Having a few friends who are sponsored pickleball athletes, I've been blessed to be able to receive some pickleball-related gifts from them ... from bags of pickleballs themselves, to paddles and most recently a DrillPickle soft practice ball.
However I've not come across a given-away paddle quite like this one before ...
I'm told that my friend Brian once tried to take a Babolat RBEL Touch paddle and customize it using a bit of black spray paint - however what was intended for just colouring the edge bumper turned out to bleed over onto the paddle face, thereby rendering it ineligible for competition play. As such I believe that it got relegated to the bottom of the equipment bag, but still Brian was gracious enough to pass it along to me.
What did I do with it? Well I took some paintbrush cleaning solvent to it to try to restore it back to as close to its original condition as I could. It's still not usable in competition, but it's more than sufficient for taking to work on drills and recreational play - and it's still a very solid paddle!
Here's my full video review!
