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The methodology behind every gear pick, court rating and buying guide on RacketRise.
This page explains how RacketRise produces its product recommendations, court ratings, and buying advice. If you have ever wondered how a particular padel racket made it onto our top-5 list, or why we recommend Decathlon Kuikma over a £200 Bullpadel for some readers, the answer is here.
We owe readers transparency about how recommendations are produced. The short answer: we test products on real UK courts, cross-reference real player feedback, and refuse paid placements. The long answer is below.
Articles are written and editorially reviewed by Gary Innes, the founder. Gary plays padel weekly at UK club level, has logged 200+ hours of testing on UK artificial grass courts since 2024, and has spoken with over 100 UK players ranging from recreational beginners to LTA-rated tournament competitors as part of building the recommendation database.
Where specific technical claims sit outside the founder's direct expertise (medical advice, professional coaching technique, venue accessibility ratings), the article cites primary sources or specialist contributors and the disclosure is in-line.
Most padel rackets and pickleball paddles in the equipment database have been physically tested in three ways:
Where a product has not been physically tested (for example, a 2026 pro-spec release that has not yet shipped to UK retailers), the article says so explicitly. We don't guess. The line is drawn at: tested in person = detailed performance commentary; not tested = factual spec coverage and brand context only.
Our court database tracks 1,898 UK padel and pickleball venues, sourced from a combination of:
Each venue page lists what the venue itself publishes (court count, indoor/ outdoor mix, opening hours, booking platform). We don't fabricate amenity data and we don't scrape user-generated reviews from third-party platforms. Where a field is blank on the page, we don't have verified data for it — we'd rather be incomplete than inaccurate.
Venues that haven't opened yet (slug includes coming-soon or opening-march-26) are noindex'd and excluded from our sitemap, so they don't show up in Google search results. They re-enter the index when the venue actually opens and the slug is renamed.
Recommendations weight five factors, in this order:
RacketRise is funded by affiliate commission on equipment links and by a small revenue share on accommodation bookings via Stay22. Both are disclosed:
The equipment database is reviewed quarterly. New 2026 product releases are added when they reach UK retailers. Buying guides are refreshed at least annually and after any major product launch in their category. Court listings are spot-checked monthly via booking-platform feeds; any reported error is corrected within 48 hours of verification.
Articles carry a Last Updated date in the byline. Articles with structural updates (new product picks, revised methodology, fact corrections) have their updated field bumped in the source — and that date appears in our XML sitemap, signalling Google to re-crawl.
We make mistakes. Court information goes stale, products change spec across model years, and reasonable testers disagree. If you spot a factual error or dated information, let us know — we read every message and correct verified errors within a working week.
Where corrections meaningfully change a product ranking or court rating, the article is updated, the updated field is bumped, and we leave a brief note about the change rather than rewriting silently.
The short version: We test products on UK courts, calibrate recommendations to the audience each guide names, refuse paid placements, disclose every affiliate relationship, and correct errors when readers flag them. None of this is heroic — it's what an editorially-honest UK racket-sports site should be doing.