A Novel Approach to an Old Problem — Watch how FLIPP stacks up against the competition

The need to pick up and carry multiple tennis balls for practice drills has existed since the beginning of the sport. Yet, despite how common this need is, there has been surprisingly little innovation in the last 50 years. Every tennis club, coach, and player is familiar with the usual tools: wire baskets, pick-up tubes, and rollers. Some are good a holding many balls, some are good at picking balls, some are portable, some are foldable, but none are good at everything.

In the following Battle of the Hoppers, we’ll show you that there’s finally an all-in-one solution that checks every box. It’s both a hopper and a ball pickup system. It’s portable, lightweight, clever, compact—and fun to use. It’s called FLIPP: an innovative 2-in-1 ball picker and hopper, developed in collaboration with top tennis instructors across Canada.

You already know tennis is hard. It takes thousands of reps to fine-tune your serve and strokes. It takes time, lots of time to master this beautiful sport. FLIPP will give you some of precious time back. By cutting down on ball pickup, it helps you make the most of every training session. With FLIPP, you’ll train hard and train smart.

Rules of The Battle

The goal of this comparison is to determine which tool is the fastest and most convenient for both picking up balls and holding them at waist level for feeding drills.

Our four contenders are: FLIPP, a wire basket, two pick-up tubes, and a pick-up roller.

The test measures two variables:

1. The time it takes to pick up 60 balls (arranged in 15 rows of 4 balls each*).
2. The time it takes to bring those 60 balls to waist level, ready for feeding drills.

The winner is the device that completes both tasks in the least amount of time.

Out of the four devices, only FLIPP and the wire basket are designed to function as both pick-up tools and hoppers. For these, the second time measures how long it takes to convert from pick-up mode to hopper mode.

Pick-up tubes and rollers must be paired with a separate hopper. For these devices, the second time measures how long it takes to unload the balls into the corresponding hopper or basket.

Watch the videos below!

Make sure to watch the three side-by-side comparison videos below. We’ve put FLIPP head-to-head with each of the three alternatives. In each video, FLIPP is shown on the left, and the competing product is shown on the right. There are no tricks—no videos have been sped up or slowed down. Everything is shown in real time.

Let the battle begin!

*We know tennis balls are never arranged this neatly during real practice sessions. However, we used this setup to ensure a consistent testing environment for all devices and to make the side-by-side comparisons below easier to evaluate.

FLIPP vs Wire Baskets

Times (60 balls)	FLIPP	Wire Basket
Pickup Time	✅ 3 secs	❌ 36 secs
Convert to Hopper	✅ 5 secs	❌ 15 secs

FLIPP was 12x faster picking up balls and 3x faster converting into a hopper than a wire basket.

Wire baskets have long been the go-to for tennis ball pick-up, but their flaws are hard to ignore. Most are built from cheap wire frames that bend, break, or warp over time — especially when tossed in and out of trunks or dragged across courts. Their limited capacity means you’re constantly stopping to unload, and pushing down to collect balls requires more effort than you’d expect. When it’s time to switch into feeding mode, you’ll have to manually snap each leg into place — a two-handed, clunky process that slows you down.

FLIPP was built to eliminate every one of those pain points. With a generous capacity of about 80 balls and smooth-rolling action, it’s faster and more efficient. And when it’s time to feed balls? A single, satisfying swivel flips the handle down into a sturdy pedestal — no fidgeting with fold-out legs. Its premium materials and foldable design make it durable, compact, and easy to transport — making wire baskets feel like relics of the past.

FLIPP vs Pick-Up Tubes

Times (60 balls)	FLIPP	Pick-Up Tubes
Pickup Time	✅ 3 secs	❌ 69 secs
To Hopper / Unload to Basket	✅ 5 secs	❌ 20 secs

FLIPP was 23x faster picking up balls and 4x faster getting balls to waist level than two pick-up tubes used at once.

Pick-up tubes are simple, lightweight, and inexpensive. They’ve earned their place in tennis clubs everywhere. But when you’re working with 60+ balls on the court, their limitations become crystal clear. Tubes only pick up one ball at a time — and with a typical capacity of just 15 balls, you’ll be unloading them over and over. Worse yet, you’ll need a second piece of equipment (a separate hopper) just to hold the rest of the balls. So much for packing light.

FLIPP does the job of both. It picks up balls in bulk thanks to its spring-loaded intake forks and wide sweep area, then instantly transforms into a feeding hopper. No bending. No swapping tools. No wasted time. FLIPP saves your back, your space, and your budget — delivering simplicity and power in one premium tool.

FLIPP vs Pick-Up Rollers

Times (60 balls)	FLIPP	Pick-Up Rollers
Pickup Time	✅ 3 secs	❌ 39 secs
To Hopper / Unload to Basket	✅ 5 secs	❌ 34 secs

FLIPP was 13x faster picking up balls and 7x faster getting balls to waist level than a pick-up roller.

Ball rollers have gained popularity for their speed — and rightly so. They can scoop up balls faster than tubes or baskets and are often easier to maneuver. But the trade-offs add up quickly. Their average capacity tops out around 50 balls, and when they’re full, unloading them can become an awkward, two-handed wrestling match. Many coaches report spending as much time emptying rollers as they do picking up balls. And just like with tubes, you still need a separate hopper to feed balls — meaning two purchases, more bulk, and more to carry.

FLIPP not only picks up balls fast, it holds more — about 80 — and then flips into a stable, elevated hopper for feeding drills right away. No extra gear. No messy transfers. Plus, thanks to its innovative side forks, FLIPP shines where rollers stumble: in the tight edges and corners of the court.

Here are the results

The chart below shows the total time it took each of the four contenders to pick up 60 balls and prepare them at waist level for practice.

FLIPP comes as the clear overall winner. With FLIPP, it took just over 10 secs to both pickup 60 balls and convert it into a hopper. Followed by the wire basket at 52 secs. Having to push down each time to pick up balls wasted a lot of time. It also took longer to snap each leg into place to convert it into a hopper.

Pick-up tubes placed third, taking roughly eight times longer than FLIPP to complete the same task. While they can be somewhat effective in group lessons—where each student is given a tube—they’re still slow enough to cut into valuable practice time. Additionally, because they require a separate cart or basket for unloading, they’re not as affordable or convenient as they might initially seem.

The roller came in last overall, despite picking up balls faster than the wire basket (39 seconds vs. 60 seconds). Most of the time was lost during the unloading process. In fairness, rollers can often be the second-fastest solution, but in this test, we pushed its capacity to the limit, which made dislodging the balls at the end more difficult. While some rollers convert into hoppers, they tend to perform poorly in that role, as they’re primarily optimized for ball collection.

Without FLIPP you’re probably wasting up to $1K a year

Let’s do the math. In a typical 1-hour lesson, a coach can easily go through 10 baskets with 80 balls each. Using traditional tools, it takes about 3 minutes for one person to pick up 80 scattered balls. In a one-on-one session, that means the student could spend up to 30 minutes—half the lesson—just picking up balls.

If the lesson costs $60 per hour, that’s essentially $30 wasted on ball collection instead of actually playing tennis.

Now, let’s say you take 50 lessons a year (about one per week). Even if we’re conservative and assume just 20 minutes per lesson are spent collecting balls, that still means you’re wasting $20 per session—or $1,000 per year—on time not spent training.

Can you see now why it makes so much sense to minimize the time spent collecting balls?

Let’s take a closer look at how much time—and money—you could save by using FLIPP. In all our tests, FLIPP consistently outperformed every alternative, saving at least 2 to 3x the time when it comes to picking up balls and getting them ready for feeding drills in hopper mode. Given how much time is typically spent on ball collection during lessons, even saving a few minutes per session can quickly add up to hundreds of dollars worth of time over the course of a year.

Even if FLIPP were only twice as efficient, a student taking weekly one-hour lessons could easily save $500 per year. The more lessons you take, the more time you save—and the more time you spend actually improving your game.

The bottom line? If you value your time, your money, and your progress on the court, investing in one or more FLIPP units might be the smartest decision you make.

And if you’re a coach or club owner, the benefits go even further. Yes, your sessions may become more intense with less downtime, but that’s a good thing. Your players will improve faster, stay more engaged, and be far more likely to book future lessons—with you, not the competition.

What about group lessons? While pickup time may seem quicker with four or more players, keep in mind: the time is divided. In a one-hour class with four students, each player gets only 15 minutes of actual instruction. Subtract even 5 minutes per player for picking up balls, and you’re down to just 10 minutes of real coaching. That’s why saving time during group lessons is just as critical as in one-on-one sessions.

Conclusion: The Future of Ball Pick-Up Has Arrived

Wire baskets bend and break. Pick-up tubes are slow and inefficient. Rollers move fast but leave you juggling gear. All of them were created in a time when tennis players and coaches just accepted the hassle. But FLIPP was built to challenge that — and to win.

After two years of obsessive design and testing, FLIPP isn’t just a tool — it’s an evolution. It combines the speed of a roller, the simplicity of a tube, and the capacity of a hopper, all in one compact, durable, beautifully engineered system. With FLIPP, you’ll save time, you’ll save money, and you’ll get better at tennis faster!

Ready to Flip the Way You Practice?

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