America’s fastest-growing sport has a kitchen on the court.
The thing about pickleball, our friend Katharine told us, is that you just never know where the sharks are. “You drop in on some court and there’s a 75-year-old guy with a big belly and two knee braces,” she said. “And then he kicks your ass.”
America loves pickleball, an unusual sports equaliser. Tens of millions of people play, and not just those normally considered “athletic.” Courts are filled with players from their teens to their 80s.
The young, strong and coordinated will always have a natural advantage, but don’t sleep on the crafty geezer in the silly hat.
Pickleball is easy to learn and easy to play. It doesn’t require the athleticism and strength of tennis. It’s more about quick reflexes – think of it as oversized ping-pong. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a work-out. We are reasonably in-shape people in our (very!) early 60s. We played outdoors on a cool morning recently, and after a couple of hours we were drenched in sweat.
The court is smaller than in tennis – 20 feet by 44 feet for pickle, 36 feet by 78 feet for tennis. You can play singles, but it’s much more common to play doubles. Instead of tennis rackets, players use what resemble large ping-pong paddles.
The ball is hard plastic and neon yellow, with holes that give it a little aerodynamic lift, and makes a distinctive “thwack” sound when whacked by the paddle.
There are some quirks, especially the no-step zone at the net called “the kitchen.” But the game is easy to understand: Serve and return, keep the ball over the net and between the lines, and the first side to 11 wins the game.
America has gone ga-ga for their pickle, the country’s fastest-growing sport.
Mike Dee, co-founder and chairman of the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships, said 3,500 people competed at the Florida tournament this year. He estimates that 25 to 30 million Americans play at least once a month – double what it was five years ago. Although it is best known as a game for older people, Dee said half the players in America are under 40.
He said one of the best players in the world right now is Anna Leigh Waters, a 17-year-old from Florida, who won the U.S. Open women’s doubles championship in April with her mother as her partner.
The sport was created in 1965 on a back-yard badminton court by a Republican Congressman from Washington state and two of his friends. But it didn’t become widely popular until the early 2010s. It grew exponentially during the Covid pandemic, when families and friends were looking for outdoor activities they could safely do together.
There are more than 100 tournaments a week in the United States – and the game is catching on in Canada, the UK, India, Australia and beyond. But the heart and soul of the sport is still American casual players “dropping in” at places like the Bethesda, Maryland YMCA courts where we play with our friends.
Dee told us: “Some people go out there to bust a sweat and play for three hours, others just find a local spot to play with a bucket of beers next to the court.”
Pickleball has its detractors. Tennis purists look down their nose at what they consider more a game than a sport. They are also upset about the lightning speed at which tennis courts are being shifted to pickleball. To meet demand, pickleball lines are being drawn onto public and private tennis courts – and those lines are confusing and kind of ugly. Neighbours find the sharp sound of paddle-on-plastic annoying – and even tacky.
Washington Post sports columnist Rick Reilly has trashed pickleball: “I’m 65 now, which means that, according to federal law, I have to start playing pickleball. But I don’t want to play pickleball. I hate pickleball.” Reilly dismissed the game as “not as fun as ping-pong. Not as elegant as tennis. Not as pretty as golf.”
But, as Taylor Swift reminds us, haters gonna hate hate hate hate, while pickleball shakes it off. And a new American industry is cashing in.
Companies are marketing pickleball hats, shoes, duffle-bags, shirts, shorts, socks. They’re no different from any other sports gear–honestly, your tennis shoes will work just fine. But adding the word “pickleball” to anything these days makes it fly off the shelves. Pickleball wrist bands? Of course! Gimme six!
One vitamin company is selling “Pickleball Gummies” that are supposed to enhance pickleformance, and “contain clinically studied levels of L-Tyrosine, L-Arginine, L-Citrulline and Vitamin B6 and Vitamin B12 + the 5 main Electrolytes and Caffeine.” To us, that sounds like RFK Jr. spouting whack-job statistics about vaccinations. But, as with RFK Jr., some people are actually buying the bullcookies – a jar of 60 gummies sells for $20 on Amazon.
For us, pickleball isn’t an obsession, it’s just something fun and healthy. We aren’t great, we aren’t terrible. But we have a good time – even if we can’t beat our 75-year-old retired cardiologist and his wife.