Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Sleve Senior Pickleball Report is brought to you by TNC Network. Get ready for an exciting episode of People of Pickleball with me, Mike Slieva. We're about to dive deep into conversations with influential figures from the world of pickleball.
So let's get it going.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Today in our People and Pickleball episode, we are speaking with the brains behind Stafford Pickleball Paddles. I did a review which I'll have a link in the description. Arguably the quietest paddle on the market and they just getting started. So we speak with the three gentlemen behind that development. But before we get to that, if you like this content, consider subscribing to the channel. Check out all our links in the description for discounts. Subscribe to our newsletter, keep up with everything going on in the pickleverse and also check out our merch page. All right, let's get to that conversation with the gentleman at Stafford Paddles.
[00:00:50] Speaker C: We are here with Stafford Paddles and the review that I posted for the Blackbird is in the links below in the description. And we are here with Randy, Steven and Dan, the Q team, the quiet team that has developed a paddle, the first paddle that I've actually reviewed that really takes in consideration the noise that pickleball, that tends to push some people away from the sport. So welcome to the Senior Pickleball Report, fellows.
[00:01:21] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:01:22] Speaker E: We're happy to be here.
[00:01:24] Speaker C: Yeah, it's great to have you because I think what you're working on is really the future of the game. There's really two aspects that I look at and that is the paddle and the ball.
And what you're working on has created some. A lot of interest anywhere. I brought the paddle. When people first pick it up and they hit it, they turn it, their head usually just swivels and looks at me like, what the heck is this? And there's not a lot of paddles out there on the market doing these things yet. So it's new for me and for my listeners as well. So, Randy, I want to start with you because you have an extensive racquet and paddle background. Obviously, you know, head of USA Racquetball hall of Fame, you've written books. Heck of a player. Talk about really?
Yeah, I'm really building it up here, Randy. Don't mess this up.
Talk about what. What grabs you and started you to get to play pickleball. Because obviously I played with a lot of people that play racquetball. It's not a natural fit necessarily. So talk about that gate, that transfer for you.
[00:02:36] Speaker D: And that's a great question is because in the early days of racquetball, when I started playing in the. I hate to say it, in the late 60s, I played racquetball for almost 50 years, and I built racquetball squash courts for almost 40 years. So I've always had a racket in my hand of some sort. And racquetball at the very beginning was very much like pickleball was 10 years ago, even till like three or four years ago, where it was a very balanced game where balance, I mean, that you have the aspects of power and control. And in racquetball, there were certain shots, ceiling balls, pass shots that you could hit against a power player, move them to the back, make them hit the ball with a racket up high, perhaps, so you can control the power players with control. And pickleball was very much that way. And then so racquetball kind of changed because the marketeers and the manufacturing sped up the ball with. Or the game with larger rackets, faster balls. And it became basically a. I almost changed the name to bullet ball instead of racquetball because it was then an unbalanced game, and power just took over. And it really. To me, it just was not that much fun anymore because the control function of the game was gone. And so they were playing pickleball only in one spot here in Memphis, Tennessee, back about 10 years ago, actually about 12 years ago at a church. And I knew some of the players because they were all racquetball players for the most part. And I joined them and just fell in love with. At that point, because. Because of the balance of the game, you could. It's fun to have the power, but it's also a lot of fun to have the control. Kind of a cat and mouse game. So that's what got me involved in it. And I did see the demise of racquetball, and I do see some of that same effect happening with pickleball right now.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: Yeah, and I think that's a good point, because I think the same thing has happened in tennis. When I was growing up, I used to enjoy watching a lot of tennis, specifically in the 80s, you know, the McEnroe and the Borg era. Connors and I watched today. And I can appreciate, you know, what the talent level of these men and women. But at the same time, it's a baseline game where people are just sort of ripping the ball hard as they can at each other. And it seems like a fair amount of the cat and mouse, as you brought, you know, brought up, is kind of gone from tennis as well. And that seems to be whether you look at racquetball, you look at tennis, you can even bring up golf and how that's changed the game a little bit with guys hitting 400 yard drives.
[00:05:16] Speaker D: But, you know, one other point is that if you watch the top pros, men and women, they are still playing a cat and mouse game. Now, their speed ups are professional. They can speed the ball up at the right moment, and then you go into your, you know, your firefight, but they still play because they can and they know to keep that ball below that level of that net up close. And so there still is that function of the game. So that's what's still great about pickleball.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And I say this because I hear, I watch a lot of pro ball and I watch a lot of podcasts with pro players. And when pro players are starting to get tagged in the face and pro players are starting to complain about the speed of the paddles, then, you know, something, something is up. And when the number one player in the world, Ben Johns, is like, we're at the point now where we need to start finding a balance between the power of this game and the finesse of this game. I'm all ears. Because, you know, he's the guy who's revolutionized sort of how to play the game.
So you got these two really smart engineer guys next to you, and Stephen and Dan. So, fellas, when you kind of heard about pickleball, and then, you know, it's one thing to play the game, it's quite another thing to go, I'm going to jump into this industry with somebody, and I'm not only going to jump into the industry, I'm going to take on arguably the toughest thing to solve in this game. And that is the noise of the ball hitting the paddle. So, Stephen, why don't you talk me a little bit through like, how you kind of came into the fold and you know a little bit about, like, what motivates you to kind of work on something like this?
[00:07:05] Speaker E: Joe. So, you know, right started right here. I was graduating high school, graduating college in 2014, and my dad was, had been playing pickleball for a while at that time and was bringing to me some of the equipment. And I was graduating engineering degree, wondering what I'm going to do.
And my dad is like, I think we can make a better paddle here. So straight out of college, I started working on composite engineering and trying to figure out how to make these things. And real quick we learned that making one of something is pretty easy. Making hundreds of something the same every time, perfectly is a whole nother ball game. But that is the challenge that, that people like us really thrive on. It's like it's beating your head on something, but eventually your head wins and the wall falls down. I mean, there's hard to beat that. So we got into the industry making pickleball paddles and took us a few years to kind of get our feet on the ground. And we started manufacturing for the wholesale market. We did that for several years, and then we got into, like, kind of wanting to make our own paddles and selling under our own brand. But the market, there's a fair bit in the market. So we were really looking for a place where we could kind of do something special, find our own niche. And about that time, we started hearing about these noise complaints. A lot of them were just people saying, this is annoying. And then you also started hearing about, like, organizations saying, we're banning pickleball at this time or altogether because it's so dang loud. And when you pay attention to it, pickleball can make a lot of noise. And there weren't any products out there that had done the engineering to solve the noise problem. So we all work together on, you know, Edison said, you know, I know 100 something ways to not make a light bulb. We know a thousand ways to not make a quiet pickleball paddle. We have stacks of prototypes, didn't work. But eventually trying really digging into the physics of how sound is generated, we came up with a way to make a hard face paddle that is the quietest paddle on the market. And then, you know, we've been doing that since then, just trying to make these things right.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: So, Dan, you know, you've sort of been my contact through all this. And, you know, we've, we've gone back and forth and, you know, waiting for the paddle to arrive and asking me.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: What I thought of the paddle.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: And I'll be honest, when I, I started hitting it, I was blown away on two levels. The obvious one is the quietness of the paddle. But the other thing was it's a very deceptive paddle in many ways. And one of it is one of the things besides the obvious, which is control and power, is the ease it is to hit the ball with this paddle. I would argue out of, and I've reviewed too many paddles, but I would argue this is probably the paddle that is the Easiest for me to hit the ball and make it go a place with the least amount of effort.
And, you know, here it is. Obviously, I gotta figure it out with that background here, but this is the Blackbird, and I couldn't figure it out for about two or three games. I kept hitting everything a little long, and I was like, wow, this thing comes off the face like nothing I've experienced before. And I was getting a little frustrated just because I wasn't changing the way I played. I was just like, you know, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and, you know, which. It doesn't always work. But once I figured it out, it became a very incredible tool because I felt like my game was much more effortless.
And so, Dan, talk a little bit about developing this product. And then some of the things I'm saying, they just happen. By chance, did it come along with. Because the paddle is quiet. Walk me through some of this.
[00:10:54] Speaker F: Absolutely. Without getting into too much of the exact technology, what we add to the paddle allows for some of that ease that you are talking about, ease of getting the ball over the net. Some of the feedback that we've gotten has been about the lack of sound, makes me swing harder, things like that from players.
And so, yeah, we've gotten different feedback. We can. The most important thing that we can do is we can adjust how the paddle plays. And we've gone through different iterations of our product, of our main product, so that we can make a paddle that's playable for everybody. We think it has really good power that is still going to be under the new standards from the usapa, as well as good control with the paddle. And then the grit that we have on it provides spin for the lifetime of the paddle because it never wears out.
[00:12:00] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think that's huge because when I looked at the face, I've never seen anything like it. I think I said in the review, it reminds me a little bit. It has the tactile. It feels like leather, and I like that. And. But every time I show it to somebody, they. They want to touch it. Like they do anything else with a panel, and they're like, what is this? And I'm like, I don't really know, and it doesn't really matter, you know, Like, I watch a lot of reviews and everybody gets into the technical aspects of it, and I'm like, at the end of the day, and obviously, Randy, you know this for playing racket sports for a long time, it's what it feels like in your hand at the end of the day, and it's what it feels like when you swing it. And you can throw it all the technical jargon you want, but you can pick up five paddles and, you know, sometimes you just know by picking one up, and sometimes it's the handle.
So, Randy, are there any influences in this design based on what you preferred in, you know, racket slash paddle play that you've had over the years?
[00:13:03] Speaker D: Well, that's a good question.
First off, first and foremost, I wanted a paddle that when you put it in your hand, it feels like an extension of your hand.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: Right?
[00:13:13] Speaker D: It feels. It feels balanced. Matter of fact, that's our corporate name, Statera Paddles, and that's a Latin word for balance. So we've had that from day one, the name of our company. And so it all evaluates, evolves around all this technical jargon. You're right. But if it doesn't feel right, then it really is not right. So we go to make certain that it feels right, plays right, looks right, smells right, and it is a normal paddle. It doesn't have a piece of carpet on it or fabric on it. It is a carbon hard face paddle. And that's what's unique about what we've done, is that we have, without having a PVA foam or something like that on the inside, it looks just like a regular paddle. But we've tackled in depth the hertz noise, which is one part of the sound and the other is the decibel level. So we've separated those out, and we've been able to isolate certain features that we do to the paddle that will affect one and maybe not as much the other. So, I mean, we're talking probably several hundred paddles that we have made and maybe truly, probably 50 different iterations of it. With working, especially with Dan, with his audio knowledge and trying to identify both of those, why it comes out of the paddle, how it comes out, and how we can reduce that, and that's what we've achieved. But like you said, first and foremost, it feels like an extension of your hand. It's not pop heavy. It's not too much weight in the handle. It's got a good swing weight. It feels great.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, it helps to have a guy from Dartmouth and Northwestern on your team. Go Big Ten. I went to Wisconsin.
[00:15:01] Speaker D: I didn't mention that, but that's very true.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: So let's talk about the sound. And, you know, you have charts and things like that on your website, and I put some of that stuff in the review itself. But.
And again, you tackled and are attempting to tackle the biggest issue, I would say, in pickleball for the masses, and that is the noise complaints. Because if anybody lives in a neighborhood and all of a sudden somebody says, we're going to build 16 outdoor courts right next to it, that could be a problem.
It could be a problem medically for people as well. So talk a little bit about some of the things you've discovered along the way, you know, with a lot to do with health, you know, and how we feel about not only the game, but how we feel about when we interact with this game, whether we're playing it or not.
[00:15:55] Speaker F: Yeah. So one thing that we've done with our paddles is on there. The blackbird has 67db on it, and the nighthawk has 66db on it.
Those are not only just the product number, but also what we have claimed is our sound level under certain conditions. And that are we going to continue to try to keep lowering those numbers. Makes it easy to number our paddles as well in each iteration of our paddle. So the next model will be even lower than that. And most of the people we've talked to in the community or in the pickleball community, but just the people living near pickleball courts, is some of that psychological damage, even the annoyance? We want to. We're not selling them a pickleball paddle, but we want to be a good member of the community and try to bring the noise level down so that more people can play pickleball. Or those people who just say, pickleball is annoying. I don't want to play it.
We want to sell them a paddle that doesn't annoy them. So we're reaching out to those communities. There are Facebook groups that are just there to share complaints and other issues that they have, and we've joined those groups and are communicating with those groups to try to reach an understanding with them even. Yeah.
[00:17:29] Speaker E: You know, and, like, speaking of, like, you know, health effects of, like, noise, you can look at it from, like, two directions. One, you have, like, the raw, like, physical repercussions of sound. My dad over here, his ears ring from playing racquetball because, like, the repetitive ball attacks and in certain scenarios, you have a lot of people in a warehouse environment playing pickleball. You can get, like, occupational noise exposure levels that OSHA would be like, I don't like that.
[00:17:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:55] Speaker E: And, you know, using a quiet paddle, those noise levels are vastly reduced in that environment. Granted, pickleball hasn't been Going on really for like, we don't have like those studies to say, hey, pickleball can cause hearing damage. I'm not saying that, but.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: Right, it might.
[00:18:11] Speaker E: But what the real concern is is stress. You know, you have people near courts that tick, tick, tick, that penetrates trees and fences and even the walls of people's houses. That's that specific. Without getting too technical. 120 and up hertz frequency. That just annoys people. It's right in the frequency of speech. So our brains really pay attention to it and it's impossible to ignore. And by reducing that, we're reducing stress. And everyone knows that, like, reducing stress makes you healthier. So.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Right, absolutely. And so before we go here, I want to talk about touch on two things. First, what are we looking at in the background here? Like, what facility are we in? The purpose of this place? So start someone, if you can answer that.
[00:18:55] Speaker D: Yeah. Behind you, which you cannot see, is our manufacturing facility. This is just our court at our corporate offices in a warehouse here. And so it actually just the perfect size for the court. It's just our indoor test court, play court. And I've got four players waiting in the other room to come in here and start playing because it's raining outside today, so.
[00:19:16] Speaker E: Yeah. And you know, one of the fun things about being in this industry is we get to make cool things. So it's like behind us, I have a bunch of testing equipment that you can't really see it, and that's good because it's not finished yet. But we're building testing equipment that we want to sell. And I personally love designing things like that. We also have an air cannon back there to launch pickleballs at outrageous speeds.
And that is hilarious. I put a hole in the door with the pickleball a few days ago. So I like doing stuff like that. That's. That's a blessing kind of working with stuff like this. And you know, for sure, boys with.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: Toys gotta love it.
[00:19:52] Speaker E: Absolutely.
[00:19:55] Speaker C: Okay, so without giving away any sort of top secret and secret sauce, what are we looking at? What are we working on next? Can you give me some vague idea of what's, what's coming down the pipe with you guys?
[00:20:08] Speaker F: Sure. So specifically what he was just talking about some of our testing equipment that we're working on making. We want pickleball to be safe and fair. And one thing that we see happening to a lot of pickleball paddles is that they're delaminating or just getting damaged over time. And that's propelling the Ball too fast.
The PPA even tests the pros paddles, and they're having, you know, outrageous numbers. Like 40% of the paddles are being disqualified before the players get to play with them because they. They just get damaged over time. They degrade over time.
So what we're doing is trying to make a testing machine that can assess whether a paddle is of regulation standards before a person plays with it. So any club would want to have that so that when they have a big event, they could just test the paddles real quick in 20 seconds or less.
Same with any shop that sells pickleball paddles. If a person comes in saying, this is the paddle I've been using, and they go ahead and test that paddle, and they say, well, that paddles delaminated. That paddle didn't work anymore. That paddle is illegal now. If you were to play in a. In a major event, then they'd be able to sell them another paddle. So we think we've got a pretty good market for that. It's keeping pickleball safe, fair. We hear a lot of amateurs complaining about some paddles being delaminated and players continuing to use them.
[00:21:36] Speaker E: You know, my dad talked in the very beginning.
No, sorry, go ahead.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: No, go ahead. No, continue.
[00:21:43] Speaker E: You know, it's like my dad talked in the very beginning about, like, how racquetball, like, turned into bullet ball and really affected, like, the quality of the sport. And that's something that, like, as pickleball players, we totally want to avoid. And as, like a pickleball company, we want to, like, you know, preserve, like, the integrity of the sport and like, the delamination of the paddles, even if it's illegal, drives the expected speed of the game up. And then, then players are going to look for paddles that are legal, that have that same sort of outrageous power. And that's something that we want to prevent from happening.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: Yeah, And I think, you know, I think that's key. And I'm appreciative that a bunch of smart guys are on this, because we are still in the wild west version of pickleball. Even though the game's been around nearly 60 years, the popularity, the explosion of the, you know, the amateur game and the pro game and the paddle industry in particular, I think we're trying to kind of find our ground in our feet. And I'm glad somebody like Randy, who's got a ton of experience in racket sports, has decided to take this out because it's an important thing. And like Steven mentioned, like, keeping the integrity of the game. And we don't, you know, we want to keep that quality of the game that, you know, you can bring in. You know, My mother, who's 78 and I can play a game with her and it's not ridiculous and she doesn't get hurt from some sort of equipment that basically that has no really purpose on the court other than just hurting people. So I appreciate you guys and what you do. We got, obviously Randy Stafford, we got Steven Stafford and Dan Roberts. Thank you. Stafford paddles. Again, link in the description. If there's any questions you have for these gentlemen, put them in the comments and we'll see if they can get to answering some of those things because I think they're going to have a big voice and say in the future of this game. And I appreciate your time, gentlemen.
[00:23:36] Speaker F: Thanks so much.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Well, that's pretty exciting stuff coming our way. The game is getting quieter and I think that's good for everyone. All right, folks, at the end of the day, you know what to do. Hey, let's pickle.
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