Pickleball, a rapidly growing paddle sport that is easy to learn and enjoyable for players of all ages, has gained significant popularity across the United States in recent years.
Characterized by its fun and social nature, the paddle sport has grown from 4.2 million players in 2020 to 13.6 million in 2023, marking a rapid 223.5% increase in players within three years, according to a topline participation report by the Sports and Fitness Association.
“When I first started pickleball in 2016, it was one of those things where it was almost like a secret society, you really didn’t know much about it,” said Armando Leigh, the vice president of the Foster City Pickleball Club and a pickleball tournament organizer. “Now, it’s getting to a point where it’s becoming a thing, and its footprint is here.”
Although pickleball has found its success as a sport, its growth has caused tensions among its neighboring sport, tennis.
“I think one of the biggest problems is that tennis players think that pickleball is trying to become or overtake tennis,” Leigh said. “Tennis players had enjoyed the opportunity to be untouchable in the sense that not any other sport is interested in using tennis courts; however, with the rise of pickleball, tennis players are now unable to hold on to their courts.”
With rising tensions between the two sports, the need for solutions to remedy their relationship becomes more dire.
Throughout the years, there have been many reasons why pickleball grew to become so popular in America compared to other racquet sports. For one, its accessibility to play as a sport makes it much easier for people to play.
“Pickleball is accessible because you don’t have to make plans for it; you just show up,” said Lisa Shaw, a pickleball instructor in San Francisco who also plays for tennis teams. “Tennis used to be like that in San Francisco, but it went away when they started doing a reservation system on all the public courts.”
In addition, the real estate that pickleball courts take up is significantly less than the space tennis courts take up.
“With a tennis court, you could have four people that maybe play for an hour and a half, whereas with one tennis court, you could have four pickleball courts on there and have four games going on,” Leigh said.
As a sport, pickleball is well known for being less physically demanding than other racquet sports while promoting greater social interaction, making it much more beginner-friendly.
“Honestly, it’s more fun than tennis,” said Gabriel Rui, the Carlmont Pickleball Club founder and player on the Carlmont boys varsity tennis team. “It’s so much easier and rewarding because of how beginner-friendly and social the nature of the game is.”
However, even though pickleball has become much more popular as a sport, it comes with conflicts.
One major problem the sport poses to communities is that pickleball is a very loud sport. The unpleasant, noisy, percussive popping sound the paddle makes when it contacts the ball annoys many residents who live near public pickleball courts.
From 100 feet away, the sound of a pickleball hit by a paddle is around 70 decibels according to a pickleball noise impact assessment done by Spendiarian and Willis Noise Control. A volume of 70 decibels is similar to that of a vacuum cleaner, being much louder compared to tennis, where games are only 40 decibels from 100 feet away.
In combination with the high-pitched noise that comes with the paddle hitting the pickleball, the sound can be so unbearable for residents that it escalates to them filing noise complaints and lawsuits in some cases.
One such incident was in 2023, when residents of Falmouth, Mass., who lived near pickleball courts, filed a lawsuit against their town, claiming that the courts violated local sound ordinances. Due to the lawsuit, the pickleball courts were temporarily shut down, preventing the unpleasant sound from ringing in the community.
“I mean, the sound can be annoying; I agree with that,” Leigh said.
Regarding tensions between pickleball and tennis, the biggest problem is the sports having to share the courts.
“You can compare tennis and pickleball to chess and checkers,” Leigh said. “Both are viable pastimes; however, the only problem is that both entities require the same board.”
With the big surge in pickleball players, there has been increasing demand for the construction of pickleball courts. According to an annual pickleball growth report by USA Pickleball, there are now 50,003 known pickleball courts within the U.S.
However, even with the increased construction of pickleball courts, supply can’t keep up with demand, and pickleball courts do not exist in some communities, causing many pickleball players to use tennis courts to play the sport.
In a State of the Game news conference in August, United States Tennis Association (USTA) President Brian Hainline expressed some worry and dissatisfaction with the growth of pickleball as a sport.
“When you see an explosion of a sport, and it starts potentially eroding into your sport, then, yes, you’re concerned,” Hainline said in the conference. “That erosion has come in our infrastructure. A lot of pickleball advocates just came in and said, ‘We need these tennis courts.’ It was a great, organic grassroots movement, but it was a little anti-tennis.”
In addition, the construction of pickleball courts is very costly to towns and cities, making it much more financially convenient to make tennis courts suitable for both sports.
“City recreational departments have to accommodate all their residents, and if there are enough people interested in playing pickleball, they have to find some way to accommodate that,” Leigh said. “The only problem is that real estate is costly, so their mindset is very much focused on how to make the existing land dual purpose.”
In past years, the tensions of who can use the courts have been seen in several incidents.
On an organizational level, the USTA has also shown resistance to the growth of pickleball by launching a new program called the USTA Red Ball Tennis Program. This new program aims to help players get into tennis a lot easier by eliminating more complicated aspects of the game.
“The shorter court, lighter rackets, and 66-75% slower balls allow for full tennis swings in a smaller space, which gives instant success to new players and can be quite fun for current players of all skill levels,” said USTA national manager Marilyn Sherner in a press interview about the program.
Although the Red Ball program is designed to make tennis more accessible to players, there has been criticism and suspicion about the many similarities Red Ball shares with pickleball, such as the game being played on a pickleball-sized court.
“At the end of the day, this program is about money,” Shaw said. “If you were the head of USTA, you’re trying to grow your business every year, and you do that by having players join teams. I think that’s why the USTA is having a hard time with it, they’re actually losing players to pickleball.”
While it is hard to say for sure what the intentions of the USTA are with its launch of the Red Ball Program, it is undeniable that the tennis association has lost quite a bit of players to pickleball.
For example, former professional tennis players like Jack Sock and Sam Querrey retired from tennis to play pickleball professionally. In addition, tennis legends like Andre Agassi and John McEnroe have appeared on television before, competing in big pickleball tournaments such as the Pickleball Slam, the highest-rated pickleball telecast.
“It’s gotten to the point where products are making commercials with pickleball involved, there’s Major League pickleball with money getting involved, and many celebrities and professional athletes endorsing the sport,” Leigh said.
While pickleball has found great success in its growth, stigmas towards the sport among tennis players have become more common within the community.
“There’s a little bit of an elitist attitude that tennis players have towards pickleball,” Shaw said. “Many have the idea that because pickleball players don’t have to take a million lessons to get really good at the sport, it makes pickleball less than tennis.”
Even though claims like the one Shaw mentioned about pickleball may be illogical or quite extreme, it serves as a sign that something needs to be done to mend the relationship between the two sports.
With tensions at an all-time high and tennis fighting back against pickleball’s soaring popularity, steps can still be taken to make the relationship between these two sports more mutual.
For example, the reduction of pickleball-lined tennis courts and increased construction of pickleball courts would allow for fewer pickleball players to play on tennis courts.
“There should definitely be construction of more pickleball courts,” Shaw said. “Even if that means sacrificing the construction of tennis courts to build more pickleball courts, it’s important that we separate the two sports to avoid the conflict of sharing the courts.”
Constructing more pickleball courts also means the tennis community wouldn’t lose any accessibility to their courts.
“If there were three tennis courts and they converted one of the courts for pickleball, there would usually be outrage from tennis players,” Leigh said. “However, if they kept those three courts and built another six pickleball courts on the side, they wouldn’t care because it’s not taking anything.”
In addition, promoting the embracing of pickleball and fighting against the stigmas towards the sport among the tennis community would also help ease tensions.
“I think we just need to expose more tennis players to pickleball,” Rui said. “I actually was not a big fan of pickleball when I was primarily playing tennis, but I guess after one or two times of playing the game, I realized it’s really fun.”
However, with both parties’ refusal to compromise on their plans for the future, the chances of a mutual relationship between the two sports seem unlikely.
“I would say the two sports would compromise, but very reluctantly,” Leigh said. “It has to be a compromise on the tennis side due to pickleball being the new kids on the block, and that’s what makes tennis organizations so upset because they feel like their domain is being chipped away.”
With the hope of compromise between the two sports, the sports can only adapt to sharing the courts until a plan that benefits both parties can be agreed upon and executed.
“Instead of fighting each other, both sports need to realize that at the end of the day, people are out there supporting racket sports and getting healthy,” Shaw said. “People who play pickleball but not tennis might even enjoy watching a tennis match now that they play pickleball.”
