Last Updated on June 24, 2026 by Drew Pierce
Pickleball just got its own movie, The Dink, and Ben Stiller is involved, which means two things are now true: the sport has officially arrived in the mainstream, and I am contractually obligated as a child of the 90s to have an opinion about it.
The Dink premieres July 24 on Apple TV. It stars Jake Johnson as a washed-up former tennis prodigy who gets pushed into pickleball during rehab, Ed Harris (never ages!) as his pickleball-skeptical father, Mary Steenburgen (never ages!) as the partner who pulls him into the sport, and Stiller himself in a supporting role as the doctor who hands him a paddle in the first place. The trailer just dropped, the internet has takes, and I have a personal reason to care about this one beyond the usual “my hobby is famous now” excitement…but we’ll get there.
Here’s everything worth knowing, plus the part of this story I genuinely did not expect to write about myself.
Quick Facts: The Dink (2026)
- Streaming on: Apple TV
- Release Date: July 24, 2026
- Director: Josh Greenbaum (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Strays, Will & Harper)
- Writer: Sean Clements (Workaholics)
- Producers: Ben Stiller, Jake Johnson, John Lesher, Rob Paris, Mike Witherill
- Cast: Jake Johnson, Ben Stiller, Mary Steenburgen, Ed Harris, Patton Oswalt, Chloe Fineman, Christine Taylor, Chris Parnell, Aaron Chen, with cameos from tennis legends Andy Roddick and John McEnroe
- Genre: Sports comedy, underdog story
What Is The Dink About?
Jake Johnson plays Dusty Boyd , once a tennis phenom known as “The Hammer,” now reduced to coaching unruly kids at his father’s country club. His father Chuck (Ed Harris) is openly hostile to the pickleball craze that’s slowly taking over the club, and Dusty, eager for his dad’s approval, goes along with it.
Then Dusty re-aggravates an old injury. Tennis is off the table. And the only road back, according to Stiller’s character, runs straight through the sport his father can’t stand. Dusty reluctantly picks up a paddle, finds an unexpected partner in Candace (Steenburgen), and, shocker, starts actually enjoying himself. What follows is the part every sports comedy needs: an identity crisis, an old rival (hello, Andy Roddick playing a version of himself), and a guy figuring out who he is when the thing that used to define him is gone.
If that arc sounds familiar to longtime readers of this site, hang on. We’re getting to that.
Watch The Dink Trailer
A few things jumped out watching this for the first time. The pickleball footage actually looks like pickleball, not the usual movie version where someone swings a paddle like they’ve never seen a sport before. Jake Johnson reportedly trained in both tennis and pickleball to prepare, and it shows. And watching two actual tennis legends get gently roasted by a sport that didn’t exist in its current form twenty years ago is, frankly, exactly the kind of cultural moment those of us who’ve been playing since the “wait, what is pickleball” years have been quietly hoping for.
Why This Movie Matters for Pickleball’s Mainstream Moment
I wrote a few weeks back about Pickleball Inc.’s $225 million investment and what it signals about the sport’s trajectory. A studio comedy with this much star power attached is the cultural cousin of that story. Money moving into a sport is one kind of validation. Hollywood deciding your sport is worth a feature-length comedy, with actual tennis legends willing to be the punchline, is a different kind, and arguably the one that gets your non-playing relatives to finally stop asking if pickleball is “just ping pong on steroids.”
Whether the movie is actually good is a separate question, and one I genuinely don’t have an answer to yet. But here’s where I land regardless: more eyes on this sport is good for this sport. More casual fans means more courts get built, more local leagues get funded, more people show up to open play looking slightly confused and leave three months later completely obsessed. That’s the actual pipeline, and it doesn’t require the movie to be a masterpiece. It just requires people to watch it and think, “huh, maybe I’ll try that.”
New: Pickle Rock Radio
I just launched a brand new 24/7 internet broadcast... a free Pickleball Radio Station that soundtracks your open play sessions with 90s & 00s alternative rock, while dropping pro tips, local court reports, and gear news between tracks.
Please tune in and share your honest feedback!
Listen to the Live Broadcast →A Quick Detour Into My Ben Stiller Origin Story
Long before pickleball was anywhere near my radar, Ben Stiller was already shaping my sense of humor. The Ben Stiller Show ran for less than a season on FOX back in the early 90s, won an Emmy, got canceled anyway, and somehow became one of those shows where everyone involved went on to define a decade of comedy. I still find myself reciting bits from that show at completely inappropriate moments: ask my wife, she’s stopped reacting at this point.
So watching Stiller show up in a pickleball movie thirty years later hits a weirdly specific nerve. The guy who shaped how I think sketch comedy should work is now in a movie about the sport I now structure my weeknights around. That’s not a small full-circle moment for me personally, regardless of how the rest of the internet receives it.
The Part Where This Gets Personal
Here’s the thing I wasn’t expecting while watching the trailer: this emotional arc felt weirdly familiar, because I had already written my own version of it.
Last year I published a short story collection called Before the Sink Overflows (and Other Warning Signs of Hope). One of the stories, “Dropkicks and Dinks,” follows Danny “Deadpan” DeMarco, a longtime professional wrestler facing the end of his career, who gets handed a business card for a pickleball clinic by an eighty-two-year-old woman in a physical therapy waiting room. He shows up skeptical, gets humbled immediately by people half his size and twice his age, and slowly finds something in the sport that the spotlight never gave him: a place to just be a person again.
Sound familiar? A washed-up athlete, forced out of the sport that defined him, finds an unlikely second act through pickleball, guided by someone who’s already found peace in the game. That’s Dusty Boyd’s arc in The Dink. It’s also Danny DeMarco’s arc in my story. I’m not saying there’s any connection between the two. I’m saying the premise clearly hits something real about pickleball: it has become a second-act sport for people who thought their competitive chapter was over. Looking at you, Agassi!
If Danny DeMarco’s story sounds like something you’d want to read before or after you watch Dusty Boyd’s version on Apple TV, the collection has two other stories in a similar vein — including one about a father confronting his past during, of all things, a physical therapy session, and another about a writing assignment that reveals far more than anyone expected. You can find the full collection here.
Frequently Asked Questions About The Dink
When does The Dink come out? The Dink premieres July 24, 2026, exclusively on Apple TV.
Who stars in The Dink? Jake Johnson leads as Dusty Boyd, with Ben Stiller, Mary Steenburgen, and Ed Harris in major supporting roles. Patton Oswalt, Chloe Fineman, Christine Taylor, Chris Parnell, and Aaron Chen round out the cast, with cameo appearances from tennis legends Andy Roddick and John McEnroe.
Is The Dink based on a true story? No. The Dink is an original sports comedy, not based on a real athlete or real events.
Who directed The Dink? Josh Greenbaum directed the film from a screenplay by Sean Clements.
Is The Dink a sequel to Dodgeball? No, but it shares creative DNA — Ben Stiller produced and starred in 2004’s Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and produces The Dink as well, which explains the similar underdog-sports-comedy tone.
Final Take
I’ll watch The Dink the day it drops, paddle bag probably still sitting by the front door from that morning’s session. I hope it’s funny. I hope it’s at least a little bit accurate. And honestly, I hope it gets one more person who’s never picked up a paddle to wonder if maybe they should.
Good for the sport is good for the sport, even when Hollywood gets there a little later than the rest of us did.
Need a break from the court?
I wrote a short story called "Dropkicks and Dinks" about a pro-wrestler finding solace in pickleball. It's featured in my new collection.
Get it on Amazon →If you’re new here — I write about pickleball culture, gear, and the occasional unexpected parallel to a Ben Stiller movie. Stick around. And if you want the soundtrack for whatever comes next, Pickle Rock Radio is streaming 24/7 — 90s and 2000s alt rock plus real pickleball talk, built by someone who clearly thinks about this sport way too much. Sound familiar?