Everyone has been hooked in pickleball. Everyone has hooked someone. And everyone has a list of players they would absolutely like to hook next.

In this episode of Balls Deep Podcast, we stop dancing around it and say the quiet part out loud. We name the players who have hooked us, openly admit who we’ve hooked ourselves, and talk honestly about who we’d like to hook in the future. From bad line calls and selective honesty to reputation bias and quiet favoritism, we break down how hooking actually works in real pickleball matches.

We dig into why hooking becomes more common as competition increases, how certain players consistently get the benefit of the doubt, and where the line really sits between gamesmanship and straight-up bad sportsmanship. This isn’t a hypothetical discussion — it’s a candid look at the unwritten rules of pickleball, with real examples and real names.

If you’ve played pickleball long enough, especially competitively, this episode will feel uncomfortably familiar.

In this episode, we dive Balls Deep into professional pickleball player Michael Loyd to dig into the experiences that shaped his career and his life beyond the court.

We talk about Michael’s relationship with his girlfriend, how life off the court intersects with life on tour, and the realities of balancing competition, travel, and personal relationships. From there, the conversation takes a sharp turn into Pokémon, unexpected nostalgia, and why competitive personalities are drawn to games far beyond pickleball.

The episode includes hot takes — some about pickleball, some about culture, some about absolutely nothing important — but all of it unfiltered. It’s a loose, candid conversation that shows a different side of a pro player you don’t usually hear in interviews.

In this episode of the Balls Deep Podcast, we turn pickleball into a business pitch room and go full Shark Tank mode. We pitch pickleball business ideas to each other, break them apart in real time, and decide which ones actually make sense beyond the hype.

From product concepts and media ideas to leagues, tech, and monetization plays, we analyze what would realistically work in the pickleball space, what’s already oversaturated, and what sounds good on paper but falls apart under scrutiny. Nothing is protected, everything gets questioned, and every pitch has to survive real pushback.

If you’re interested in the business side of pickleball, brand-building, or how ideas actually get evaluated instead of politely nodded through, this episode is a candid look at how pickleball ventures stand up when the gloves come off.