Pickleball Partnership Etiquette: How Pro Players Find and Keep Their Perfect Match

PPA pros Ava Ignatowich and Camila Zilveti explore the messy, complicated, and surprisingly human side of locking down a doubles partner event after event

Finding a doubles partner in professional pickleball isn't exactly a formal process.

There's no official matchmaking system, no algorithm, no LinkedIn for the pro tour. Instead, it's Instagram DMs, text messages, and the occasional awkward conversation at a tournament.

That's the reality Ava Ignatowich and Camila Zilveti unpacked in the latest episode of their new podcast, "Balls Deep," where they explored the messy, complicated, and surprisingly human side of how pro players coordinate partnerships.

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The Informal Reality of Finding a Partner

Here's the thing: when Camila first joined the pro tour, she didn't know the unwritten rules. She was out here emailing potential partners like she was applying for a job. Spoiler alert: nobody replied.

"I was like, 'Hello, I saw you were missing a partner. Would you like to play?'" she recalled.

The actual process is far more casual.

Players typically reach out through Instagram DMs or text, asking if someone wants to team up for a specific tournament. Sometimes they ask around for a player's number first. It's informal, it's spontaneous, and it works because everyone on the tour understands the system, even if nobody explicitly teaches it to newcomers.

The Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) has added some structure by maintaining a set player list, meaning you can only compete with other signed players.

Before that rule existed, you could theoretically partner with anyone. But even with this limitation, the process remains largely decentralized.

The Logistics Nightmare

Managing multiple partnerships across 20-plus tournaments a year is genuinely complicated.

Ignatowich plays both women's and mixed doubles, which means she needs to coordinate roughly 40 partnerships annually. All of these arrangements happen through different channels: Instagram DMs, text messages, Twitter, phone calls, and whatever else comes up. It can be chaos.

She's even triple-booked before. Once, she thought she was committing to three different tournaments – Orange County, San Clemente, and LA – when they were actually all the same event.

"That was really tough," she admitted. The lesson? When people ask months in advance, she now tells them to remind her a week before the event. Otherwise, she might forget.

Zilveti, on the other hand, keeps a spreadsheet. She's got her system down.

When deciding whether to play a tournament, she waits until about a week before registration closes. Then she texts the player liaison asking who's available. She prioritizes finding a women's partner first because, as she explained, "there's infinite mixed partners, so that's not never an issue." Once she has a women's partner locked in, she moves on to finding a mixed partner.

The Etiquette of Dropping Partners

Dropping partners happens constantly on the pro tour, and the etiquette around it is complicated. The general consensus? Give people ample notice. Don't drop someone two days before a tournament. That's just rude.

But what if you get a better offer? Most players would text their current partner first and explain the situation.

"This is our career," says Ava.

That said, not everyone on tour is easygoing about it. Some players will get upset if you drop them. And dropping happens way more at the higher levels of competition than at lower levels. Top-10 players are constantly switching partners, while recreational players tend to stick with the same person.

There's also the matter of reputation. If you develop a reputation as someone who drops partners constantly, people become hesitant to commit to you. It's a delicate balance between pursuing the best opportunities and maintaining relationships in a relatively small community.

The Bigger Picture

What's fascinating about all this is how human it remains despite being a professional sport.

There's no app, no centralized system, no algorithm matching players based on compatibility scores. It's just people texting each other, sometimes forgetting commitments, occasionally getting upset when they're dropped, and generally trying to figure out what works best for their career.

The pro pickleball world is still relatively small and tight-knit. Everyone knows everyone, which means your reputation matters. Drop too many people, and word gets around. Be reliable and easy to work with, and you'll have no trouble finding partners.

Zilveti and Ignatowich even joked about what a Tinder-style system for pickleball partnerships would look like. Everyone gets access to all the players, you swipe right on who you'd be willing to partner with, and if both people swipe right, it's a match. Then you decide which tournament to play together. It's a funny idea, but honestly, it might solve a lot of problems.

For now, though, the system works because the community makes it work. Players are responsive, generally respectful of each other's time, and understanding about the realities of professional sports. Sure, there's drama. Sure, people get dropped. But at the end of the day, everyone needs a partner, and everyone knows that finding one is just part of the game.