The Growing Pains of Pickleball

With over 4.8 million passionate people taking an interest in pickleball (and counting,) it has quickly become the fastest-growing sport in America. Now, however, a different challenge is taking place as pickleball experiences the growing pains associated with such a rapid growth curve. The issue? Court availability is not aligned with court demand, creating some tension between “picklers,” tennis players and even local neighborhood HOA’s. By 2030, it is estimated that there will be as many as 40 million pickleball players worldwide. With this expected growth, many communities have been caught unprepared to provide adequate playing space for the rabid following of pickleball.

Here are three things that must happen if pickleball is going to continue the unprecedented growth it has seen over the last three years.

1. End the “civil war” with tennis players – Maybe it’s the goofy name, maybe it’s the stigma of being a sport for retirees or the fact the game is played with a whiffle ball – but whatever the true reason might be, tennis players look down their furry-balled noses at pickleball. In 2020, pickleball was nowhere on the radar of the tennis community. By 2021, pickleball became somewhat of a pandemic fluke, a nuisance at best. By 2022, pickleball started to infringe on tennis facilities and courts were re-purposed to accommodate both games. Now, in 2023, it has  become a legitimate threat to tennis players and the two factions are drawing lines in the sand. Tennis will always have the history and carries with it a sense of grace and dignity. You think tennis; you think country clubs and Wimbledon. Pickleball will never be categorized as graceful (doomed by a goofy name), but it does have the hearts and minds of Americans. Happy Gilmore would love Pickleball.
2. Cities and communities need to wake up – In our own town of Southlake (TX), we are members of a pickleball club of over 700 members and would be larger but we had to cap the membership due to  lack of available places to play. In our city of 31,000 citizens, we have exactly TWO courts available for pickleball (and even those are equipped for tennis as well.) These public courts sit less than ¼ mile from a Tennis Center with 20 available tennis courts, none of which are accessible to pickleball. On most evenings, the two public courts are the host to 16 pickleball players, while the vast majority of the tennis courts are empty. Yet we still battle tennis players for the two public courts. City government is not only failing to serve their respective constituents, they are missing a huge opportunity for economic gains.
3. Stop Being Prideful – I mentioned a tennis center in our community as an example of wasted resources. For reference, you could put three full pickleball courts on the same space as is needed for one tennis court. Pickleball is dominated by doubles play, so 12 players could be accommodated on that one space. Tennis is a sport highlighted by singles play; this 6:1 ratio is a main cause of the tension between the competitors in the two sports. New court development is not happening quickly enough to meet the demand, so some facilities have started to convert existing tennis courts to pickleball or dual-sport play. That is encouraging, but it is happening too reluctantly and in some cases not at all. Again, like city government, they choose to ignore the sport like Nero fiddling on the balcony as Rome burns.

In the meantime, many people are making a personal investment and building courts on their own property, as the battle wages on for playing space. For pickleball, it’s another indicator of big things ahead. For tennis, the future is very much in a pickle of its own.