A Pickleball Family: From Father-Son Partnership to Repairing Creams

Christopher Hardy has played plenty of PPA tournaments with his son, Christopher, now 12.

But that all ended not too long ago. 

“He’s playing 4.0 doubles now. He dumped me for another partner,” dad said with a laugh. “It was hard getting coached on every point, and it wasn’t me coaching him. It was the other way around.”

There’s no product on the market, over the counter, or available by prescription that makes the bittersweet pain of watching your children grow up go away, but thankfully, Hardy’s AloeMD products can do just about everything else.

Just ask about 90 percent of the pros on the PPA Tour who use the product. AloeMD is a tissue repair cream made of all-natural products. According to its website, AloeMD’s products are formulated by doctors, patented, and validated by 20 years of clinical research. All are made of natural ingredients without the use of harsh or harmful chemicals.

Hardy, his wife Alla, and son Christopher, who have been present at nearly every PPA Tour event in the past year, have developed a successful product and are a major sponsor of the PPA Tour. They travel by car to all the tournaments close enough to their home near Dallas and fly to the rest. 

Quite the journey for Hardy, who first got involved with pickleball thanks to former NBA star Rick Barry.

“In 2021, Rick called me and asked about the pain cream we had and asked me if I knew anything about pickleball. He knew some folks with the tour and said I should meet them. At the Texas Open in 2021 he introduced me to several pros and we decided to make a ‘pilot’ and bring it to a tour event, and every pro came over and told me that they wanted to be involved. We went around to tour spots in 2022 and the results were great.”

Pros like Tyson McGuffin, Callie Jo Smith, and Jay Devilliers were some of the early adopters and the results were so good, that they were using the product before they officially endorsed the product.

“Callie and her family have stayed with us,” Hardy said. “We have done Airbnb with several other pros. We built this community and we built a relationship with the tour and the players, but we’re just trying to help people, and if you play pickleball for a living and if you have a product that speeds up your recovery, that’s pretty great.”

AloeMD had a 1,000 percent growth this year from 2022 and it is projected to have another 1,000 percent growth in 2024. And if you see Hardy on Tour in 2024, make sure to say hi.

“We’ve taken the mindset that we treat everyone for free,” he said. “If your shoulder hurts or you rolled an ankle, we will take care of you. And if you put this product on when you’re hurting, you’re going to want to buy it.”