The air is alive with the distinctive ‘plop’ of wiffle ball on paddle, shuffling feet, bizarre talk of kitchens and a general confusion over who’s serving and what the hell the score is. From East Coast to West coast, it seems that nobody is immune to the latest craze – dedicated courts are popping up almost daily, and old, unused tennis courts are seeing a new burst of life. Pickleball started as a mild curiosity, rapidly became the official game of the over 65 sect and now threatens to take over the entire ball swatting world.
Its easy to see why – at its heart, Pickleball is an easy game to pick up. After an hour or so, anybody can play, especially those who have fooled about with other racquet sports. The court is small and doubles is the preferred format, so you don’t need to be a gym rat to get about, and those old injuries rarely come back to haunt. Play is up close and personal, which makes it a social business, helped by the game’s traditional fondness for mixing players up frequently. Add in the low cost of equipment, plentiful cheap or free venues and ease of setting up indoors, and you have a winning formula. Oh, and its addictive as hell… you soon graduate to the stage where the game resembles chess: tactics and strategy dominate and absolute power makes little difference.
Fads, crazes and the long haul
History is littered with sports that have exploded onto the scene, become the next fad and then fizzled out as the spotlight finds another darling, but there’s reason to think that the Pickleball craze will upset the natural curve and stay around for the long haul. Squash and Racquetball saw a similar surge in popularity, but were very physical, hard to master and were suffocated by a lack of cheap venues. The original wave of players have long since aged out, and many courts left in their wake have now been repurposed. At $50k plus a pop, not many new clubs will take a gamble on racquetball’s uncertain future any time soon, but any club with a little space and $500 can set up a Pickleball court. A small price for getting to ride the latest wave…
What’s not to love?
Pickleball, despite the ridiculous name, is also very in tune with life in the 2020s – short on formality and long on sociability, its a reflection of how we want to spend our precious spare time right here and right now. Rather than being frowned on, chat and laughter are baked into the DNA of the game. You don’t just play with people, you get to socialize with them at the same time. Games are short and partner changes frequent, which adds variety and introduces more players in less time than traditional games like tennis. The rules add another welcome dimension too: the kitchen stops overly aggressive net play, and the underhand serve ensures even weaker players get to rally. Cunning and clear thinking at the net have largely replaced physicality as the weapons of choice. True, there may not be the complexity of stoke that can bring a lifetime of frustration to the average tennis player, but sometimes a simple good time is more than enough to feed the soul.
What should tennis players make of all this?
In an increasingly sedentary world, any sport that gets people away from their screens has to be welcomed. Its also worth noting that plenty of the new pickleballers are also devout tennis players, or tennis players no longer able to play due to injury or age. The charge is often made that tennis courts are being converted to Pickleball and lost forever, but these courts have mostly sat empty and unloved for years. Most of the issues facing tennis are not the fault of pickleball – our wiffle-ball chasing friends are just the spotlight illuminating problems that have been brewing internally for a generation…. even the best sports need a little updating every now and again.
Evolution
Tennis has survived two world wars and the collapse of empires, it was around when the first powered aircraft dragged itself into the sky and was almost 100 years old when the first boot hit the moon. Throughout this time, the game has seen periods of transformation, helping it to stay connected to those who play and watch it. Long gone are the crazy dress codes of the early years, when it seemed like tennis was ripped from the pages of a Jane Eyre novel. Racquets have gone from bits of tree with sheep intestine to today’s high tech marvels, styles of play have come and gone and new surfaces have been adopted. The professional tour has also evolved, from a bunch of competitions aimed at tennis players to a full on entertainment circus where players can be as famous for their personality and antics as their actual tennis. All this is good, but there are still a few elephants lurking in the back of the room…
Elephants…
Pickleball’s popularity is often attributed to it being easy to play, and this highlights a problem with tennis: to really enjoy any game and become a regular player, you have to reach a minimum level of mastery. Left to their own devices, the average tennis player can flounder in a state of incompetence for years…assuming they keep going for that long. Frustration and injuries are hardly the stuff of dreams, and investing years in a fruitless endeavor isn’t exactly a hallmark of today’s quick return mindset. Sure, we can all get 50 hours of coaching, but that’s a serious chunk of change, and cheaper group sessions that many clubs run often focus entirely on drills rather than mastery of strokes.
There’s also the rather thorny issue of image… tennis has been around for generations and as a result is anything but ‘new’. It also has a reputation for being a little stodgy and old fashioned – not helped by the determination of many tennis clubs to ignore the world of social media. The classic tennis club website looks like it was designed by somebody commuting from 1995, complete with the obligatory ‘downer’ photo of empty courts and a tennis racquet lying on the ground. Tennis players can smile and the game can be fun, but you’d never know it.
The contrast with the media savvy Pickleball circus couldn’t be more clear. A small court and doubles format lends itself to photos dominated by smiling faces and bright colours, and a quick google image search throws up a very diverse range of players. A-list celebrities are flocking to the game, there’s a fledgling pro-tour and big names from various sports are building teams and investing money. Rather than being an alternative to tennis for old people, pickleball is starting to look a whole lot like a multi-generational gateway to racquet sports.
Couch potatoes
So back to the question in hand: does Pickleball represent a threat, or is it something to be embraced? Its currently about the only thing expanding faster than the population’s collective waistband, and lets face it, we’re hardly running out of potential new recruits for either game. There’s every chance that people will get bored of the new kid on the block and pick up tennis racquets again, but only if tennis does a better job of marketing and presenting itself. To take up any new activity, people have to be able to imagine themselves taking part and having fun. When your primary marketing strategy is to invite people to pay money to hit a ball from one side of a net to another, alongside a picture of an empty court, you’re kinda missing something….. the fun bit.
The final word
So lets kill this ‘threat’ nonsense once and for all, and instead embrace some friendly competition. Tennis players would be wise to remember the Djokovic/ Nadal/Federer effect – competition was their primary driver, making them innovate and move the sport forward. We were all winners. Change may not always be comfortable, but a little medicine is a whole lot better than the alternative….anyone for a game of racquetball?