Like it or not, the mark of quality when it comes to a pickleball paddle is the USAPA approved stamp.
Generally speaking a USAPA approved paddle will cost more than a like for like paddle that is not approved.
So why is the approval so important?
Well for the majority of players, it doesn’t really matter too much. if you don’t plan on playing a tournament then most likely it doesn’t matter at all.
Even so, there are growing number of “OEM” paddle manufacturers that are falsely claiming their paddles are USAPA approved when they are clearly not.
A simple check on the USA pickleball association web site means you can check if a paddle supplier is lying in seconds.
But why does is matter is they are lying? Why should we care if a manufacturer falsely labels their paddle with an unearned USAPA-approved stamp? Well, it’s a matter of trust. Quite simply, if they are lying about the approval, what else could they be lying about? Is the core as they promise? Is it really a carbon fibre surface? Are the dimensions correct? Will it even look the same as the picture on the website you bought it from?
To be clear there are great paddles out there that are not USAPA approved, and if you have no plans to enter a tournament (many tournaments insist on playing with an approved paddle) they will serve you just as well as approved ones.
So, our advice at PNA is either to go for a paddle that is proudly not approved and doesn’t hide the fact, or check whether the approval is genuine before going down that route.
A simple search on Shopee turned up a swathe of paddles that claimed to have the approval, but when we checked, it showed no such approval exists. Here are a few examples.
There is a swathe of no-brand T700 (that’s a carbon type) that look like a Joola all over Shopee. They have the USA approved logo but no brand we can actually see to check them!
Nice looking paddle from Sildurx, but no sign of it on the approved list!
Lovely design on this ROBORTY – but doesn’t appear on the approved list.
Twoot have even used an incorrect logo for their unapproved stamp!
PNA contacted a manufacturer stamped with a USAPA approved logo and confronted them about the fact they are not on the approved list.
The initial response was, we are going through certification and will have it soon. When pointed out that this means the paddle is not approved and they are not allowed to say so until the approval is given, the answer changed.
They sent us a picture of a more expensive paddle and said, “look this is not approved either”. It was somehow lost on them that the paddle in question was NOT claiming to have approval. We pointed that out to which we were told. “our paddles are not for competition players”. So we asked, “Then why say they are USA approved?”
The answer this time was “Because no one really believes they are approved, and if we pay for approval, we will have to raise our price”
So we pointed out that they were still misleading, and not everyone will know they are not really approved. They explained, “Well, everyone is doing it.”
We left it at that, but it confirmed our thinking, if you want to be sure the paddle you buy “contains what it says on the tin” then go for genuinely approved or the brands that are not pretending to be approved. Those are your safe options.
