii that replaced them — a review of the Honolulu J6CR, and what you start noticing about grit and twist weight once you stop being a beginner.
Read the review →The Great Equalizer
Thirty years of competitive sport, a boxing gym in Detroit, and none of it helped: notes on getting humbled by seventy-year-old women, why a small court is filling mountain towns in June, and four months of Wednesday nights.
Read the essay →The ball flies differently at eight thousand feet
Why the game speeds up as you climb, what it does to the third shot drop, and how players who learned at sea level have to relearn the whole thing on a mountain court.
Coming soonHow a resort builds a summer out of nothing
The properties tearing up parking decks and tennis courts to put in paddle - what it costs, what it fills, and why the numbers work on a Tuesday in June when nothing else does.
Coming soonCourts beside the cold plunge
Racket sport and longevity have a long, well-documented relationship. What happens when a spa programme is built around a game that eighty-year-olds win.
Coming soon