The ‘Full Bag Epidemic’?
Back in early May, Anna Bright posed a question in her newsletter as to whether it is okay for a male pro to be attempting a full-bag on a female pro after Riley Newman attempted one on Sahra Dennehy in a PPA round of 32 matchup. She titled the portion of her newsletter the “Full Bag Epidemic”.
On Thursday, we had a more controversial “full bag” moment as Jay Devilliers tagged Nico Acevedo in a mixed match featuring Devilliers/Jessie Irvine on Atlanta and Acevedo/Lea Jansen on Texas. Lea Jansen did not react kindly to the shot choice from Jay, who gave a big “vamos!” cheer after hitting Acevedo — notably, Acevedo had bodied Jay a couple of times a few rallies earlier (although not nearly as hard). Jansen proceeded to say “you’re a joke” to Jay, refused to paddle tap him and they exchanged some words both on the bench and off the court as captured by the pickleball.com crew and shared on their social media.
Lea noted later that her disdain for Jay’s shot selection was less about his full bag, but rather a different veiled comment that Jay made on social media for anyone in the know of pro pickleball gossip drama, which we don’t plan to get into for the purposes of this post.
We were tempted to write something about the “Full Bag Epidemic” after Anna’s post in May, but ended up taking a pass on the topic. However, after this Jay-Lea incident, we figured it was time to revisit the matter. Jay hit Nico, which is male on male full bag violence and not the situation that AB raised last month.
Overall, though, it seems to us if you are a pro player and wanting pro treatment, anything within the realm of the rules should be fair game. It is a more nuanced situation if it is a male / female dynamic, but this is a take that we generally apply across other professional sports. Our commentary on this topic isn’t intended to be isolated at this Jay-Lea incident. Instead, it is more of a general sentiment of how hard it is for us to understand why people get so upset about bags in pro pickleball.
A similarly confusing example from other pro sports that comes to mind is when teams, players or coaches get upset at opposing teams for running up the score at the end of the game. It has always struck us as odd that when you are being paid to play a sport for a living, you can get mad at someone for literally doing their job. If you don’t want them to score, stop them. If you don’t want to get bagged, get out of the way.
In our view, when you get paid to play a sport for a living, the line for what constitutes good sportsmanship is in a totally different place. At the end of the day, these players are hitting a plastic wiffle ball at each other 14 feet away and, as long as you have eye protection on, there’s really nothing a person can do to actually injure you.
Why must we extend the courtesy and sportsmanship that is offered at open rec play to the pro side of the sport? A good chunk of players are getting paid 6 or 7 figures annually to do this as their job, yet some of these same players are losing their mind and throwing a fit when a plastic ball is hit hard at them.
To be clear, whether fans think it is acceptable is a different question. As a fan, it is fully within your right to like or dislike something a player does and determine if you are going to root for or against them. That’s part of being a fan, as much as we may disagree with those who chastise pros like Hayden Patriquin, Christian Alshon and Jay attempting to go for a good full bag.
The full bag is fully within the rules of the game and there is no reason pro players should be getting upset about this.
End of story.
Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com! You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @nmlpickleball
