EQUITY OVER EQUALITY: THE ONLY SCORE WORTH KEEPING

Last week I was invited to Dallas for an all hands meeting for Pickleball, Inc., where we were given updates on the organizational structure of professional pickleball going forward. It was fun to meet fellow coworkers whom I have worked with for over two years, but had never met in person. I find it interesting to be in relationship with people who you only interact with online, via video calls, or Slack. And then when you finally meet them in real life, it seems to fully forge the working relationship in a whole new way. It feels stable, secure, and you get to know them on a deeper level.

I ended up staying in Dallas for a couple extra days after the meeting. My boss and I are actually old friends who met at a pickleball clinic back in 2018. Shortly after that, I played my second ever tournament with him at my local club in Utah. While we did get totally worked over by two young teenagers, it brings a little relief to hear that they are both now signed with the PPA tour.

Last Wednesday night, we went to Oasis Pickleball Club in Rockwall to play in an organized Kings Court. It’s always a little exciting and unnerving to go to a new place to play my favorite game with total strangers, whose games I have no familiarity with. Coming in fresh to a group where I have no clue of their individual strengths, weaknesses, proclivities, favorite shots, or expertise, married with all of mine—including my disability—often brings a mixed bag of results. As someone who will always see doubles pickleball as a partnered event built on trust, communication, safety, and a deep familiarity with each other‘s games, a Round Robin or Kings Court with strangers has a tendency to rub up against these qualities.

Before I certified as a relationship coach in 2020, I had often heard that healthy relationships were a 50-50 dynamic. If a secure relationship is 100%, then each person would give exactly half of what it would take to achieve a partnership based on equality. Sounds fair, right? The math checks out. But what happens if somebody can’t give 50% on any given day due to life‘s circumstances, a major upset, sickness, or simply a bad day? Then what?

During my self-discovery journey, I read a lot of Brené Brown’s work (who just happens to be an avid pickler), mostly focused around shame. I remember coming across an article where she debunked the 50-50 relationship rule, and why it doesn’t work. Despite our best efforts, giving 50/50 in every scenario can be extremely difficult, even impossible. There is simply no way to expect the same amount of energy, effort, capability, and achievement from two people at any given time. After eight years of playing pickleball, I discovered that this principle absolutely applies to the doubles game.

A secure relationship is not about percentages; it's about mutual effort, care, and balance. Sometimes it's 70/30, sometimes 40/60, depending on life's seasons. And, sometimes the individual efforts don’t even add up to 100! Sometimes we can only muster enough to get to 40%. And that’s okay, having less than 100 is going to happen. The key is to figure out how to co-create a successful relationship with one another when you’re both existing with less than 50% to give. Unlike the game of pickleball itself, partnership isn't scorekeeping; it's showing up for each other in ways that make both people feel valued, supported, and secure. In my marriage I was a total scorekeeper. Everything was tit for tat—a dynamic I had to really work on and reframe in my subsequent relationships after my divorce.

Reframing is simply looking at a situation from a different perspective. The reframe in this situation is to replace equality with equity as the intention in the relationship. Equity is different from equality.

This distinction is very important because when you aim for equity, you are taking each situation and giving consideration. Each partner and their individual abilities, energy, and capacity is considered.

We had four courts going Wednesday night. My DUPR rating seeded me on court 2, and my boss started out on court 1, Kings Court. Since we had planned on playing together that night, I really wanted to make it up to the top court with him. My first game was a close loss with a really chill and kind player that had me settling into my own. I thought game two was going to be an easy win since my new partner was someone I had played a warm-up game with and he was very skilled. I was surprised at how nervous he became and at the several low-level errors he made. I tried to soothe him with my supportive dialogue to no avail. The result was a quick drop to the bottom court and I would now have to work my way back up with another stranger.

I could tell my ego was getting involved as I started to worry about what these people were going to think about me and how I work in professional pickleball, and how I’m here with my friend (and boss). My new partner served first and the ball sailed out of bounds. I quickly assessed that she was nervous as well but I was also frustrated at the prospect of never getting off this bottom court. She made a couple other shots that either muffed into the net or landed out. Our opponents were now up 4–0 and I quickly resigned myself to the fact that this game was going to keep me down at the bottom. I felt torn between feelings of apathy and competitive spirit.

In between the next point, I thought about partnership and how it could come into play in this moment. A realization came to me about the 50-50 balance. My partner could not bring 50% in her current state, and the more she made errors, the more I could see her confidence rapidly wane. If I had to guess, I’d say she was bringing maybe 15% to this game. I quickly thought about the instances when a friend, relative, coworker, or romantic partner could only bring what they could at any given moment and how I could fill in the rest because I was more resourced at the time. And even though my frustration was growing in this game, I knew I had more to give. I reached a little longer, I moved a little farther, and I stayed more steady to consistently keep shots in play. I noticed that my partner started to relax and began keeping the rallies going with me. We both praised each other after each point. We were now playing as a team. We sided out with the ball and ended up winning 11-4, without ever giving our opponents another chance at service. This game started out as me wanting to win at all costs and shifted to me wanting to be the best partner I could be. As I’ve said before, so many lessons to learn on a pickleball court.

I never lost another game and ended up on Kings Court with my good friend and boss. We lost 10–12 in the final match but we sure had a lot of fun playing together again. As for our relationship score, we will always keep it 100!

About the Author

Daniel Singer is a senior designer at Pickleball Central and a certified relationship coach. He is an avid pickleball player and plays with a rare disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth. He resides in Orem, Utah.