He’s No Paddle Nerd
February 19, 2025
If you don’t know Daniel Hawk you could easily mistake him for a pickleball paddle nerd. You know the type. One of those players who buys every hot new paddle, researches paddle materials, does deep dives on metrics and comparisons and watches hours of YouTube reviews. Add in the fact that Hawk has a warehouse stocked with so many paddles he’s lost count. “I’d say the lower end would be probably 500 and the upper side would be a few thousand,” Hawk tells me.
For a while Hawk kept as many as 75 paddles in a hallway closet in the Chico, CA, home where he lives with his wife, Cici, and their two young children. “My wife didn’t love this,” he says of the paddle-packed closet. He moved the paddles to what he describes as his “little home office.”
Hawk buys paddles wholesale in bulk, and sells them.
“I am just a retail business focusing on top notch customer service. I'm very careful to follow manufacturer guidelines and MAP pricing (minimum advertised pricing.)” Hawk sells paddles from the warehouse and online. A brick and mortar store will open soon.
The 42-year-old native of Washington, D.C. says, “I wouldn't consider myself a true nerd. I like to try all the hot new stuff but I'm much more about feel than statistics. I couldn't care less about swing weight or twist weight. I like plush feel and power. [It’s] fun to see how all the companies are innovating and pushing each other to improve.”
Once you speak with Hawk, you realize he’s more renaissance man than paddle nerd. Maybe with a little Woodstock era hippie thrown in.
He’s the youngest of three boys. “I was their little obedient servant,” Hawk says of his brothers. “I was very easy going and happy and mostly just wanted to run and jump. Not much has changed, except maybe the obedience.” Hawk says he was “addicted to basketball during the Michael Jordan years.”
Hawk’s mother, a nursery school teacher, is from Israel. His father edited a publication for a non-profit and is from England. “We would do summers in both countries,” he says. “Travel was a big part of our lives and we always loved getting to experience other cultures and lifestyles.”
Hawk attended the University of Colorado and spent his junior year studying in New Zealand. After graduating with an English degree, he did not go home.
“As soon as I graduated I hit the road,” Hawk said. “Over the next six years I went to Thailand, Laos, India, Israel, through Europe, Guatemala, and Colombia. I spent a year in Guatemala living with a family, learning Spanish, and volunteering at an orphanage. That will always feel like a second home to me, where in some ways I feel more comfortable than I do in the US. I love the vibrancy of the culture and people. The music, the food, the street life. I love the Spanish language and resiliency of the people there. I could go on and on. If I had to pick one [favorite country] though it would be Colombia. Beautiful and varied countryside. Beautiful people. Music, dance, fun at every corner. And the nicest and most open people I have encountered anywhere.”
Hawk settled in California and held several jobs. He worked in a health food store, an acupuncture clinic and was a middle school basketball coach. Then he got into selling fruits and vegetables. “I was a vegetarian at various times in my life and have worked on many organic farms throughout the world,” Hawk says. “I love growing food and eating it. It is fun, tastes the best and feels the healthiest.”
Hawk started the Chico Fruit Company and owned it from 2020-2024. “We sold dry fruit made from excess fruit. When the kids came my fruit business wasn’t lucrative enough,” he says. Meanwhile, his interest in pickleball returned. He had first played before most people even heard of the sport, when he was in middle school, but hadn’t played for years. He was a tennis player as a child and picked up pickleball quickly when he gave it a go again during the COVID pandemic in 2020.
“I was instantly hooked on pickleball,” Hawk says. “The fast reflexes, the speed, the finesse, the sound, the strategy, the camaraderie, the exercise. I hadn’t worked out for like six months before we played and I remember the next morning I was so sore I couldn’t put my pants on.”
Hawk is a sturdy 6-feet tall, weighs 185 pounds and is a 4.5-5.0 player. “I dove in head first,” he says of his return to playing. “I think all that and my sports background was enough to get me to that level. If I was younger and had more free time I would absolutely drill to fix the holes in my game. If I was in my early 20’s right now I think I would try and make a run at playing professionally.”
So instead of trying to become a pro player he became a paddle seller.
“Six to eight months after playing pickleball again I loved it so much I became an ambassador” for a major paddle seller,” Hawk says.
Hawk also finds time to run a nature program for pre-schoolers. At the Mighty Oak Nature School, three to five-year olds learn about nature and how to appreciate it. “It is one hundred percent outdoors and very child-led,” Hawk says. Fifteen kids are currently enrolled and Hawk doesn’t do any advertising. “It’s all word of mouth,” he says.
So besides his family, Hawk’s passions are the outdoors and pickleball. His advice for a first-time paddle buyer: “Go to the courts and make some friends and borrow a couple of paddles to try out to see what you like. I’d then pick up a good used one at a decent price off a Facebook group, like the ‘Anti-Scammer BST (Buy Sell Trade) group.”
Asked what he hopes to be doing 10 years from now, Hawk says, “Basically what I am now. Teaching children outside, getting to spend quality time with my family, immersed in pickleball. I’d like to keep growing the businesses and find a way to get a bit more time to travel with the family eventually. Oh, we’d also love to live on a few acres where we can grow more food and be a bit out of the city.”
So Daniel Hawk is clearly not a paddle nerd. To use a Seinfeld catch-phrase, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Hawk is simply more passionate about other things: His family, his nature school and his paddle business.
Thoughts of the week, not all pickleball
· Do the sellers of pickleball shoes think everyone has small feet? The options in size 14 and up and in extra wide widths are slim. I wear a 14 extra wide and recently bought a pair of SQAIRZ. They have a wide toe box, solid lateral stability and are high quality. By the way I have no affiliation with the company.
· Beware of a common scam. People are receiving tests from scammers saying they’re from the US Postal Service and they can’t deliver your package because it has an incorrect address on it. The texts are from phishers who want your personal information. Don’t click on the text. Delete and report it.
· I like movies based on true stories, especially if they’re faithful to the facts. I highly recommend Unstoppable, the story of a high school and college wrestler who was born with one leg.
· Pickleball’s explosion in popularity began during the pandemic. To play indoors usually meant playing on a gym floor with lines for other sports. The current explosion is in the number of indoor pickleball clubs. By the end of this year there will be hundreds if not thousands of indoor clubs nationwide. The four big companies are Ace Pickleball, Dill Dinkers, Pickleball Kingdom and The Picklr. Also, the health club chain Life Time has dedicated pickleball courts in 123 of its 175 locations nationwide.
· The price of eggs, coffee and other groceries is insane. Glad I quit dairy six years ago due to joint pains. The pains vanished a month later and haven’t returned. I refuse, however, to quit drinking coffee.