I have used numerous pickleball markers, but markers can be hard to setup and take down, so I wanted to find the best pickleball tape that money could buy. Thankfully, I tested this tape over many days, and we got a lot of rain, so I can show how each holds up.
Why pickleball tape? Because it’s semi permanent and good tape can last a while, making it easy to not have to think about setup and put down.
The results of my test are extremely surprising as I wanted to test numerous different types of tapes because this article mentioned just tested one to two tapes. I wanted to test more tapes with heavy rain.
Based on all of my research, I tried 3 different types of pickleball tapes based with two budget options and a much more expensive option.
Which Pickle Tapes Did I Test?
Firstly, I tried the Scotch exterior tape based on what the above article recommended this option. It took a bit of work finding the tape, but I finally found it on Amazon. Surprisingly, it came with just one roll.
Secondly, I tried Frog Tape, specifically the orange roll, which is the heavy duty roll. My road is asphalt, so I needed a heavy duty tape. Here’s what the Frog tape looked like. For around $4 more, you get 4 rolls instead of one.
Finally, I tried asphalt tape, which I didn’t know existed. This tape was the most expensive on Amazon, but I really wanted to see whether the cost could justify the longetivity of the court.
When I got all three tapes, I was actually really impressed with the asphalt tape. It was much thicker than I expected, and was much more dense than the other tapes. I guess it better be given the price difference.
Let’s talk about the day to day play.
Day By Day Pickleball Tape Trials
I wanted to provide you different pictures of the experience with the different ypes of pickelball tape before and after rain.
Day 0
Firstly, I decided to test all 3 tapes in one go. I used the thicker asphalt tape for the main areas, and then the green tape for one side and the orange tape for the other side.
Here’s one look at the green side.
Here’s another look at the orange side.
I obsess over pickleball nets and have owned aroun 10. For the net, if you plan to keep up the net, I would highly recommend this net which is the best semi permanent net in the $200 range, which I am using in this picture.
That said, if you want the easiest net and the best net overall that’s slightly cheaper when using the $25 discount code bepickleballer, you can get this amazing Srikel net that took me around 2 minutes to set up and take down. It’s incredible.
Let’s go through the days.
Day 1
Excuse the ugly lines, but after day 1, you could already see some discoloration in the orange tape, but the asphalt tape is looking very good.
Day 3
After day 3, I noticed that perhaps a vehicle made the orange tape have more discoloration and broke off slightly. Overall though, both the orange and green tape still looked good. The asphalt tape looked excellent.
Day 8
We had around 2-3 full days of rain between around days 5-7, so I was excited to show you what the tape looks like on or around day 8.
Incredibly, the orange tape actually looked much better than the green tape as the green tape separated and was almost unusable. The orange tape still looked okay and the asphalt tape looked amazing.
It might be obvious at this point, but let’s rank the best pickleball tape to the not so best.
Which Would I Choose?
Personally, I would choose the asphalt tape and the Frog tape again. The asphalt tape is expensive, but you are able to use that in the key areas, and then you are able to use the frog tape in other areas. Let’s talk price.
1. The asphalt tape was around $25 – $30, but I had plenty left over from the court.
2. The orange tape was around $10 – $15, but it came with 4 rolls.
3. The green scotch tape was around $5 – $10, but it only came with one tape roll.
From my experience, the Frog tape lasted much longer than the scotch exterior tape and you received much more tape for a lot less money. Voila.
So, personally, I would purchase asphalt tape for the outside areas and the orange frog tape for the middle areas, knowing that I will have to change it often.
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