Scream at Your Partner, Not Across the Net

Genie Bouchard won the first game of her second-round singles match at the Veolia Chicago Cup, 11-6. Then Maria Ford started screaming. Jim Kloss, writing on Pickleball.com, described it as a “near constant stream of screams basically after every point,” some of it aimed at Bouchard. Ford took the next two games 11-5, 11-5. No penalty was called. Bouchard skipped the paddle tap at the net, and within days the headlines were about Bouchard’s snub. The screaming was a footnote.

Kloss’s column, published October 14, used that match to argue that the PPA needs an anti-taunting rule. Under his proposal, a first offense gets a warning, a second costs you a timeout (or a challenge if you’re out of timeouts), and after that you get a mark. Referees would weigh six factors: how often, how loud, whether it’s directed at the opponent, whether it’s words or just noise, whether it follows the opponent’s error, and whether there’s profanity.

Zane Navratil took the other side on Instagram, and Pickleball.com ran his comments on October 19. “Players should be allowed to scream,” he said. “I think they should be allowed to taunt, too, if they want.” His argument is that the comment section is penalty enough (“It works way better than losing a timeout”), that the NFL’s taunting crackdown turned it into the No Fun League, and that “We aren’t role models, we’re entertainers.” And to be fair to him, he’s not arguing from a safe distance. He yelled at an opponent during the MLP Playoffs this year, got roasted for it online, and said he regretted it.

I think they’re both arguing about the wrong thing. Four of Kloss’s six factors are about the sound itself: how often, how loud, words or noise, profanity or not. One asks whether it’s directed at the opponent, and another (whether it follows the opponent’s error) is really the same question in disguise. Those two are the only ones that matter.

Celebrating actually works

Before anyone tells you to pipe down, it’s worth knowing that the fist pump probably isn’t just ego.

In 2010, Tjerk Moll, Geir Jordet, and Gert-Jan Pepping looked at 151 penalty kicks from World Cup and European Championship shootouts, counting only kicks taken while the shootout was still tied. They published it in the Journal of Sports Sciences. Players who celebrated after scoring were more often on the team that went on to win, and the strongest link was for celebrations with both arms in the air. Pepping’s explanation was emotional contagion: one player’s enthusiasm “infected the team with a positive attitude.”

The same year, Michael Kraus and two Berkeley colleagues coded the touching (high fives, chest bumps, half hugs, all of it) by 294 players across all 30 NBA teams early in the 2008-09 season. Teams that touched more early in the season played better later in it, even after the researchers accounted for preseason expectations and how the teams had already been playing. The touchiest player in the league was Kevin Garnett, which surprises nobody who ever watched Kevin Garnett.

Neither study proves cause and effect. Both are observational, and the soccer sample is small. But they line up with something every doubles player already knows: a team that celebrates together plays like a team. The between-points paddle tap your 70-year-old open play partner insists on is the cheap, quiet version of a Garnett chest bump, and it’s probably worth more than you think.

The part nobody wants to say out loud

The soccer study had a second finding, and it’s the uncomfortable one. After a player celebrated, the opponent taking the next kick was more likely to miss.

So some of what a celebration does, it does to the other team. They see you light up, and it gets in their heads. That’s why the Ford match read as taunting to a lot of people even if she never said a word to Bouchard. A big celebration always has an audience across the net. You can’t stop the other team from watching you celebrate. You can decide whether you’re celebrating at them.

That’s where I’d draw the line. Point it at your own side of the net and scream until the neighbors file another noise complaint. Point it across the net, whether it’s a roar, a lean toward the kitchen line, or a stare after their error, and it’s taunting, no matter how loud it is.

What the 2026 rulebook says (not much)

The 2026 USA Pickleball rulebook doesn’t contain the words “taunt,” “scream,” or “celebrate.” What it does have:

The definition of a distraction includes “making loud noises,” and Rule 10.F says a player “must not distract their opponent when the opponent is about to hit the ball.” So yelling while the other team is winding up is a fault. That’s in a refereed match, though, where the ref makes the call under Rule 20.I.

In tournaments, Section 22 lets a ref issue a warning for “objectionable language directed at another person” (22.B.1) or for “other minor unsportsmanlike behavior” (22.B.10). A wordless roar in someone’s face falls under the second one, the catch-all, which means it depends on what kind of day the ref is having.

At open play it gets worse. Rule 9.B.3 says you can only call kitchen faults and service foot faults on your opponents. For everything else, including distraction, Rule 9.B.4 lets you mention it after the rally, and then “the final decision on fault resolution belongs to the player that allegedly committed the fault.” So the screamer gets to decide whether the scream counted. Good luck.

The pros have even less. According to Kloss, the UPA rulebook that governs the PPA and MLP doesn’t define unsportsmanlike conduct at all. It lists a few specific behaviors, and the only penalty for those is a mark, with no warning first.

Look at the word USA Pickleball already uses in 22.B.1, though: directed. Right now it only applies to language. Apply it to sounds and gestures too, and you’ve got a taunting rule a ref can actually enforce. Refs can’t measure decibels from the chair. They can see which way you’re facing. Navratil says refs can’t tell where the line is. Make the line a direction and that problem mostly goes away.

The direction test for open play

Nobody is selling tickets to your Tuesday 3.5 round robin, so you don’t need a rule. You need a habit.

Turn around when you celebrate. Face your partner and tap paddles, shout “yes!”, fist pump toward your own baseline, whatever you like. You and your partner get the boost from the research, and the other team watches you enjoy yourselves without having it shoved in their faces.

Celebrate your shots, not their misses. This is Kloss’s fifth factor, and it’s the best of the six. Screaming after your clean ATP is a celebration. Screaming after a 3.0 nets an easy third-shot drop is applause for somebody else’s bad afternoon. You didn’t do anything on that point. Just take it and go serve.

Use words, not noise. Kloss holds up Anna Leigh Waters as the model: she yells rarely, never at an opponent, and when she does it’s usually something like “fight.” A word tells your partner something. A wordless howl is just volume.

Read the room. Gold medal match at a sanctioned tournament? Get loud. Nine a.m. drop-in at the rec center with three retirees and a guy on his second day? If you bring playoff energy to that court, the paddle rack will let you know how it went over.

If you’re the one getting screamed at

At open play the rules won’t save you, so don’t try to argue the rulebook. Rule 9.B.4 does let you mention it after the rally. Do that once, calmly, then drop it.

Then remember the second finding from the soccer study. A celebration gets to an opponent because the opponent is watching. So stop watching. Turn to your partner, tap paddles, and run your between-point routine. You can’t make somebody quieter, but you can refuse to be their audience.

And tap paddles at the end anyway. Bouchard may have had a fair complaint. Didn’t matter. Skipping the tap made the match about her, and the screaming became a footnote. Don’t give a screamer that win too.

Where I land

Navratil is right that refs can’t police volume, and right that a quieter sport isn’t automatically a better one. I’d still give him the scream and take away the aim. Yell all you want at your own side of the net. Once it’s pointed at the people across it, it’s taunting.

That’s my rule for the pros and for Tuesday open play. Be as loud as you like. Just face your partner.