HEAD of Austria, known as a long-established tennis-racket maker, announced a new pickleball paddle \"Boom Pro EX15\" in the week of June 25, 2026. What's notable is not the product itself but the organizational move revealed at the same time. HEAD moved the base for developing and marketing its pickleball business from its home country of Austria to Phoenix, Arizona, USA, and newly established a dedicated team. A brand that made its name worldwide in tennis equipment publicly stated, \"We don't want to be a brand that also does tennis; we want to become a pickleball brand,\" and moved the center of gravity of development to the U.S. This series of decisions reflects where the leadership of the sport lies. For players choosing paddles in Japan too, it becomes material for discerning which brands are serious and where that seriousness is aimed.<\/p>\n
What HEAD put forward this time was two things: a product and an organization. The product is the new paddle \"Boom Pro EX15.\" On the organizational side, it placed a dedicated team handling the development, testing, marketing, and ambassador operations of its pickleball business in Phoenix, USA. For HEAD, moving the product development and marketing of a sport\u2014starting with tennis\u2014outside Austria is said to be a first. Leading this business globally is Philippe Oudshoorn (Global Pickleball Director), who has indicated a policy of getting involved, through the Phoenix team, in the local community, ambassadors, and grassroots spread as well.<\/p>\n
Symbolic are his words. He said he wants to make HEAD \"a pickleball brand, not a brand that also does tennis.\" A brand with home-country R&D assets deliberately moves its development function to the sport's largest market. This declaration accompanying the product release can be read as a statement of intent that it's not a side gig.<\/p>\n
Behind this is the geographic skew of the sport of pickleball. The birthplace and the center of the competitive population are both the U.S., and most of the testing of new products, contracts with top players, exposure around tournaments, and sales channels are concentrated in North America. In paddle development, whether you can cycle player feedback at high speed is vital, and the advantage of having users and developers in the same region is large. Rather than drawing blueprints at the Austrian head office and sending them to the U.S., making them in Phoenix and testing them locally is faster. Oudshoorn having even the local grassroots spread in view is likely because there's an aim to advance product development and market-building as one.<\/p>\n
The contents of the new paddle Boom Pro EX15 are also not unrelated to that degree of seriousness. HEAD explains that it adopted a 3-layer full-foam core called \"TriFlex Power\" for this paddle. The design places, at the center, PP foam handling rebound and pop; outside it, a ring of EPP foam suppressing impact and vibration; and at the outermost, EVA foam that lets the core flex to widen the sweet spot. The surface is an uncoated carbon face called \"Hexagon Raw Carbon,\" aiming to bite the ball and apply spin. It's positioned as a power-leaning one, aimed at baseline-oriented players who swing aggressively. There's a largeness of stance in hitting a dedicated-design new work and a base relocation at the same timing.<\/p>\n
The main confirmable specs are as follows. As the manufacturer's suggested price, 199.95 dollars is presented in the U.S. Note that figures such as weight and thickness are values listed by retailers, and there may be a range depending on distribution and lot.<\/p>\n