The turf war
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.