The men’s doubles quarterfinal on Jan. 10 between Ben Johns and Collin Johns and Quang Duong and Matt Wright at the Zimmer Biomet Masters powered by Invited wasn’t particularly memorable for highlight-reel shots.

It was actually a pretty lopsided affair in favor of the Johns brothers, who secured an 11-0, 11-3 victory in just 36 minutes in front of a packed house on Humana Championship Court.

What was memorable, however, was Ben’s wicked speed-up in Duong’s direction early in the second game that prompted quite a reaction from Pickleballtv play-by-play man Dave Fleming on the air.

“Oh my goodness gracious! Wow! Ben Johns just full sent it at QD,” said Fleming, seconds after the ball sailed over Duong’s head. “I have not seen him hit a ball that hard in my life. Wow! What a shock driven through this place.”

When the match was finally over, Pickleballtv analyst Matt Manassee asked Ben to explain why the blast was necessary at that point in time.

“It’s definitely not something I’m in the habit of doing. I don’t really like to go for those, but Quang has a habit of going for the body on a lot of shots. He did two or three times before that, so it was just a warning shot more than anything,” responded Johns. “If you’re going to do that, we’re going to do it, too, and if you don’t, we probably won’t, so it was more of a warning shot.”

It should come as no surprise that Collin shared similar thoughts on the latest episode of the PicklePod podcast with Zane Navratil and Thomas Shields several days later.

“It really stems down to this. There’s an unwritten rule in professional pickleball that maybe not everyone is aware of,” stated Johns. “Pegging is part of the game, and I’m totally fine with pegging, but the etiquette is you keep it shoulders and below, and if you go higher than that, it’s considered headhunting and you really put a player at risk. And also it’s generally just not a very smart play to do.”

Collin was adamant that “certain players following that unwritten rule” - while others, “especially the newer ones” like 18-year-old Duong - simply don’t.

That kind of behavior creates a widespread safety issue for competitors in PPA Tour and MLP events alike given the ever-increasing speed of the game courtesy of paddle technology.

“Especially with the very powerful paddles that are coming along, it can get almost disrespectful in a way that you’re going against what we’ve all sort of agreed upon, that we’re not going to do that,” mentioned Johns. “It’s sort of like having nuclear weapons. We have these paddles, and you can go after each other with it, but remember, the other person has nuclear weapons, too. I think that’s the point Ben was trying to make. We’re not saying you can’t do it. You can, but know that you are risking some form of retaliation.”

The main takeaway here is that Collin isn’t advocating for pegging to be removed from the game.

It certainly has a place in pickleball, but needs a boundary so to speak.

“We can have a gentleman’s agreement to some extent where pegging is cool, but headhunting is not, and if we keep it in that realm, I think the game is better off,” insisted Johns. “Certainly, I think it’s a symptom of the paddles being powerful, because you’re putting the reward of pegging at such a high premium, where you can do it so successfully, because you have 0.3 seconds to get out of the way kitchen line to kitchen line. You could peg people basically at will with these paddles now, and the fact that you don’t see more of it, is probably more surprising than anything else. It kind of goes back to that unwritten rule that we all have. Headhunting is not something that we really do because I don’t think the sport should be dodgeball. It’s just sort of disrespectful to the sport.”

With that in mind, Collin proceeded to put Ben's actions towards Duong into perspective.

In short, sometimes a “warning shot” is a necessity.

“Getting back to what Ben did, I think he really wanted to scare Quang, show him ‘Look, we can do what you’re doing, too, so play nice, play the game the right way, and we don’t have to do this.’ He was not trying to injure Quang,” stated Johns. “He was trying to send a message, not just to Quang, but to the entire field - ‘If you head hunt against us, you are posing the risk of us retaliating’ - and I think the threat of doing it is something that will hopefully hold more players back from egregiously pegging high, which many, many players are guilty of these days, and I certainly hope that nobody gets seriously injured.”

As a veteran pro himself, Zane chimed in as well.

Admittedly, he wasn’t a fan of Ben’s move.

“I think Ben sped that ball up from too low to realistically be able to avoid Quang’s head. I do think it was a distasteful speed-up, but now with the message, if you’re doing it or other people are doing it, so can I,” said Navratil. “I don’t disrespect that message, but if we’re just evaluating that one speed-up at face value, I would say that was a sh*t shot.”

“Sh*t shot” or not, it sparked quite a conversation around the picklesphere.

And Collin reiterated his position to close that portion of the chat.

“Pegging is fair game. It’s a big part of the game, and it opens up interesting possibilities where sometimes you’ll fake bagging somebody in order to open up their feet. You just have a higher-percentage shot when you’re doing that if you’re aiming for the body or the torso. And I’m never going to complain about that,” said Johns. “At the pro level, we’re there to win. If that is included in the winning formula, then you should do it. But, all the top players know that aiming for somebody’s head is off the table, and I feel like some of the newer players like Quang don’t abide by that. They just try to blister it as high and as hard as possible, particularly on counters, but you have to look at the other person’s lead-up behaviour as well. If he’s trying to do that over and over to both of us and you expect us to just sit there and not take any sort of action... The shot that Ben hit was really 'Message sent vs. I’m trying to peg you in the head.' Ultimately, he missed him and he didn’t even get that close to him. Sure, if you myopically look at that one shot, you could say 'Oh, that’s distasteful,' but you also have to look at the lead-up where not just in that match, but in previous matches Quang has been egregiously going after both of us. And we’ve just had enough of it.”

Talk about an interesting topic for discussion.