When Pickleball Rating Starts Rating Your Friends
By Svenya M. Elackatt
August 19, 2026 • 10 min read
I HAVE BEEN thinking about something lately, and the more pickleball I play, the more I notice it: people can change as they get better. Not everyone, obviously. And maybe “change” is not even quite the right word. But something happens as you move up in pickleball. The games change. The invitations change. The people you regularly play with change. And sometimes, without even realizing it, the way we look at other players changes, too. I say this as someone who loves pickleball and is pretty competitive myself. I like winning. I like playing with people who challenge me. I want to get better. I am definitely not writing this from the sidelines pointing fingers. I am right there with everybody else. And somehow, a surprising amount of this can be traced back to four letters: DUPR.
At one point, my DUPR climbed above 4.0. You would have thought I had received an honorary doctorate. Except not everyone agreed. I heard that I was not really a 4.0. My rating was inflated. I did not actually play at that level. Fair enough. People are allowed to have opinions, and ratings certainly are not perfect. Then, my DUPR dropped. Eventually, I found myself around 3.6. And, wouldn’t you know it? There were opinions about that, too.
Now, I heard that maybe 3.6 was a more accurate reflection of my actual skill level. Maybe it is. But I had to laugh. Apparently, somewhere between 3.6 and 4.0, quite a lot had happened to me. Then, someone made a comment that really got me thinking. The suggestion was that a player above 4.0 might actually be embarrassed to play with me now. Embarrassed? That word stuck with me. I was not angry. I was not even particularly offended. I just found it interesting. When did playing recreational pickleball with someone who has a lower number next to their name become something to be embarrassed about? And, that is really where this article started.
We All Want to Play Up
First, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to play with better players. I do it, too. If you want to improve, you need people who challenge you. You need faster hands coming at you. You need opponents who expose parts of your game that still need work. Sometimes you need someone to absolutely destroy you for an hour so you can drive home quietly reconsidering every athletic decision you have ever made. That is part of getting better. And, as we improve, of course our playing groups are going to change.
Someone who starts at 2.5 probably is not going to play the same games forever. Eventually, they find 3.0 players, then 3.5 players, maybe 4.0. That is normal. What I find rather interesting is what can happen socially along the way. Because somewhere along that climb, “I want to play way. Because somewhere along that climb, “I want to play
with stronger players” can occasionally turn into “I only want to be seen playing with stronger players.” Those are not quite the same thing.
The Weird Little Social Ladder
Whether we like admitting it or not, pickleball has a social ladder. There are beginners, intermediate players, advanced players and tournament players. And then, there are the people who tell you they do not care about ratings, but somehow know yours before you have finished introducing yourself. Every sport has different levels. Pickleball just seems to make ours unusually social. You notice who gets invited into which games. Who gets asked to partner in tournaments. Who is playing on which court. And occasionally, you notice someone who is completely unavailable when one person asks them to play but miraculously finds an opening when a 4.5 texts. Some of this makes perfect sense.
If someone is preparing for a tournament, they may need a certain level of competition. If I am trying to improve a specific part of my game, I may want stronger players across the net. But sometimes, the skill level starts becoming something more than a way to organize a good game. It becomes status. And, people can get a little funny about status.
Maybe It Isn’t Arrogance
It is easy to watch someone improve, see them start playing with different people and think, “Wow, they’ve gotten arrogant.” Sometimes that may be true. But I do not think it is always that simple. Sometimes people are just excited about getting better. Sometimes they finally feel like they belong in a group they have been trying to reach. Being invited into higher-level games feels good. Of course it does. We all like feeling competent. We like being included. We like knowing that other people think we’re good at something. There is nothing particularly wrong with any of that. It becomes different when being good at something starts affecting how we treat people who aren’t as good at it. That is the part worth paying attention to.
Ego Isn’t Only at the Top
pretty interested in explaining why I was not actually a 4.0. Maybe they were right. But it made me wonder why we sometimes care so much about whether somebody else’s rating is deserved. Someone goes from 3.6 to 4.1 and suddenly there is an investigation.
“Who did they play?”
“Was that tournament entered correctly?”
“They are definitely not a 4.1.”
Meanwhile, the person whose rating we are discussing is probably at home eating dinner. I think comparison works both ways. The player who desperately wants everyone to know they belong in the 4.0 group may have a little ego tied up in that number. But the person determined to prove that player does not belong there might have a little tied up in it, too. I have probably been guilty of both at some point. A lot of competitive people probably have.
The Friendship Part Is Where It Gets Interesting
Think about someone you learned pickleball with. Maybe you started around the same time. You played terrible games together. You hit balls six feet out. You celebrated the first time somebody hit a successful third-shot drop, even though neither of you was entirely sure why it was called a third-shot drop. You got better together. Then maybe one person improved faster. They started getting invited into stronger games. They found different partners. Eventually, you did not play together nearly as much. That by itself does not mean anything went wrong.
Playing groups change. People improve at different rates. Friendships evolve. But sometimes something else happens. The stronger player stops asking you to play. Then maybe they stop talking as much. Eventually, they barely acknowledge some of the people they used to spend hours on the court with. That feels different. Because now we are not talking about finding the right level of competition. We are talking about how we treat people. And maybe the distinction is pretty simple: You do not have to play with everybody. But you can still be kind to everybody.
What Happens When You Are the Better Player?
This may be the more interesting question. It is pretty easy to be gracious when you are the one trying to play up. If a 4.5 invites us into a game, most of us are thrilled. But what happens when we become the stronger player? Do we remember what it felt like when somebody better gave us a chance? Can we occasionally play a social game that is not going to help our rating? Do we still enjoy the people we enjoyed before we knew everybody’s DUPR? Or do we start looking at every invitation and wondering whether the game is good enough for us? None of this means anyone should sacrifice their own development.
Have your serious games. Have your tournament partners. Set aside sessions where you want everyone around your level. Play up. Challenge yourself. Try to get better. There is room for all of it. And, there is still room to be kind.
Maybe We Are Taking the Number a Little Too Seriously
Ratings are useful. They help tournaments create reasonable brackets. They help players find competitive games. They give us some idea of where our game stands. I check mine, too. But DUPR measures something pretty specific: how we perform at pickleball. It does not know whether you make a new player feel welcome. It does not know whether you are the person who encouraged somebody when they were learning. It does not know whether people are genuinely happy when you walk onto the court. And maybe, that is worth remembering. Because there will always be somebody better. The 3.5 wants to play with the 4.0. The 4.0 wants the 4.5 game. The 4.5 wants the 5.0 court. And somewhere out there is probably a 12-year-old who could destroy all of us. So play up. Train hard. Enter tournaments. Celebrate the wins.
Check your DUPR when it goes up. Complain about it when it goes down. We are human. Just remember the people who played with you before anyone cared what your rating was. Remember what it felt like when someone better gave you a chance. And remember, that someday, someone better than you may be deciding whether you are good enough for their court. When that happens, the number beside your name may matter a little less than how you made people feel when you were the stronger player. After all, your DUPR can tell people quite a bit about your pickleball game. It cannot tell them very much about you. ●
About Svenya Elackatt
Svenya Elackatt is a registered nurse executive in mental health who lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Philip, also a registered nurse, and their nine-year-old twins, Noah and Hannah. She discovered pickleball about two years ago on her neighborhood courts and eventually made her way to Lifetime and courts throughout Houston, playing in leagues and tournaments along the way.
Pickleball has since become somewhat of a family affair. Noah and Hannah enjoy playing, too, although probably not quite as much as Mom, and Philip has happily taken on the very important role of bringing food and making sure dinner is waiting when everyone gets home. When she is not working or with her family, there is a pretty good chance Svenya can be found somewhere on a pickleball court.
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