What Has Pickleball Become?
In April, thousands of people, and occasionally their pets, flocked to the coastal city of Naples, Florida. They weren’t in town for an AARP convention or the bacchanalia of spring break. No, the Minto US Open Pickleball Championships, brought to you in part by Margaritaville Hotels & Resorts, was in the final stretch of its seven-day run. For one week, attendees watched, cheered, and imbibed as hopefuls thwacked it out for the title and its $100,000 purse. CBS Sports Network broadcast the event, whose matches were held on the Zing Zang Championship Court (I’m serious). Announcers boomed into the mic as finalists slapped the game’s yellow plastic ball across the net.
Perhaps you’ve noticed, or wish you. It is America’s fastest-growing sport, and nearly “picklers” are playing it. Since pickleball’s in the mid-1960s by two suburban dads wanting to entertain their families, the game has been mostly confined to backyards and church-group driveways. And it is a simple game at heart––inexpensive and deeply accessible. Paddles, a Wiffle ball, chalk-drawn lines, and a portable net are all that’s to play. It was an antidote to loneliness and boredom, even before the pandemic drove people outside to play it en masse. It is now commonplace to know someone who plays it, who swears by it, who’s headed to the blacktop tomorrow morning, net in tow, with a zealous gleam in their eye.
