Why SQAIRZ XRZ™ Beats Mizuno in Pickleball

Mizuno is a respected name in sport. But look at every shoe they’re selling to pickleball players, including the ones their signed pros wear on tour and the product name says the same thing every time: Tennis Shoe.

Not pickleball shoe. Tennis shoe.

As pickleball exploded in the early 2020s, Mizuno followed the path of many established athletic brands. They got their shoes onto pickleball retail sites, signed tour-level players, and marketed their footwear to a fast-growing audience.

But every shoe in their pickleball lineup was designed for tennis first. Tennis and pickleball are different sports with different demands. A shoe built for one was never optimized for the other.

That’s exactly the gap XRZ™ was built to close.

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So we built the right shoe

SQAIRZ didn’t adapt an existing shoe. XRZ™ was engineered specifically around the demands of pickleball, developed with doctors, researchers, and players who needed a shoe that protected as much as it performed.

The patented roomier toe box lets all five toes spread naturally and anchor to the court surface. Your big toe alone accounts for 32% of your rotational capability. Four dedicated lateral outriggers on the forefoot prevent ankle rollover on every slide and push-off. The Anti-Torsion TPU Stability Plate locks out unwanted flex from heel to forefoot.

These aren’t borrowed features from another sport. Every one of them was designed specifically around what pickleball demands.

The Proof

Pickleball injuries are not a small problem. Last year alone, pickleball injuries cost Americans $377 million in ER visits, imaging, casts, and therapy. Ankle sprains, fractures, and falls top the list. The average ER bill for a fractured foot runs $2,500 to $3,000 or more.

Bad shoes don’t just limit your game. They put players in the hospital.

That is the real cost of playing in footwear that was never designed for the lateral demands of this sport. A shoe repositioned from tennis does not change that math. It just means the risk is built in from the start.

XRZ™ was designed to change that equation entirely. In the first-ever clinical pickleball footwear balance study, 53 real players were tested using the Kinetisense Risk of Fall motion capture system. XRZ™ improved balance scores by 15.15% on average over the shoes players walked in wearing and outperformed ASICS by 33% and HOKA by 26.5%.

Pickleheads, the premier online hub for players of all levels, named XRZ™ the Best Pickleball Shoe of 2025 after exclusively covering the study findings. When the data is that clear, the verdict tends to follow.

The Bottom Line

The Wave Enforce Tour 2 AC is $160. The XRZ™ is $159.

Same price. One is a tennis shoe. The other was built specifically for the sport you are actually playing.

For the same dollar you can have a shoe repositioned from tennis with no clinical data, a removed ankle support system that players are compensating for with braces, and a design that was never tested against the lateral demands of pickleball.

Mizuno makes good tennis shoes. The Wave Enforce Tour 2 AC is proof of that. But you are not playing tennis.

The data proves it. Pickleheads confirmed it. And if your ankles could talk, they would thank you for it.

Shop XRZ™. Purpose-built for pickleball. Proven to keep you in the game.

Article Originally Posted Here.