Terrell Owens backs custom 3D-printed pickleball recovery shoe

Terrell Owens is putting his name behind a pickleball shoe that is trying to solve a very specific problem: how to help players recover after repeated lateral movement, sudden stops and hard changes of direction. Syntilay and Zellerfeld said TO RESET is the world’s first custom 3D-printed pickleball recovery shoe, built from a digital scan of the wearer’s feet and priced at $189 with an estimated delivery window of three to four weeks.

The pitch is less about style than the wear and tear of the sport itself. Syntilay says the shoe was designed around pickleball movement patterns, with a sole structure intended to relieve pressure where athletes commonly feel stress after play. The upper is meant to stay snug, supportive, breathable and comfortable, a combination aimed at players who are on court multiple times a week and sometimes on back-to-back days.

Owens brings more than celebrity recognition to the project. The Pro Football Hall of Fame says he entered as a Class of 2018 inductee and finished his NFL career with 1,078 receptions, 15,934 receiving yards and 153 receiving touchdowns. Pickleball.com lists him as an amateur pickleball player from the United States, and his involvement fits with the broader Prototype 81 brand, which describes itself as a lifestyle and apparel company founded by Owens.

That matters because pickleball’s growth has changed the market around it. A 2025 review in Springer said participation in the sport has increased by more than 200% since 2020, and an orthopedic review noted that the smaller court forces shorter, quicker movements. That combination helps explain why recovery gear has become a selling point. If players are making the same quick cuts and abrupt stops over and over, products built specifically for post-play pressure relief have a clearer case than generic recovery shoes borrowed from tennis or running.

Zellerfeld, which was founded in 2015 and is based in Hamburg, Germany, said the shoe uses breathable TPU-based ZellerFoam materials and can be put in a washing machine. The company’s broader 3D-printing model is built around custom fit rather than traditional size runs, and TO RESET pushes that idea into a new corner of the pickleball market. The bigger signal is not that a former star receiver backed a shoe, but that pickleball has grown specific enough to support gear built for the way amateurs actually move and recover.