Though most of you probably know me as Tickle or Mr. Tickle, the guy who's been running Tickle My Pickleball since the channel started in early 2023.

I’m a former tennis player that picked up pickleball in summer of 2022 and immediately got addicted. When I decided to buy my first serious paddle, I wasn’t sure how invested I would get into pickleball so I wanted to find one that had the best blend of performance and durability at a low price point.

Since paddles aren’t cheap, I was very thorough in this research and ended up going down a rabbit hole of pickleball gear. There wasn’t too much content out there and even less content that was trustworthy. This lead me to channels like Pickleball Effect and Pickleball Studio where I became obsessed with learning all I could about paddles.

Now with the growth of the sport there was also a high volume of paddle releases and I would always have questions about these paddles. “How did this new paddle release compare to the Joola Hyperion?” “How true are the marketing claims on this new paddle? Is the sweetspot really edge to edge?”

Often times I would see ads for all these paddles and wonder if they were worth taking a look at. I would wait for Chris or Braydon to take a look at these paddles so I could hear thoughts about them from a trusted voice.

Eventually I thought to myself, I'm sure many people are in the same boat as me right now. Why don't I just go out and get these paddles and then post my thoughts? I decided that pickleball was going to be a hobby that was going to stay with me and I’d be happy to spend money on paddles to test out so I could help other people.

I may not be a high level player but I consider myself an average rec player and felt that my thoughts could still help people get the information they're searching for.

If someone at my 3.5 level couldn't tell the difference between an expensive and a cheap brand or feel RPM differences, then I felt that the average pickleball player wouldn't be able to either and I'd help them save money on a smarter purchase. Well that's exactly what I did when I started the Youtube channel and that's where we are today.

Now you may be wondering, why the website? Well as everyone can clearly see, I don't have any experience with videography or any sort of design. I'm just a guy who enjoys playing pickleball and sharing my thoughts. The whole vision of the channel since I started has been to provide thoughts on pickleball paddles from an average rec player's perspective and talk about how they play relative to their price point. Pickleball isn't full time for me, I work a regular 9 to 5 and with other responsibilities in my life I don't have the time and bandwidth to invest a lot more time into releasing higher quality and more frequent content on both Youtube and Instagram.

That said, I do usually have quick thoughts and additional things I do want to say about paddles that I find hard to articulate via those platforms and felt that having a website where I can provide faster text updates would be a great supplement to my other accounts. I'm not the most comfortable in front of a camera and feel that I'll be able to describe paddles in a better way via a text post.

I want to also provide more of a personal touch during my process; I want to show more fun gameplay clips, write down random thoughts I have about pickleball in general, and talk about how I think a paddle fits into my game every time I try a new one. This is going to be a work in progress for me but stay tuned for additional features such as a Q&A and a paddle database. And don't worry, for those of you that still enjoy the videos, I'm still going to be making those. I know having content in video form is going to be the preferred method for several of you and I'll be continuing to (slowly) make small improvements to the video quality as I continue to learn. Constructive feedback is always welcome and I'm excited to be able to share more with everyone!