DUPR Pickleball Night in America Preview

📸 @duprpb

DUPR is doing their 3rd installment of Tuesday night pickleball, which is now being called Pickleball Night in America, at least for this week. Last week’s Battle of the Sexes installment was pretty universally considered somewhat of a yawner. The potential problem that we had highlighted in our preview last week was the lack of incentive for the players to perform at 100% intensity. That problem came to fruition as the players, other than maybe Anna Bright, were playing as if it were a rec game in the battle of the sexes. It’s really tough to create a tournament atmosphere for an exhibition, but DUPR is determined to keep experimenting with different concepts to see what can work.

In our view, tonight should be the most anticipated DUPR Tuesday night event. There are 8 players who will be randomly selected to partner with and play against one another. The 4 winners from the first 2 matches will play a semi-finals remix and then play again for the finals (honestly, we’re not quite sure how this is going to work). The big difference to us with this event is that the winners are getting $4,000 each whereas the runners up only get $1,000 each and the rest of the participants get $500 each. That’s a $3,000 difference per player between 1st and 2nd place, which we believe is more than the gold versus silver prize money difference at any pro tournament this year.

In pickleball, the difference between $4,000 and $1,000 is a lot. If that level of discrepancy in prize money doesn’t bring the full intensity of these players, we’re not sure what will. Furthermore, most of the players involved in this event are not players that are always on the top of podiums. Beyond the money that these players will surely be incentivized by, we are intrigued to watch these lesser-known players in this type of high stakes environment with partners that they may never have played with. At least one of us is still not on board with the rally scoring that has been implemented but there is some understanding that there is a desire to keep the time pretty tight and experiment with new concepts.

The list of players for the tournament are Dekel Bar, Thomas Wilson, DJ Young, Julian Arnold, Travis Rettenmaier, Ryler DeHeart, Brandon Nsekpong and Stefan Auvergne. It’s pretty safe to say that the vast majority of pickleball viewers have not seen much of the last 4 or 5 players on this list. We don’t always have the best sense of what the average pickleball viewer wants but having lesser known, lower end pros play a higher stakes event is right up our alley. 

We’re not going to give any preview of matchups because it would be ridiculous to try to account for the amount of matchups. Some random thoughts about the player and the event:

(1) Dekel bar is the best doubles player in this group, and we will have to see if he can find his way to a victory regardless of partner. If Dekel gets to partner with either Wilson or DJ in a matchup, it might be game over. The one caveat with Dekel is that he may not feel the stakes of this event the same way as a lot of the other participants, which could be good and bad. We’re not sure.

(2) Retteinmaier/DeHeart and Nsekpong/Auvergne are regular partnerships in their relatively short time on tour. As relative newcomers, they do not have as much experience playing with different, higher level partners. That could be tough for them.

(3) Like Anna Bright, you know Julian Arnold is going to bring the fire and intensity. As an side, let’s get them partnered together for a tournament and get some mics on them.

(4) DJ Young is always a wildcard, but his alpha style lends itself well to making just about every partnership in this setting workout. The only other true alpha out there is Dekel Bar, who DJ has played with before.

(5) Rally scoring equalizes the random nature of having a hat draw determine the partnerships. The running theme of the past two events is almost every match ends up being very close. Something doesn’t feel right about that.

We don’t know if we’ll keep doing short previews for these events if they are going to be every week. But if they continue to be as intriguing as this one sounds, you bet we’ll be all over it.

Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments below or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook too!

15 thoughts on “DUPR Pickleball Night in America Preview

  • April 5, 2022 at 8:39 am
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    I’m not watching

    I watched the battle of the sexes and it was already kind of blah and then I saw two terrible line calls, one by Whitwell and a revenge call by Ryan Sherry. I turned it off shortly after. I get it was a “fun” exhibition but when players do junk like that….they should respect the audience and I’m not wasting my time watching players hook each other.

    I didn’t see the chippy line calls this weekend that NML posted about as I only watched a little bit….but I’m starting to be in the camp that players shouldn’t ref the line calls….even if means the refs do a worse job than the players. It is a disaster waiting to happen and I’m not going to waste my time watching a match to see it come down a bad player line call that a ref can’t see or, as I suspect, too afraid to overturn.

    Credit to some of the great players for not being chippy on line calls like Ben, JW, Simone etc – they haven’t abused the system and hats off to them…..but if pro pickle is going to be taken more seriously next year or so this issue HAS TO GET FIXED. Be proactive Pro Pickleball.

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  • April 5, 2022 at 8:56 am
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    Definitely excited for this one as it’s random draw and has some underdogs mixing in for big money for there only being an 8 player pool. Makes me think it’ll be a good competitive atmosphere. Last week you could tell not all the players were serious the whole time, which is fine, but I personally prefer to watch people battle, which I hope happens tonight!

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  • April 5, 2022 at 9:52 am
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    “Rally scoring equalizes the random nature of having a hat draw determine the partnerships.”

    Not following this line of thought… can you expand?

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    • April 5, 2022 at 9:54 am
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      Oh, I think I get it — your saying that the fact that the previous matchups finished close was *because* of rally scoring? I suppose that’s possible, but with only two events, I was assuming it just had more to do with the pairings being close and would have been close scores under either system.

      Is there any reason rally scoring would inherently lead to closer scores?

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      • April 5, 2022 at 2:02 pm
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        The reason is that when one team gets 20 they are unable to score unless they serve, while the other team can continue to score on both serve AND return until they get to 20. So Collin and Adam beat Dekel and DJ for example even though they won less rallies overall. I think they were down 20-16 at one point. The only way for it to be fair in my opinion is to have both teams switch to normal scoring after 1 team gets to game point.

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        • April 5, 2022 at 2:10 pm
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          oh, right, thanks! I forgot they had that rally scoring variant

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  • April 5, 2022 at 10:05 am
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    Thank you very much for posting and for your time. I enjoy reading your thoughts about these matches. I’m with A-Train in the comments. When Ryan Sherry purposely called a ball out that was way in for revenge, and nobody said anything, it was a joke, and that dishonest call cost the other team the game, IMO. And. What makes you think the line-up is going to be random? Isn’t DUPR PPA? If so, they have already shown to be dishonest when it comes to random player rosters. And are all these players contracted to PPA, so they are already getting paid to show up (not sure about the newbies)? And I’ll be interested in the video quality. PPA has some of the poorest video quality in pickleball. Thank you for your time.

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  • April 5, 2022 at 10:28 am
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    DUPR is not related to either pro league.

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  • April 5, 2022 at 10:34 am
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    I suggest something similar to a jump ball/possession arrow in basketball. If call is disputed and Referee can’t confirm or overrule the line call, then check the possession arrow, that side gets the call.

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  • April 5, 2022 at 11:05 am
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    Thanks! I didn’t even know about this. MLP promoted the heck out of the Battle of the Sexes but not this one. Hmmm.

    Don’t forget that T.Wilson won gold with DJ at the World Pickleball Open last December. I think Bar or Wilson will make the strongest team no matter who their partner is.

    I’m against line judges but wouldn’t mind having the players themselves trained better. Some of them don’t realize how the angle you are viewing from can make a big difference. And some don’t realize why a ref can’t make a 100% certain call. So some training of players could help. Maybe an online video. For the online viewing audience, we have the big problem that what we see is not reality. Those camera angles can really make things look different to us at home.

    There was some association at some point with DUPR and PPA. PPA tournaments supposedly would have their results entered into DUPR. MLP is associated with APP at some level. No PPA contracted player will be playing at the first MLP tournament in early June (from what Ben Johns has said).

    Sorry but your post says DUPR and maybe it should be more emphasis on MLP.

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  • April 6, 2022 at 6:58 am
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    Finally watched it… Lee is a fun commentator.

    Does she spend a lot of time at Dreamland? I thought she was at the Villages.

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    • April 6, 2022 at 8:16 am
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      Lee lives in Dreamland actually. Fairly recent move

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      • April 6, 2022 at 12:28 pm
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        Probably lives in the Austin area. No housing at Dreamland (yet).

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  • April 6, 2022 at 12:33 pm
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    Some good rallies. But I didn’t like the curve ball at the end regarding a singles game. Didn’t seem kosher. Glad the players declined.

    Reply

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