Nine days ago, Hurricane Tyra Black won women’s doubles gold alongside Jorja Johnson at a PPA Tour event in Las Vegas using her signature PIKKL Hurricane Pro paddle.

However, she wasn’t able to use that paddle in her Round of 64 mixed doubles match on Tuesday at the Veolia Cincinnati Showcase presented by Six Zero.

Black isn’t the only top player who couldn’t use their preferred paddle on Tuesday. Andrei Daescu, CJ Klinger, Meghan Dizon, and Gabe Tardio also had to use different paddles than they are used to.

The reason for this sudden equipment change is that their usual paddles don’t have full UPA-A certification, which means they aren’t on the UPA-A Certified Paddles List.

As of Sept. 1, being on that list is a requirement for use in pro play at PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball events.

Since January, having either Interim Approval or Provisional Approval has been enough for use, though the September deadline for full certification was widely publicized.

Provisional Approval, which was predicated on a paddle already being on USA Pickleball’s Approved List, was the standard met by most paddles being used at UPA events so far this year.

Now that we’re into September, though, full certification by UPA-A standards—which have been available online since January—is required for use at the pro level.

UPA-A president Jason Aspes says that the testing and certification process takes eight weeks and that this timeline was thoroughly communicated to manufacturers worldwide as the Sept. 1 date approached.

Still, though, there are some widely used paddles missing from the list.

As of this writing, 86 paddles have full UPA-A certification.

Three notable ones that don’t include the Proton Series 3 – Project Flamingo (used by Daescu, Dizon, and Klinger), PIKKL Vantage Pro (used by Tardio), and PIKKL Hurricane Pro (used by Black).

Black expressed her frustration in a social media post Monday evening.

As Black points out, the timing of all this makes for a difficult situation for all the impacted players.

This week’s event is one of four Slams on the PPA Tour schedule, meaning that 2,000 rankings points are on the line as opposed to the traditional 1,000.

Despite using different paddles on Tuesday, all five players mentioned in this article won their opening round matches in mixed doubles, though Tardio did fall in men’s singles earlier in the day.

Stay tuned to see if more paddles join the approved list as the week goes on.