Building the Perfect Pickleball Player: 11 Skills Top Pros Excel at Most

Zane Navratil and Erik Tice go head-to-head assembling their ideal "FrankenPro" – the best men's player across every possible category.

The PicklePod just did something we didn't know we needed: they built an entire men's pickleball player from scratch, cherry-picking the best skills from the sport's elite.

No, not through some sci-fi cloning experiment. Instead, hosts Zane and Erik went head-to-head in a draft where they couldn't use the same player twice, assembling their ideal competitor across 11 different attributes.

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The result? A fascinating window into what separates good players from great ones.

The 11 skills required to be the best

Erik devised the parameters: they would go back and forth, choosing one player each for the 11 essential skills required to be a top PPA men's pro.

The only requirement: once someone used a pro, they couldn't use him again. One pro per skill, no exceptions.

The skills they looked at:

1. Serve
2. Drive
3. Drop
4. Transition Zone
5. Dinks
6. Speed-Ups
7. Backhand Flick
8. Counters
9. Overhead
10. Athleticism
11. Mental Toughness

The FrankenPro

Interestingly, the guys never picked the same pro for the same skill.

And only a couple pros appeared on each list: Hayden Patriquin and Andrei Daescu.

Otherwise, this was a veritable who's-who of the game's top male pros.

A few notable picks:

• Zane chose Tyson McGuffin for dinks, despite his reputation for being largely defensive at the kitchen line
• He also chose relative unknown Yuta Funemizu in the backhand flick category; his is a deadly, but to-date inconsistent shot
• Finally, Zane did not include Ben Johns on his list
• Erik opted for newcomer Eric Oncins for best serve
• In the transition zone, he chose Riley Newman, one of the sport's OGs
• One all-around standout Erik is missing is Chris Haworth

Mental Toughness and the Intangibles

One particularly fun category came at the very end.

When it comes to mental thoughness, Erik picked Andrei Daescu for his leadership and perseverance. Zane went with CJ Clinger, the "Slim Reaper," arguing that CJ shows up in the biggest moments without flinching.

"How many times has this dude showed up in super super important points?" Zane asked.

That's the kind of observation that doesn't show up in stats. It's the stuff you notice when you're actually competing at the highest level, watching how players respond when everything's on the line.

Watch the full segment below: