From Never Playing to Pro in 12 Months

Pickleball influencer, instructor and pro player Kyle Koszuta has been setting lofty goals since he was a kid.

One of his first goals was to be a top high school basketball player. He made all-state at Niceville High School in Florida, averaging 17 points and seven rebounds per game his senior season. His next goal was to get a college basketball scholarship. He earned a full ride to the University of Louisiana Monroe.

Koszuta, a 6’1” guard, played only 15 minutes a game at ULM (but led the team in three-point percentage his freshman year in 2012-2013 at 44%). After his sophomore season he transferred to Rollins College, a Division 2 program in Winter Park, Florida. There he played in all 28 games his senior year but his minutes decreased to only 12 per contest. He knew his basketball career was over.

“I felt like I underachieved my entire college basketball career,” Koszuta tells me.

After his senior season, Koszuta says “I didn’t touch a basketball for a year.”  He graduated from Rollins in 2016 with a degree in Business Management. He landed a job with a basketball camp company, coaching hoops to kids, producing videos and doing social media.

In August 2021, Koszuta, who’s 30, single and lives in Phoenix, played pickleball for the first time while on a date in Scottsdale. Like so many newbies, Koszuta immediately became obsessed with the sport.

“The next morning, I jumped out of bed and headed back to the park around 7:00 a.m., this time by myself. I wasn’t sure if anyone would even be there, but I went anyway,” Koszuta says.

 “I think the main thing I liked at first was that it was social, there was a really good vibe at the courts, everyone was having a good time, and then just the opportunity to improve at something again was really cool and I wasn’t that good at it at first and so I was like, ‘Alright, let me try to get better at this thing.’” Koszuta says when he started playing he was losing badly to players 40 years older than him.

Koszuta quit his secure, full-time job and went all-in on playing pickleball and creating content. “I want to reach my full potential in pickleball,” he says.

   Koszuta and mixed doubles partner Jennifer Tavernier won gold in Vegas in 2022

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 About a year after getting beat by senior citizens, Koszuta had improved drastically and began entering pro tournaments. Today his DUPR (Dynamic Universal Player Rating) is 6.2 in doubles and 5.6 in singles. In October 2022, just over a year after he started playing, Koszuta and mixed doubles partner Jennifer Tavernier won gold in the 5.0 division in the Las Vegas Cup tournament. He reached the quarterfinals at the APP Newport Open in July. Goal accomplished.

 Koszuta had another goal: To become a major social media presence as a pickleball instructor. He started a YouTube channel and gave it a simple but cool name, “That Pickleball Guy.” His first YouTube video, in December 2022, was titled, “These 5 Pickleball Beginners Mistakes Are Ruining Your Game.” (mistake number one: serve and stay, don’t creep up). He says that at the time, “There wasn’t any really good [videos] out there.” He’s since churned out 204 videos, but that first one is still his most watched, with 1.6 million views. The channel has 146,000 subscribers. His videos are tightly edited, slickly produced, filled with graphics, special effects and occasionally background music. On Instagram, he has almost 110,000 followers. Another goal reached.

 Koszuta is charismatic, usually smiling and always upbeat in his presentation. That plus his playing ability helped him land a sponsorship with Selkirk. He says his YouTube channel also makes him “some money.”  He’s started an online pickleball instruction website called “That Pickleball School.”  He calls it “The place where obsessed players go to learn how to play strategically.” Nearly 500 players have signed up at $39 a month.

Quitting his full-time job now seems like a great move. “There was like a two month period where there was some definite risk to that,” Koszuta says. “I believed in what I was building with content. I felt like the money would come. I had some money saved up, so I gave myself a six month window to figure this out, and I was able to, which was a really cool thing.”

Koszuta played in the Arizona Pickleball League for the Tempe Tornadoes and was one of the stars of the recent documentary, Breaking Pickleball, the critically acclaimed series that streamed on Prime Video.

Not bad for a guy whose dreams of college basketball stardom fizzled, who quit a secure job to do what he loved, creating content and playing pickleball.

“I was always into story telling. I just love making videos,” Koszuta says. “I just like to educate people and put out videos with the best, most clear, nicest edits, but also the best teaching and clarity that can help people get better. I want to put one out every two weeks. That’s my main goal.”

Koszuta does many of the videos on his backyard court at his Phoenix home. “I want to put out a video every two weeks,” he says. That’s my main goal for the channel.”

Koszuta spends four to five hours a day drilling. “I love training,” he says. He is an analytical player. “I’m working on either adding something new that I think I need, like a two-handed backhand at the kitchen line, two-handed backhand speed ups. I’m also trying to discover patterns that I can really lock into my brain. Also, if someone’s giving me trouble with something they’re good at, I start trying it and I’m like, ‘Why is that so hard for me to do?’ I’ll try to add that to my game.”

He doesn’t have a girlfriend and when asked what he does for fun away from the courts and the studio, he says, “This is kind of my life. I love working. I love making videos, I love writing a newsletter.”

His goal playing pickleball? “I want to be the number two player in the world.” Asked why not number one, he says, “Number one feels like too much pressure. And being number two always gives you someone to chase.”

If Koszuta’s record of accomplishing goals is any indication, becoming the second best pickleball player in the world might not be like a lob in the wind.

My thoughts of the week, not all pickleball

• Rip Quincy Jones. The prolific music arranger, composer and producer died at 91 on November 3^rd. Jones produced the best-selling album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Jones had a full and fascinating life. His father was a carpenter for gang members on Chicago’s South Side. His mother was a musically talented woman who developed a schizophrenic disorder and at one point in his childhood his father took Quincy and his brother to Louisville, Ky to live with their maternal grandmother, a former enslaved worker.

• Many readers of last week’s profileof NBA Hall of Famer and 80-year-old pickleball champ Rick Barry called him an “arrogant jerk” after reading a quote from my interview with him. Barry said, “I’m not out there to make friends with you when I play. I’m out there to kick your ass, just like when I played basketball. Afterwards we can be friendly.” Last night I told Barry about the criticism and he texted back: “Those are people who were probably not great athletes and don’t understand what it is to be a competitor. When you’re a competitor, you’re not out there to make friends when you’re playing in any type of sporting event. To judge me as a person based upon my approach to competing doesn’t make me a bad person. That’s not a real world environment. To call me arrogant is a disservice to me because they don’t know who I am as a person.”

• Rick Barry rubbed some people the wrong way as an NBA and ABA star and later as a TV analyst and he’s still doing that to some, 44 years after he retired. For what it’s worth his pickleball partners told me they love playing with him and a few folks on Facebook who’ve met him or played against him said he was a nice guy during their brief encounters.

• In rec play I would much rather lose a close, competitive match than win 11-3. Longer rallies and much more fun.

• When a college football player is down on the field and seriously injured, I often see their   coach’s head buried in the play sheet instead of going on the field and showing concern for the kid. Last Saturday I was heartened to see Georgia Tech coach Brent Key go on the field, take off his headset and console one of his injured players.

• One of the million little things I like about pickleball is that when you’re at the courts hardly anyone asks you what you did or do for a living. I don’t mind discussing work but much prefer discussing pickleball.

• Do you ever play with or against someone who after every single mistake they make analyzes out loud what he or she did wrong? It’s good that they realize it, but I find constant analysis between rallies mildly annoying. When I screw up I think to myself what I did wrong and how to correct it.

• During my first pickleball lesson, the instructor told our group that a player should never offer advice to an inferior partner unless he or she is a certified instructor. I disagree. I think it’s fine if a superior player gives tips if the lesser player asks for it, and I don’t think the better player needs to be a certified instructor. Some players don’t want to hear advice during a match. I get that and think the way to handle this is for both players to discuss it before the game starts.

• CBS college football analyst Charles Davis is underrated.

• Fox NFL analyst Tom Brady is overpaid. And not as good an analyst as Greg Olsen, the guy he replaced on the network’s number one broadcast team.

• I love college basketball, but make me watch an NBA game.

Hudef gives away a new paddle every month to the first person who emails the correct answer to one question at the end of my blog. This month’s winner will receive the Kevlar/carbon fiber Hudef Viva Pro Gen3 paddle, valued at $169.99.

The question: Excluding the starter kits, how many paddle models does Hudef sell? Note: The same model in different core thicknesses and colors count as one.

Email your answer to sales2@hudefsport.com. The winner will be contacted by email.