The man who got kicked in the face in a shocking moment of pickleball violence just wants to be done with it and has no plans on pressing charges.
Footage of the fiery on-court altercation at a tournament in Mexico has gone viral, surprising many given pickleball’s reputation as a friendly sport.
In what appeared to be a match point, the eventual kicker, who was wearing pink shorts, received a serve before approaching the net, where he illegally stepped over the non-volley line.
That mistake gave away a foot fault, and ultimately the match.
On the other side of the net, the man who would be kicked, who was wearing a green shirt and was identified as Peter Shonk, celebrated, screaming “c’mon, let’s go — f–k yeah.”
While that wasn’t the act of a gracious winner, it all went wrong when the pairs stepped up to the line to shake hands.
The man in the pink shorts appeared to hold out his paddle, which the man in the green knocked out of his hands.
This looked like an accident as the man in the green shirt immediately leaned over the net to pick up the paddle he had just knocked to the ground, when the man in the pink shorts kicked his opponent in the face.
“I was just fired up after the win,” Shonk told pickleball blog, The Kitchen Pickle. “I went to tap his paddle, and it fell out of his hand. I immediately bent to pick it up (for him) — no bad intentions — but what happened next shocked everyone.”
Shonk fell to the ground seemingly unconscious as he fell on the net and his teammate confronted the kicker, shoving him in the face as other people in the area stepped in.
The Kitchen Pickle revealed that Shonk had “no interest in pressing charges” even though he “lost memory for three hours.”
“I have a family, two healthy businesses, and I play pickleball for recreation and challenge,” Shonk said. “I don’t have time to waste with this guy.”
Shonk shared a clip of the incident on Instagram, writing: “We broke the internet.”
He shared an Instagram story posted by one of his teammates, who said: “We got the Dub with the craziest ending everrr”, along with a medal from the 2024 Quintana Roo Invitational in Mexico
The Kitchen Pickle account tweeted that the video was “absolutely insane” but the man who was kicked “wants everyone to know that he is OK.”
“While I understand things get heated at tournaments this behaviour is disgusting and completely unacceptable. I love pickleball as much as anyone I know but at the end of the day … it’s just pickleball,” the account posted.
“Thankful that Peter wasn’t seriously injured.”