Since 1970 Prince has been a leader in the racquet sports industry, continually redefining the landscape with leading edge technology for tennis and squash. The first company to patent an oversized tennis racquet that radically increased the size of the sweet spot, Prince continued to innovate and influence trends in racquet sports for many decades. In 2018 Paddletek partnered with Prince to launch Prince Pickleball, marrying Paddletek’s paddle design and manufacturing expertise with Prince’s racquet sports engineering know-how. The result is a line of innovative pickleball paddles leveraging Paddletek’s advanced technology, and producing a new line of paddles with an incomparably large sweet spot. These paddles deliver an exceptional combination of control and power through the unique rounded face shape. Engineered and assembled in the US, the polymer core Prince paddles are backed by a 5-year guarantee against dead spots. Want proof about how good these paddles are? Top-ranked Simone Jardim used her Prince Response Pro at the 2018 US OPEN to win a Triple Crown, three gold medals in the three pro events.

Prince – CHANGING THE SHAPE OF PICKLEBALL

In 2018 when Prince decided to enter the Pickleball marketplace, they made three very important choices to assure their success. First, they decided that the paddles they produce be the absolute best available in the marketplace, perfect for players trying to improve their game and the choice of the world’s best players. Prince’s approach was to take a risk, and focus exclusively on the high-end pro level player, and craft only the best possible high-end paddle. Was this a good idea? If you judge them based on the success of their first two endorsed pro players at the 2018 US OPEN Pickleball Championships (where the paddles were launched), then you have to say "Yes, this strategy was a success." Simone Jardim won four gold medals (including the coveted Triple Crown – winning the Open Pros’ Women's Doubles, Mixed Doubles, and Women's Singles event) with her new Prince Response Pro Paddle. Jennifer Lucore, who was the second Pro to sign-on with Prince, won Silver in the Women’s Doubles 50+ with her Response Pro paddle.



The second decision the Prince Pickleball team took in launching their products into the market was to partner up with one of the world’s best designers and builders of high-end paddles. The folks at Prince decided to collaborate with the engineering and manufacturing team at Paddletek to produce their paddles. The collaboration between these two industry leaders has delivered amazing, podium winning technology right out of the gate. This allows Prince Pickleball to be a uniquely American organization with the paddles designed, engineered, and manufactured here in the USA. This also allows Prince to collaborate on engineering with a company that has a reputation for delivering breakthrough technology into the sport, and a proven track record of producing paddles that Pro players seek out to improve their game.



The final decision the Prince Pickleball team took in launching their products was to focus on performance, and not purely profit. As such, what you will see are paddle designs and shapes unique in that they increase the manufacturing costs. Producing paddles with the unique rounded shapes is less efficient, and more labor intensive to finish. They selected materials that enabled the paddles to deliver exceptional results in both power aspects of the game (passing shots, hard volleys, serves, etc.) and control aspects of the game (dinks, third shot drops, defensive blocks, etc.).



Other than training and coaching, the one and only product that can truly change a player’s game is a paddle. Prince paddles have been carefully and thoughtfully shaped to maximize performance. As their lead designer pointed out to us, the paddle has been "put on a diet", removing all the excess material where it isn’t needed so that what remains is a paddle where every bit of the paddle face is useful. The energy transferred from a ball to the face of a paddle is by its nature round – energy transferring out in a set of concentric circles from the impact point. It made pure engineering sense to create a paddle who’s edges (and energy absorbing edge guards) translate that energy into the maximum sized sweet spot.

We recommend you take advantage of Pickleball Central’s 30 Day Test Drive and put one of these paddles in your hands and test for yourself if Prince Pickleball delivered on their promise: Changing The Shape Of Pickleball.