Todd ‘Happy’ Boynton is from a tiny town in Western Massachusetts, and for many years, his life was anything but happy - a tumultuous marriage, battles with addiction, and a body worn down by years of physical labor and ice hockey injuries. 

“Happy was an ironic nickname,” he says. “Like, ‘boy, you're miserable all the time.’ ‘Hey, I'm happy.’ So it stuck.”

Five years ago, during a trip to Disney World, Boynton weighed 350 pounds, sported a Dasani water bottle filled with vodka, and required a wheelchair to get around. He recalled telling his wife that he wanted to end his life. “And after all the years of doing that to her,” he recalls, “she cried.” At that moment, Happy chose sobriety. 

Pickleball came into his life shortly after.  

"The first time I hit the ball,” he says, “I had flashbacks to playing goalie. I get a visceral feeling. I feel it in my bones.”

“Do you remember the machines that would sell super balls at the grocery store? You could put a dime in, and you'd get this little rubber ball. When we were 8 years old, we would get those balls and I would just throw them against the wall and try to stop them. Well, that's where being a goalie came from. I loved stopping the puck. I loved stopping the ball, and I get that same visceral feeling from pickleball.”

Happy’s passion for the sport is infectious and he enlists anyone who will listen. "I love talking pickleball. I get kicked out of parties for it. My wife won't hang out with me some nights when I'm on a pickleball rant. But all I need is one person to be interested and I'll keep going because I know what good it can do for everybody.” 

From organizing tournaments to advocating for more courts in his community, Happy’s on a mission to spread the joys of pickleball far and wide. "My goal is to become the Johnny Appleseed of pickleball. I just want there to be pickleball courts everywhere, where you don't have to make a reservation, you don't have to buy anything. You just say, ‘hey, what is this?’ I put a paddle in your hand and you hit the ball and you go, ‘this is pretty cool.’ Bang! Done.”

Despite his own aversion to keeping score, he recognizes the value of DUPR in creating a standardized metric that transcends geographical boundaries. “Everybody should have a DUPR. So once we have 8 billion people with DUPR scores, you'll know who to play with. You could go to India, you could go to Bangladesh and say, ‘where's the 3.0s?”

Happy still struggles with his weight, but he’s down 75 pounds.

“I‘d like to say pickleball helped me lose weight. Eating better helped me lose weight. But wanting to live makes you eat better, which helps you lose weight, which helps you play pickleball, which makes you want to live.”

His story serves as a reminder that happiness isn't just a destination—it's about embracing life day by day, game by game.

“I am happy all the time. You either choose to be happy or you choose to be miserable. It's a choice.”

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