Why Your DUPR is Making You Miserable: The Difference Between Your Goal & Purpose

Jill Braverman
Apr 6
6 min read

Hello, all my Pickleball Joy Riders!

This newsletter is brought to you by… DAPS! I am LOVING my wide toe-box DAPS shoes and finally don't have bunion pain. Read to the bottom for a discount code and to see my favorite color!

Don’t kill the joy of pickleball (and life) with metrics

Smart watches, Whoops, Oura Rings, even our phones--we cannot escape the constant monitoring of our lives. But metrics force us to play by the games we can measure rather than play the games we actually value.

DUPR did a “reset” this month (you pay $34.99 for a chance to improve your DUPR during a small window of time). Brilliant move on their part.

Would you believe me that as someone who has a top 20 in the world DUPR and at one point in time was CEO of DUPR, that I really don’t think too much about my DUPR? And I don’t think you should either. When it comes to getting what you want out of pickleball (and life?), ask yourself these four questions:

Do you want to improve too badly?
- Modern Philosopher Alan Watts talks about Wu-Wei: The more you want something the more it will evade you. Like, trying harder to fall asleep, or trying harder to win, or trying to clear your mind by trying to clear your mind. Philosophers have a name for this: a self-effacing end.
Are you confusing your goals for purpose?
- When you have friends over for cards, the goal is to win, but the purpose is to have fun. In pickleball, it's a similar structure--your goal is to win, but your purpose is to improve, find community, get exercise, and experience joy. For some people though, the goal and purpose is singular: simply to win. What is it for you?
Is the activity greater than the outcome?
- Aristotle & Kant say that meaning in life comes from doing a difficult activity that you voluntarily choose for yourself. Not just outcomes, but the exercise of our capacities. Are you finding joy in the activity, or are you overemphasizing the outcome?
Are the most important things in life un-measurable?
- My favorite Silicon Valley-cum-Philosopher is Naval Ravikant, and he says, "all real scorecards are internal and cannot be measured. There is no external reward for true happiness." What does this mean? Well, you cannot measure joy. You can't measure peace. You cannot measure gratitude or fulfillment. Yet social media is full of people who look super successful and happy. The truth is we have no idea if they are, because there is no true external reward or "badge" for true happiness.

In summary, I don’t think you should "metric" yourself out of the joy of pickleball. And maybe you're not! I'm not trying to be assumptive, rather to share with you what's genuinely been on my mind lately as a coach to thousands of students who are striving towards improvement, and also personally as a player who is also striving towards improvement. But if you've been feeling stuck, and a bit too obsessed by outcomes, then please read this as a gentle reminder that we play games for joy. Heck, we're playing a game with the word "pickle" in it - LOL. A number, your DUPR, does not define your progress. Not only is improvement sometimes hard to measure, it's also intermittent periods of going backwards to unlock something much better moving forward.

So if you're unhappy with how good or bad DUPR thinks you are, or that the higher level group won't play with you, just remember -- what other people think of you is none of your business! And you don't need them or a number to validate your worth.

So how DO you get better and win more?

Winning is an outcome. Like DUPR, you can’t control it, but you can control the inputs, which strengthen the likelihood of a positive outcome. I try never to go into a match with the goal to win it.

Do I want to win? Absolutely. But if I try to win by wanting to win...well you already know that's Wu-Wei.

So how do you win & get better? Start by making sure it's not an end-goal rather a byproduct. Control what you can control: your attitude, your training, supporting your partner, your strategy in a match. Winning is like a recipe — put in the right ingredients and the dish will probably taste like winning.

One of my favorite things to watch on a pickleball court is when a player hits a game-ending shot but accidentally walks back to the line to serve again. They forgot it was game point! Great players aren’t attached to outcomes - they put one foot in front of the other and all of a sudden they’ve tripped into winning.

These concepts were inspired by Derek Thompson’s Substack & podcast titled: Why Metrics Make Us Miserable.

APP SEATTLE RECAP

Fun fact: there was a study analyzing the expressions of Olympic Gold, Silver, & Bronze medalists to determine who was experiencing the most joy. Gold medalists were happy, silver were downright unhappy, and bronze were the happiest (just happy to end up on the podium, I guess?). LOL.

But I am genuinely happy with my SILVER medal w/ Emilia Schmidt in our 1st time partnership. So what was it like to face off against Megan Fudge, my partner of 1.5+ years? Well, let’s back up. Last August I told Megan to find a different partner for 2026 because I was planning to take a step back from playing and focus more on my camps and teaching business. I wasn’t sure how many events, if any, I'd play in 2026.

So what changed? Two things: 1.) Two months off where I could let my body rest. Counterintuitively, taking the mental pressure off of "needing to train" actually enabled me to train more than I ever had in a similar period of time. I'd step out on the court in February and think, "Damn, I feel like I'm still getting better!" 2.) My sister, Natalie, decided she wanted to play some pro tournaments with me this year! And just like that I was sucked back in! My sister couldn’t play Seattle, which is how Emelia and I teamed up, and I feel lucky to have picked up the young Aussie! Emilia is 21 years-old (could I be her mother?!), and the #2-ranked NextGen player on the APP Tour.

Championship Sunday is always a little fatalistic from the onset—who's getting the let cords? Who's playing better that day? Both Megan & Sofia had lost early in mixed and didn’t play singles, so they came out VERY fresh, hungry and SHARP. They played amazing and I think Emilia and I both played 15-20% worse than we had the previous day and rounds. Emilia and I are playing again in a few weeks at the APP Sacramento Invitational--a very cool concept where the top 12 players compete in a one-day timed competition against each other the day before the main draw starts. I'll play the main draw with my sister, Natalie!

QF run with Aidan Schenk, who won Men's Doubles! We ran into Purple Jesus and Christine Maddox in the QF--who just played LIGHTS OUT and went on to upset Jack & Sofia, the #1 seeds, in the semi-finals.

Camp Update! Hawaii is SOLD-OUT! Teresa Tarn is coming to Grand Cayman

We are tremendously excited for our sold-out Maui, HI camp at the brand new Ohana Pickleball Club in Lahaina where we'll be joined by 48 campers! Jose Derisi, top 3 male senior doubles player in the world, is one of our celebrity guest coaches. He is joined by decorated NPL and senior Pro Kimmie Ouchi as well. What a coaching lineup!

The one and only Teresa Tarn is officially joining us in Grand Cayman (12/6-12/8) and, of course, we have my dear friend and first coach, Scott Fliegelman, joining us in Baja (10/6-10/8). Vamos!

OBSESSED WITH THESE SHOES!

I thought it was normal to feel a bit snug in your pb shoes, until I tried DAPS. The wide toe box is sweet relief to the bunion on the right side of my foot. The shoes are designed for pickleball - not tennis! So that means built for more lateral movement and jumping (think more basketball than tennis), with a carbon fiber shank that facilitates energy return. I am finding myself able to erne and jump better than I ever have thanks to these shoes (built by 4th gen shoe maker brothers!).

But the biggest testament ever? I wore them on the airplane going to APP Seattle. I've never worn my pickleball shoes off the court before, until DAPS. That's how comfy these shoes are. Every person who has tried these shoes has sent me a personal thank you text message --and I expect the same from you if you try them! Try them out risk-free for 30 days (just don't get them dirty) and see the DAPS difference for yourself. Use code JILLYB for a discount!

I wear the Desi Lows - size 11 (they are pretty true to size) and my favorite color is MIDNIGHT MARAUDER!