Pickleball is changing. It’s evolving. It’s for the good for the most part. But it might also be bringing out some not-too-kind stuff from players.
This is especially true in the world of professional pickleball, which is becoming more and more lucrative and more and more competitive at the same time. It makes perfect sense. Pros today play not only for prestige and honour and bragging rights. They also play for increasingly growing prize pools. Pros at the PPA Tour and MLP Presented by DoorDash should know. There’s nothing friendly about pickleball at this level. It’s become all about competing. All about winning.
An example of this seemingly overly competitive nature was the contentious finish of the gold medal match of the women’s doubles 5.0 open at the the 2025 US Open Pickleball Championships. The said match featured Mariana Paredes and Evi Cruz and their respective partners and ended with the former striking the latter with a Nasty Nelson serve at match point, 10-4.
“The games were so good and she choose to end the game hitting me in the face, which was upsetting ’cause it took over the great matches. I know the sh*t is legal, but she hit me in the face and I wasn’t expecting her to do that since they were winning 10-4 in the last game,” said Cruz after the match.
Paredes dismissed Cruz’s disappointment, noting that the other team had been targeting her partner throughout the match. She also said that the strategy is “just part of the game” and that there’s “nothing wrong with that.”
“Hahaha THAT IS ME! And in my defense, they had been targeting my partner all day in that match. I apologized more than once, and sometimes it’s just part of the game,” Paredes said on Instagram. “It was the first time I ever ended a game like that, but at that point, I was desperate to finish the match. I saw an opportunity and took it, nothing wrong with that! #nastynelsonqueen.”
While Paredes was dismissed her use of the Nasty Nelson as being part of pickleball, some were nonetheless up in arms about the way she went about it. A few have even called into question that fairness of employing such moves in a high-stakes match.
Then again, the Nasty Nelson is a legal move. It’s rare and sneaky, and it involves the server intentionally hitting the ball to strike the opposing player positioned at the non-volley zone (kitchen line)—usually the partner of the intended receiver—before the ball bounces. The name was inspired by pickleball pro Tim “Nasty” Nelson, who was known for using this tactic. It’s called “nasty” because it catches opponents off guard and can seem unsportsmanlike to some. But again, the move is entirely legal.
To Paredes’s defence, she is right. She saw an opportunity and used a legal tactic to finish the game and earn a gold medal for herself and her partner. That part is unquestioned. She did everything by the book to win. On the flipside, pickleball purists can argue that the move runs contrary to the communal spirit of pickleball that espouses fun and fair play. These are hallmarks of the world’s fastest-rising sport, and it appears a few pros are beginning to eschew them more and more all in pursuit of medals and prizes.
On that note, picklers at every level ought to keep this in mind: Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right. THe Nasty Nelson, according to all known pickleball rulebooks, is permissible. However, it doesn’t mean it’s okay to use it.
Then again, winning is winning.
In the end, it looks like the arbiters of sport should be the ones deciding the fate of the Nasty Nelson.
