Let’s start with the TLDR:
The Engage Pursuit Pro MX 6.0 is wicked. Usually a paddle feels either too light and I need to weight it up before stepping onto the court, but this just felt solid at stock. Drives and third shot drops are aggressive and nasty.
Engage Pickleball really upgraded their line of paddles with this Pro batch. I didn’t know what to expect to be honest. The last release from April/May ’23 with the Ultra line didn’t sit well with a lot of players. The only real upgrade seemed to be the price increase. Players were unhappy they were paying more for essentially the same or slightly worse paddles.
Now, just four months later, Engage releases the Pro line. It’s good.
Back when I started playing pickleball a few years ago, the Engage Pursuit MX 6.0 was one of my favorite paddles. It’s the paddle I was using when I decided to take the sport more seriously and begin training and drilling to hone all the different shots. It was the paddle I began competing with. So the Engage brand holds a special place in my heart. I’ve been wanting to see a paddle that had the pop to give me an advantage at the net without losing my ability to control the net during the soft game. Pickleball paddles that can provide that kind of performance without much of an adjustment from the player are rare. Engage created a paddle that does just that.
With a week of three hour daily drills, and a few weeks of daily matches, I think I’m ready to put this ahead of the Diadem 18K in my bag. My baseline attacks and aggressive topspin drops are natural and more consistent with the Engage Pursuit Pro MX 6.0. The key word here is consistent. A baseline aggressive drop is a shot I’ve been trying to develop for months. If done correctly, the ball doesn’t float, it’s more of a medium pace with a low arc and dives right at the opponents’ feet. Most drops from the baseline are slow, which gives you time to approach the net; however, I’m creating a more aggressive play with this drop. It’ll hit the ground at their feet, barely bounce, and cut toward them. It’s a difficult shot to return causing the opponent’s fourth shot to pop-up. That’s where we get a bit of extra time to approach quickly for that put-away shot. The only other paddle I’ve used recently that I was consistently hitting aggressive top spin drops was the Selkirk Labs Project 006. I found this is the only shot that was consistent. Drives were much more difficult because of the paddle’s softness. It required a good bit of added weight, which then affected the consistency of the drop attack negatively.
What I like about the Engage Pursuit Pro MX 6.0 paddle is how it caters to aggressive play with forgiveness at the net. I’m not finding this combination in a lot of paddles. The Vatic Alchemy 13.5mm comes close, but needs a bit of added weight. I would have put the Six Zero Double Black Diamond as a similar performing paddle, but as of a few months ago, I can’t. Six Zero makes adjustments to the paddle in the manufacturing process without communicating each change to the player. The last DBD I have is from May, and it’s the softest paddle I have. It’s incredibly difficult to get aggressive baseline drives. Overall, the Engage Pursuit Pro is an all-performance all-court paddle. You can easily use this in singles and doubles to suit any type of gameplay. Consider me impressed.