Meet: The Nashville Chefs 🧑‍🍳

Agassi's paddle is pretty sick.

March 13, 2025

 

It’s official: The Major League Pickleball franchise formerly known as the Pandas is now the Nashville Chefs. And the team, which is operated by The Kitchen, is looking to make a serious run at the Challenger Level title this season.

The Kitchen took over in a management role for the team in the fall of 2024 and is now overseeing marketing, operations and sponsorship sales.

The first order of business for 2025: Filling out the team’s roster via the Challenger Level free-agency draft and unveiling a new logo. Get to know the new players on the roster and see the updated color scheme below.

Also in this issue:

  • Now that’s some crazy defense 🤯

  • The many benefits of poaching 💪

  • Know when your paddle is cooked 🍳

  • Alshon gets over the hump in singles 🏆

  • Win a JOOLA Agassi Pro 🙌

Let’s cook. 🧑‍🍳

GIVEAWAY

JOOLA X AGASSI GIVEAWAY - FIFTEEN Agassi Pro paddles

We are excited to partner with JOOLA to give away 15 of their brand new Agassi Pro Series line paddles. The winners can choose from either the Agassi OR Graf pro paddles.

SIGN UP HERE and also get 100 BONUS ENTRIES HERE!

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

Defense you have to see to believe

Eventually, you learn that when the ball goes up, your paddle goes down. It’s Defense 101.

But Anna Bright takes it to another level in this point — she basically does The Limbo, crouching down to keep getting ball after ball.

It’s easily one of the best defensive displays we’ve ever seen. But if you want to see more insane racquet sport D-🤺, keep scrolling …

POLL

What other racquet sport do you play most?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

FEATURED STORY

Meet The Chefs — The Kitchen’s MLP team

One word stands out when describing the new-look Nashville Chefs roster: Experienced.

While several other Major League Pickleball teams opted to take a chance on relatively unknown up-and-comers in the Premier Level and Challenger Level free-agency drafts, Chefs General Manager Jared Paul (founder of The Kitchen) and Assistant General Manager Caleb Hodder picked players who have hundreds of MLP and PPA Tour matches under their belts.

With Ewa Radzikowska as the lone holdover from last year’s season-ending roster, the team had three spots needing to be filled in the draft.

They won the bid for the No. 2 spot with 8,000 draft points and selected Anderson Scarpa – the team’s top choice going into the draft. The Chefs also won the bid for the No. 3 pick at 7,000 draft points and selected Marshall Brown, then picked up Michelle Esquivel with the No. 9 pick for 1,000 draft points.

“We’re really excited about who we chose and we feel like we got the best of the best,” Hodder said. “We spent more money in the challenger draft than any other team and it’s because we really wanted to get the people we picked.”

Player bios

Anderson Scarpa
Resides: Charleston, South Carolina
Age: 31
DUPR: 6.373 doubles, 6.053 singles

Marshall Brown
Resides: Auburn, Alabama
Age: 30
DUPR: 6.175 Doubles, 6.319 Singles

Michelle Esquivel
Resides: Estero, Florida – originally from Orange County, California
Age: 38
DUPR: 5.62 Doubles, 5.48 Singles

Ewa Radzikowska
Resides: Atlanta, Georgia – originally from Poland
Age: 45
DUPR: 6.02 Doubles, 5.90 Singles.

We caught up with the players last week to get their thoughts on how the team came together and get their outlook on the upcoming season.

As for the logo, consider it Version 1.0 … We like what we have, but we’re always open to tweaks if we think we can make it better. Stay tuned for possible updates.

INSTRUCTION

Set a trap, then break the pattern

Pickleball is a game of patterns — but the best players know when to break them. One of the most effective ways to do this involves poaching (or not poaching).

🔹 Poach early, create pressure

In a recent rec game, I started aggressively poaching my opponents' third shots, adding spin & aiming at my opponent's midsection as they were in transition to the kitchen. They weren’t ready for it.

🔹 Set the expectation — then flip it

A few points later, my opponents started adjusting, shifting toward the middle to cover my poach. That’s when I backed off. My partner, seeing an opening, simply placed a low-speed shot down the line for a clean winner.

This is where the magic happens: poaching isn’t just about stealing a ball. It’s about making your opponents second-guess every shot.

The takeaway

1️⃣ Poach early to create pressure. Your opponents will either force bad shots or give you easy put-aways.

2️⃣ Recognize patterns. If your opponent always sends their third shot floating middle, exploit it.

3️⃣ Break expectations. Once they adjust, flip the script — like I did when my partner put away an easy shot down the line.

Poaching wins you some easy points and makes the game more unpredictable, but it’s a great lesson in pattern development & court awareness, too.

BADMINTON?

Speaking of great defense…

Who is your favorite athlete and why isn’t it this dude in white playing what has to be the best badminton highlight in history?

The past two years have seen countless paddle controversies and general uneasiness among players regarding what’s legal & what’s not.

→ In an effort to clear up this gray area, the United Pickleball Association of America recently released new guidance intended to help paddle manufactures and players recognize when a paddle should be retired from play to maintain performance standards in competition.

While not an official rule, the guidance was put in place to uphold the integrity of competition and ensure paddles perform as intended within the parameters set by UPA-A. Get the details here.

THE PROS

Alshon wins first singles title in Cape Coral

After knocking on the door for more than a year, Christian Alshon broke the door down last weekend at the PPA Tour Cape Coral Open, claiming his first-ever singles title with a win over Jaume Martinez Vich in the gold-medal match.

Alshon got some help from 16-year-old John Lucian Goins, who upset top-seed Ben Johns in blustery conditions to knock out what was probably the toughest competition (No. 1 ranked singles player Federico Staksrud didn’t participate in singles in Cape Coral). Learn more about Goins here.

He also made the final in men’s doubles in Cape Coral, but ran into the last-minute partnership of Johns and Andrei Daescu, who played extremely well in their first (and maybe only) tournament together and routed Alshon and Federico Staksrud in the final.

In mixed doubles, Johns & Anna Leigh Waters bounced back from a rare loss at the Mesa Cup last month, narrowly defeating JW Johnson & Anna Bright to get back in the winner’s circle.

The PPA Tour is back in action this weekend in Dallas for the Texas Open, and we’ve already seen more upsets Thursday in men’s singles action. 17-seed Zane Ford took down 2-seed Ben Johns in the Round of 16, and Goins was back at it with another big win over Gabe Tardio. Watch live all week at pickleballtv.com.

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

JOOLA Agassi Pro: Unique shape, unique benefits

This month's JOOLA X AGASSI release has already been a popular choice among pros and high-level amateurs, featuring the same new tech as the Perseus Pro IV but in a unique shape that caters to players who come from a tennis background.

The Agassi shape positions the sweet spot more toward the top 20% of these paddles, which is where players can get maximum power on groundstrokes and overheads. The Agassi Pro and Graf Pro also have a 5.5-inch handle, which offers plenty of room for two-handed backhands -- a shot former tennis players often carry over to pickleball.

QUICK HITS

What did you think of this week's newsletter?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

REFERRALS

Earn swag while helping us grow 💌

Earn free pickleball gear for referring friends & family to our newsletter.

  • 5 referrals = The Kitchen bumper sticker & bag tag

  • 10 referrals = The Kitchen hat of your choice

  • 25 referrals = The Kitchen t-shirt of your choice

  • 45 referrals = A JOOLA bag

  • 100 referrals = Any JOOLA paddle

  • 500 referrals = Come party at our Austin HQ! We'll play & drill with pros & film viral content together for our Instagram

You currently have 0 referrals, only 10 away from receiving A Kitchen Hat.

Copy & paste this link to share with your family, friends, & in social media posts: https://thekitchenpickle.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER