🎄✨ Christmas Tree Lighting Spectacular – November 29th at 5 p.m.! ✨🎄
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Hey Dinkville Community,
Get ready for an unforgettable holiday night at Dinkville Under Broad at Nashville Yards! Join us on Saturday, November 29th at 5 p.m. as we kick off the season with our Christmas Tree Lighting Spectacular.
Here’s what we’ve got lined up for an epic holiday night:
• ⛸ Ice Rink – “Rink Under Broad” open for skating
• 🎅 Pictures with Santa
• ☕️ Free Hot Chocolate
• 🏓 Pickleball 101 Sessions all night long – learn how to play
• 🎾 Want to play more? Book your own pickleball court and ball out with friends
Bring your friends, bring your family, and come celebrate the holidays Dinkville-style. It’s going to be an awesome night filled with lights, laughs, and holiday cheer.
Sign Up For Dinkville's Winter Classic Today!
We’re starting 2026 the right way — with a big, high-energy Dinkville tournament weekend! The Winter Classic is officially open for registration, and we want YOU on the courts.
🎾 Bracket Options for Everyone:
• Saturday Jan 24th Men’s Doubles and Women’s Doubles
• Sunday Jan 25th Singles and Mixed Doubles
Whether you’re a first-time tournament player or a seasoned competitor, there’s a bracket ready for you. Grab your friends, find your division, and get ready for two days of fun, competition, and community.
✨ Why You Don’t Want to Miss This:
• Kick off the new year with a bang
• Play at one of the best indoor facilities in Middle Tennessee
• Meet new players and level up your game
• DUPR Rated Games
Secure your spot today and be part of the first big Dinkville event of 2026.
We can’t wait to see you battling it out on the courts!
📲 Sign up now and lock in your bracket!
DINKVILLE WINTER CLASSIC PICKLEBALL TOURNAMENT JAN 24-25
Dinkville Merch
Check out our online shop for exclusive Dinkville merchandise and promotional deals happening right now. Gear up, rep the community, and save while supplies last.
Today In Pickleball Brought To You By The Dink
How to Hit the ‘Cookie Jar’ Shot
Kyle Yates is likely the most influential pickleball pro you’ve never heard of.
He’s the guy who brought Ben Johns into the sport, and won a ton of medals with him long before pickleball went mainstream. He also just coached team USA to a 2025 World Cup victory.
He’s credited with a few innovative shots, like “The Kyle,” the sneaky forehand flick top pros like Jack Sock have come to love and you’ve probably attempted once or twice yourself.
But there’s one shot he’s particularly proud of. It’s called “The Cookie Jar,” when you Erne an ATP. And it goes a little something like this:
- On most ATP attempts, the player hitting it is pulled out wide of the sideline
- As soon as their head drops, the player across from them gets ready
- Instead of preparing to play defense, they're getting aggressive instead
- The second contact is made, they take to the air to initiate the Erne attempt
Court geometry helps this shot immensely: the player attempting the ATP typically has a small window of space to hit into. That's where the Cookie Jar opens.
Jump to exactly that spot exactly as the ball arrives there and you’re golden. Mistime this and you’ll get your hand caught in the, well, you know…
CJ Is Still Airborne
You loved CJ’s eagle backhand last week, so we brought more flight footage. Check the ERNE liftoff and the chest-bump wingspan, because the man keeps finding air and the Adipower keeps its cool.
That is the trick. TriFoam Edge Reinforcement holds the face steady in fast hands, the raw carbon face adds real bite for shaping, and the low density core gives you dwell so pace lands where you call it.
Pick your build from Elongated 14, Elongated 16, or Widebody 16, all at $189.
And we know you spotted the red Adipower on court. Retail is gold right now. If red ever shows up, you did not hear it from us.
The Dink Awards Are So Back
They're baaaaaaack.
For the fourth year in a row, pickleball's most prestigious awards program, The Dink Awards, puts the power in the hands of the community. If you're new here, The Dink Awards offers pickleball fans a chance to vote for their favorite pros, content creators, products, personalities and organizations across categories like:
- Player of the Year
- Top YouTuber
- Best Paddle
- Best On-Court Personality
- And many more
With over 13,000 votes tallied in 2024 and growing at an incredible 312% since its inaugural season, The Dink Awards is gearing up for its biggest year yet.
And, there's a new twist. If you know someone who should be nominated, let us know. If you're a brand interested in partnering with pickleball's biggest digital activation of the year, we're just an email away.
Stay tuned. You, the fans, will be heard.
Roscoe Bellamy Claims First PPA Gold Medal
PPA Lakeland, the PPA Tour’s second-to-last event of the year, is officially in the books, and by all accounts it was a real banger.
The gold medalists should mostly look familiar by now, but some of the storylines that got us here were downright bananas:
- Despite losing in the finals, Andrei and Christian completed one of the wildest comebacks in PPA Tour history, going on a 17-point run against JW and CJ in the semis after losing the first game and going down 0-8 in the second
- Roscoe defeated top-ranked Hunter for his first PPA men’s singles gold, a match marked (but not defined) by a highly controversial net cord call in the third and deciding game
- Anna Leigh was perfect once again, winning her fourth triple crown in a row and 171st career PPA gold medal
Full results:
— Women’s Doubles: 🥇 Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright def. 🥈 Jackie and Jade Kawamoto
— Men’s Doubles: 🥇 Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio def. 🥈 Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu
— Mixed Doubles: 🥇 Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters def. 🥈 JW and Jorja Johnson
— Women’s Singles: 🥇 Anna Leigh Waters def. 🥈 Chao Yi Wang
— Men’s Singles: 🥇 Roscoe Bellamy def. 🥈 Hunter Johnson
The final PPA Tour event of the year goes down in Daytona Beach, Florida, beginning December 21.
➡️ More stats and storylines from Lakeland.
Fun with Acronyms: Olympic Pickleball Inches Closer to Reality
Pickleball’s grand Olympic dream may still be a long ways off, but it’s inching closer by the day.
At the beginning of 2025, three international federations were working independently toward that same vision:
- The International Pickleball Federation (IPF)
- The World Pickleball Federation (WPF)
- The Global Pickleball Federation (GPF)
In June, the first two orgs joined forces to form the United World Pickleball Federation (UWPF).
And just last week, news came out that UWPF and GPF have come to the table to form a taskforce to discuss merging, a tentative but critical step toward official Olympic recognition and possible inclusion.
Here’s what this means right now:
- In order for any new sport to be recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), it needs to have one overarching governing body
- GPF has the support of USA Pickleball, a major player as the governing body of amateur play in the U.S.
- Forming a taskforce to open discussions isn’t exactly breaking news, but it is forward progress
- We are painfully aware of the laughable number of acronyms involved here
Good news, though: If UWPF and GPF do indeed come together, we’ll get another one. UGPFWTF, anyone? Just kidding, but we get it, it’s enough to make your head spin.
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Please reply to this email and say hey as I would love to get to know you and learn how we can continue to grow pickleball in our community!
Thank you,
Landon Hallam
Dinkville Founder/CEO