Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, we are back in the podcast studio.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:03] Speaker A: This is a heck of a lot.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Better than trying to share a mic.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: That was horrible.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Spit on me.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Oh, come on.
[00:00:10] Speaker C: Did I?
[00:00:11] Speaker A: You did Good for me.
I'm ahead of the game, folks. She says I spit on her. Whatever. I don't know. Let's just move on to stuff that matters.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: We're far enough away. That doesn't matter.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Now back in the pod Pod studio here in the mecca of pickleball, Anderson, Indiana, where tomorrow morning we do our advanced drills.
6:30am if you're an advanced pickleball player in the Anderson area, meet us at Shady side. We already got at least five of us.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: There's a Wednesdays. You should specify that it's on Wednesdays.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: True. I said tomorrow morning. They won't even hear this until Wednesday morning.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Probably not.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: If you're awake early and you're ready to come on out. Come on out.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Today. It's today if we don't edit this podcast.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: True. We usually record Tuesday night and then launch on Wednesday morning.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: That's too funny.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Well, I think we can roll up the. The round trip. Roll up the round trip. Round up the road trip. I'll get it right.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: It's a bunch of he's so happy people.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good day. I have had a good day.
We will wrap up the round the world trip.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: What seems like around the world road. We haven't actually done an around the world pickleball trip yet.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: I haven't given you the exact amount left yet. 6661 miles. Lisa goes. I mean, I would have driven five more. So it was six, six, six.
Well, we did.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: I did go to the grocery store before.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: We didn't.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: I settled in for the night.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: 6661. 37, 38 odd places, tons of states and cities. Three people, three time zones, the whole nine yards.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: We've said this like twice now.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: So you're like, that's why we're wrapping it up.
[00:01:56] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: We ended in Bear City.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Beer City tournament. We've talked a lot about it, but it does not disappoint, not one bit.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: It's the mid season MLP tournament, so all the pros are there.
Saw Ben Johns the first day right when we walked in.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: And then got to talk to some of the great pros. Saw the Kalamotos. Love them. Such great people.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: They play on two different teams. I bet that's hard.
At least it might be hard for me. They have to play each other yeah, sure, they're fine.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Well, you saw Jay cheering on Jackie.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: On Sunday morning in the game that led into the bronze match. They lost. Jackie lost.
Love you, Kawamoto's, but my boy Zane beat you, so that's okay with me.
And then went on to win bronze. So the New Jersey Fives with the bronze. The Dallas Flash are good. They won last year's MLP tournament. Not the mid season. That was the fives.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: I have to say, I wasn't following the pros. I was a recreational pickleball player. Wasn't really interested in the whole pro side.
Wasn't interested necessarily watching until I went to Beer City for the first time last year and I was like, okay, this is exciting.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: It's electric.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: It really is. And I mean, what's also different about pickleball right now compared to other sports is that the pros just kind of like walk and high five you or they'll like chat with you. You were giving.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: I was tripping on Zame a hardcore.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Brief during warm ups.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Hardcore tripping on him.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: It seemed so.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Wait, wait, wait, wait. It seemed.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: I think he liked I gave you the evidence.
He texted you back or emailed you.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: I emailed Zayn.
I wasn't looking for an okay. I already knew it was okay. He told me before, like, yeah, pick on me. I love. He's like, I like that chirping stuff. So I chirped on him. He, you know, he was dinking. He's dinking really well. Will administer a couple dinks. And then Zane missed a dink. And I'm like, hire Zane higher. You know better. He just laughs.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah, he eats it up.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: He does. He's back. He's back returning serves and he's hitting him short. And I'm like, you gotta hit him deep. What's wrong with you? Like, you taught me that. Come on.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: But it.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: I said, zane, if you don't hit him out, you're not practicing well enough. He's like, all right, all right.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: He used his own quote against.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: That's the neat thing about the sport too, is that we're still small enough that the pros interact with the crowds. They don't have their own entrances or exits. They have, you know, they just walk among. Among us and have fun and they build up their fan base by doing so.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah. At most places I saw kids carrying around balls, getting signatures from all kinds of pros on the balls, which was really cool.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah, all kinds of stuff.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: It was. It's beer city. Open. It's the best tournament around. That I don't run.
Okay, in all seriousness, something crazy happened at Beer City Open. So on. On. I think it was Friday morning. It might have been Saturday morning when you and I were there to watch the Saturday morning Los Angeles.
The LA Mat Drops take on whoever they were playing.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: It was one of the Kalamoto sisters.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Kalamoto is on the LA Mad Drops. Oh, that's Jade and Hunter Johnson and Etc.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: But big news in the pickleball pro world.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, there was a sub.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: QD didn't show up.
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: And when QD did not show up, they had to have a substitute player last. So they got Rafa.
Yeah, baby Hewitt.
And he just does not play as good as QD does in that Earth. The LA team, it did big time.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: And they also got.
Because there was a last minute sub. There was a point penalty on the Mad Drops.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Correct.
In those matches that Rafa was in, the other team start off one to zero.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And they lost. And they didn't.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Unfortunate too.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't lose by one anyway. You lose by two.
They lost by more than two. I think the LA Mad Drop struggled and now they've got to replace QD because this no show was the last straw for the upa, which again owns ppa, owns mlp, etc. And they said, that's it, you're fired. Like they canceled his contract, which is. He cannot play in PPA events, y'. All.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: He cannot play in MLP events.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: And he doesn't care because he's Vietnamese and he moved back to Vietnam, basically.
And he's making over the world way more money in Vietnam.
[00:06:28] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Than he is here. At least that's the. At least that's the current thinking, I think.
I don't know if he's doing this. I think he. Either he is doing this. In my mind, I think he is, or I think he should do this. I think he should start his own tour.
He's got. He is the most popular pickleball player by far in Vietnam.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: By far. He's Vietnamese.
[00:06:51] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: He's an incredible player.
[00:06:52] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: So he's got all this attention, all this money. His dad's. His dad's a problem. We'll talk about that in a second.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: But I don't know anything about them.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Yeah, but I think if I were him or if I were his dad, I'd be like, we're going to start our own PPA here. Like, screw ppa.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: I mean, you're a Business minded person. I can see why your mind would.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Go there for sure. That's where my mind goes in a hurry. Either way, they're at least going to short term set up their family for a long term financial gain and good for them.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: And we don't normally talk about the pros because we're normally about community and we're normally about the growth of pickleball. But it, it was interesting to see how a tournament handled such a high profile situation.
We were also on another pro game and there was heavy security when the girls played and you didn't really notice it, but I noticed it. And so I don't know what happened Anyway, so I don't know.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: It was the lady and the guy standing right next to us on the left.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah, they. You could tell that they were current or former military.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: I didn't notice when they left. You noticed when they left? When the guys came out.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: They would sit down when the guys were there, but when the girls were playing, they would stand.
So it was very interesting. I hadn't seen that before. Obviously there's security at different venues, but not like that.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Makes you wonder if there's been like threats or stalking or whatever else that we haven't heard about.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
Which is unfortunate.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: But in fairness, and you know, this is going to sound. I don't know, I hate saying these things because it sounds weird or creepy, but those two girls are beautiful.
[00:08:24] Speaker C: They are.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: They, they're just flat out gorgeous. Like the Barbie twins.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Baddies.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: The blonde baddies is what they call them. It's Megan, his own. And alw.
And al's what, 17?
And Megan's probably 22. I mean they're.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: She's stunning, they're gorgeous.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: And so I can understand why some creepy guys might be like whatever. Stalking or something. Yeah, stalking or something. So.
And again, we haven't heard about it. So since we're on pros, still interesting. Other twist of events. The day before, Annalee and Megan did not play together and Zayn and Megan did not play together. They brought in Mari Humberg from last year.
Now remember, the Fives won last year and Mari Humberg was their, was their partner. They didn't lose a point for that because she's on the team.
[00:09:10] Speaker D: Right.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: They have an extra of each. But they had to bring in Rafa for the other team, so they had no choice. Okay, so.
And Mari played really good. She said great pickleball player. And they should have, they should have beat. Who were they playing?
Dang it.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Was it Brooklyn?
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Might have been Brooklyn.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Although I think that's who they played Sunday morning. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
They could have beat him. They had game point in ALW's game. They were up like probably 10, 6. And they lost 12 10.
And that loss was brutal because the men tend to struggle on that team to win their doubles matches.
[00:09:49] Speaker D: Right.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: I love Zane and Willie, but they just aren't as good as some of the other doubles men's teams are.
So we kind of count on the AL win, then you count on the second AL win.
[00:09:59] Speaker D: Right.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: And then if Zayn and his partner can do something decent, then they can avoid a tiebreaker where they go to the tiebreaker and they have a really good singles team.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: I do like the tiebreakers. They call them dream.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Dream breaker. Yeah, But.
But it was interesting because you could see Megan was not happy.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: And when Megan came out the next morning and she was back on the starting lineup and she was on the line, but her face was intense, like, yes, Like, I'll show you. You'll never bench me again, sucka. Like, you could see that there was something there. And then finally she loosened up a bit, mostly when she body bagged her ex boyfriend, or, sorry, next boyfriend, current boyfriend. She and AJ Kohler date and she body bagged him really good.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So they were playing Brooklyn.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: She had been body b by his partner.
[00:10:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: And then. So she and she bodied by Dayj. So.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: So you're right. They played Brooklyn on Sunday. So I can't remember who they played on Sunday.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: It doesn't matter. I don't remember either. It wasn't Dallas. It was, I think the other team, St. Louis maybe. Maybe that doesn't matter. So great weekend. And I.
I could talk about BCO for a long time. Andrea Coop runs the pro side. Paul, I can't remember his last name, runs the amateur side. And it's just a great tournament.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: It is. We saw friends.
It doesn't stands as well as we did. Players, volunteers. For some of our friends, it doesn't.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Have the flow our tournaments have because it's a 2 out of 3 tournament.
[00:11:15] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: With a back draw. So then you go into 1 to 15, and that means you end up waiting a lot. Especially if you keep winning.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: You wait a long, long, long time to actually play your final matches. And I think that's a drag. There's a better way to do it, which is, of course, how we do it. But other than that, I mean, who's complaining? It's just a place is so much. They have a Food truck that does crepes. I'm just gonna tell you, it's awesome.
[00:11:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: They didn't have the same vendors this year, but we did see some.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: The crepe vendor was there, though.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: They were.
We did meet some new. New friends, and we also saw some old friends that are vendors, so. Yeah, that was nice, too.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Ray J. We're a Pro XR family, Ray J.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: We are. And I got a new paddle. I'm excited to try it out on Thursday.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Little Pro XR Gen 3 for the.
They call it the sweet spot now, I think.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: So now my league partner is going to. If she wants to match, she's going to have to upgrade.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: She already has the pink one like me.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: I have some notes because there was one or two of the things we wanted to talk about. Do you remember what they were? One was.
I'm going to say his name wrong. Wang Dong. It looks like Quang Duong if you read it in English, but that's not how it's pronounced.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: I don't know how to pronounce it.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
I'm just gonna go to my. You don't remember the other thing?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: No.
I never saw your notes. I didn't know you even took notes.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: No, I did. I said, hey, let's grab that for our, you know, next. Whatever conversation.
[00:12:42] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Next podcast.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: I just thought you were making a mental note, not a physical.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Oh, no, I know. So they say, you remember this? Ticket scams.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
So one of our friends here locally, she and her husband were scammed online when they were buying their tickets for the event. And this is a crazy story.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Tickets are $30 each.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: They got billed $178.
[00:13:10] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: And she just thought, well, it must just be like, parking fees and parking and food or who knows what else is included. But then they get there and it.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Wasn'T a real ticket.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: There was nothing. They looked them up by name, they looked him up by phone number, they told him about by email. Like, nothing. When we got our tickets, we got QR codes. She didn't get anything.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: And so they ended up having to pay 60 more dollars to stay just to get in.
So downside to Bear City Open is it's 20 bucks a day to get in, except on weekends, 30 per day to get in. Just to spectate. But it's worth every penny to sit there. We were in the second row.
Like, I mean, I. I could have high fives. Zane.
[00:13:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: I mean, it was. It was incredible.
And.
Yeah.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: And then on Saturday, we had we were in the stands under cover.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: We got a great spot.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: So we were out of the sun.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Out of the sun, out of the.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Potential rain, around some fun people.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Yep. With a good view down on the court. So nothing blocking our view.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: We did have the cameraman blocking our view a little bit, but it wasn't.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: No, but prohibitive. Kind of fun. It was kind of neat because then I could see what the commercials are playing on pickleball tv.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: We have a real cool personal, personal story we'll share with you guys. When we were married, probably five or six years, I feel like we were.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Pregnant with Miranda, so.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Or maybe we got pregnant with Miranda. Is that true?
[00:14:33] Speaker B: No, I was already pregnant, so it.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: Would have been 24 years ago.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: I had a friend who had a relative that worked at the Bellagio, and that's in Vegas, if you haven't been. It's an incredibly gorgeous facility. Of course it's a casino, but it's just incredible.
It's the famous one that you see with the fountains out front.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Well, it's a water. Bellagio is a water facility. Like, that's why the fountains are all about. And in fact, on the inside, they have a Cirque du Soleil that called O. And O is the water show that Cirque du Soleil does.
So we wanted to go see O. And he's like, I can probably get you in, like, because tickets, forget it. Like, they were 100 something dollars each 25 years ago, which is a lot of money.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Sold out. Most of the time.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Sold out. And he goes, let me see what I can do.
So he calls me and he goes, you need to meet, you know, Danny or whatever his name is by this. He goes, when you're standing out in front with all the people dressed up fancy already go in. He goes to the right hand side, there's a little door. You won't even hardly notice it, like, blends in with the wall. And he goes, just stand by that space.
So we stand by that space. The next thing you know, Danny, or whatever his name is, like, opens up a door and goes, are you Kevin and Sky? Like, yes. And it whisks us in and then we go upstairs.
[00:15:39] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: And we end up in our own private booth. Would you call it a booth?
[00:15:44] Speaker C: I would.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: I would call it a booth. It was behind glass and we were.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Right next to, like, the lighting and the can and the curtain guys.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: So. But we were in our own private space. They were to the outside of us with walls.
Thin walls, Thin walls.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: In between us and like dividers. But we would hear and then we'd see the curtain go flying out to left. But we could look down into the water and we could see the magic of the magic.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: It was amazing. This felt like that.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: It was. It was like that.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: It's pretty cool. Quite.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Gosh, no, but still.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: But it was fun to see the behind the scenes action of the video camera crew.
I. I definitely looked at this tournament differently this year since we are putting on our own tournaments on a higher scale.
So I was checking out all kinds of logistics and trying to make mental notes or physical notes where I could.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: It was special.
So back to the scams, because this was the point we were bringing up. It's worth it.
You gotta be careful. Like, she swore that the web address was the same address we got our tickets from.
[00:16:57] Speaker D: Right.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: And the email response that she got looked legit too. So she even got an email response. She just didn't get a QR code.
So.
Yeah. And there was lots of other people that got scammed too.
They shared that with her when she was trying to figure out what to do next.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I think it's worth talking about because as pickleball continues to grow, we're going to see more and more of unfortunately, like scammy type stuff We've already seen with like paddles and.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Oh, true.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Online, we're just gonna see more and more. So just, just be careful, friends. That's what we're saying to you.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: And I always get so frustrated when I see a scam because I think to myself, if you would just use that intellectual, you know, power for good, then you could change the world instead of scamming people out of, you know, pennies.
In this case, you know, a little under 200. But man, that's just ruins of people. Ruins people's days.
It's unnecessary.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Well, we're happy to be back.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: And we thank you for giving us your time and listening to this podcast today. Make sure you tell your friends that.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: We'Re ahead of the game and so are you.
Remember my name.
