The Paddle I Almost Passed Over at 64: My Onix Z5 Story

I almost did not open the box. That is the honest version of how this started. I am 64, I spent 28 years running a small electrical contracting shop here in Warwick, Rhode Island, and I had been playing pickleball for about two months with a cheap wooden starter set that came with two paddles and a couple of balls. A fella at open play watched me hit one ball off the frame, then a second one, and told me I was wasting my mornings. So in August 2024 I ordered the Onix Graphite Z5.

I am the kind of person who reads the spec sheet before he buys a screwdriver, so you can guess what I did here. The listing said graphite face, Nomex honeycomb core, 7.84 ounces, a 4 1/4 inch grip, 15.5 inches long and 8.3 inches wide. I have a tape measure hanging in the garage and I used it when the box landed on my kitchen counter. The numbers were the numbers.

What I did not expect was how different it felt in my hand on the first morning. My old paddle swung like a piece of lumber. The Onix felt like it was working with me. I mis-hit less. The ball came off the face where I expected it to come off, and that sounds like a small thing until you have spent a month hitting balls off the edge of a paddle.

I am not a coach and I am not going to sit here and tell you a paddle changed my life. It did not fix my backhand. No paddle fixes a backhand. What it did was make my ordinary shots feel more predictable, and at my age predictable is the thing I want most out of a Tuesday morning.

One more thing from that first season, and then I will get off it. I had some tightness in my right elbow back then, which I managed with rest and a lighter grip, and I saw my own doctor about it. Swinging a lighter paddle felt easier on my arm to me. That is the whole of what I can tell you. If your elbow is talking to you, talk to your doctor, not to a retired electrician writing about a paddle.

The listing says 7.84 ounces. I put it on the kitchen scale and it read the same number, which is rarer than it ought to be.

The handle is shaped like a tennis racket handle, which the listing comes right out and says, and that is worth knowing if you came to this game from tennis or if you just like a familiar feel in your hand. The grip is 4 1/4 inches, which fits me. I still put an overgrip around it, because I sweat through a grip in about six weeks of morning play and an overgrip takes ninety seconds and costs less than a new paddle.

The part you cannot see is the Nomex honeycomb core, and I think that is where the difference lives. The face is graphite and the core is honeycomb, and together they give a firm, even response. The ball does not jump off this paddle the way it jumps off some of the power paddles the younger fellas let me try. I have to put a little more into my swing. In exchange I get to aim.

Durability, since that is what I actually care about. I have played four or five weekday mornings a week on this thing since August 2024, plus Saturday doubles with my wife Carol. The edge guard shows scuffs from digging out low balls on the park courts. The face still looks like the face. The only thing I have replaced is the grip tape, a couple of times a season, and once I put fresh tape on Carol's paddle too.

In the winter I move indoors to the community center gym, and the paddle comes with me. The gym supplies its own indoor balls and I use those, but the paddle does not seem to care where it is. Same feel, same sound, same predictable contact.

Nobody at the park has ever asked me what I was playing with. That is how it goes with paddles. You notice the difference and everybody else just notices that the ball keeps coming back.

Where it would not suit you: if you are a banger who wants to end points by hitting the ball through somebody, this is not that paddle. It is a control paddle for a player who would rather place the ball than punish it. And if you have never liked a lighter paddle in your hand, 7.84 ounces will not convert you.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Here is what I would say if you were across from me with a cup of coffee and your court bag on the floor. Buy one paddle instead of a set. The set I started with cost less and I got what I paid for. Read the spec sheet, then put the paddle in your hand and hit twenty balls with it before you decide anything, because a spec sheet does not tell you how a thing feels at contact.

And I would tell you the truth about what a paddle can and cannot do. The Onix Z5 did not make me a better player by itself. What it did was make my contact more consistent, which let me practice instead of just surviving out there. If you are looking for a paddle that will cover for your footwork, keep looking, because this one will not. If you want a well made control paddle from a brand that has been at this a while, this is the one I still reach for.