UPDATED MAY, 2019 (original post below).  POP Tennis has officially re-marketed itself (from Paddle Tennis) and is making headway separating itself from Padel and other sports.  You can now officially find POP tennis gear!

Why Paddle Sports are so confusing right now!  

Naming conventions be ##$^@@#, people are just going to keep rolling out new versions of these sports!

As dealers of paddles for a variety of paddle sports we find ourselves in an interesting position as growth of many paddle sports is exploding.  Players are often confused by similarly named sports and equipment that often (but not always) overlaps.  What we could once sort out by asking what state a player plays in, what surface and what type of ball has now become no guarantee of what game they are involved with.

I had a customer call in asking about paddles the other day because he was looking to change things up from using a racquetball racquet with a squash ball on a paddle tennis (POP tennis) court!  While I've never heard of such a thing, this is an excellent example of the "anything goes" type of movement in paddle sports right now, with players leading the charge on creating variants of what were once a few established paddle sports.

Don't even try to get it straight as a player right now until those heading up these factions get it straight themselves.   As if it wasn't already confusing, just today I heard that POP tennis, which recently adopted what was previously Paddle Tennis is now going to have POP hardcourt tennis (presumably paddle tennis) and POP Beach Tennis, a lower-net version of what many Beach Tennis players using a volleyball height net know as Beach Tennis.

One suggestion we have is don't bother with too much research about what type of paddle and balls to buy for what you think you want to play; instead, ask those you're playing with or watching, what they use for equipment. Hook yourselves up with that and go play, in whatever form you want!