The time was right. The overbearing heat of the day dwindled as the sun hid behind the trees. I grabbed my racquet, called my friends and rushed to the courts to play a match of tennis. I was in need of a break after a long day working – and tennis was the perfect way to forget about all the stresses of school.
Unfortunately as soon as I stepped foot onto the courts, I encountered the problem. It was worse than any storm clouds or winds that could mess up a player’s game.
The courts were all taken up by pickleball players.
Pickleball’s popularity has increased tremendously, with participation growing an average of 223.5% over the last 3 years, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. I want to be able to go to the tennis courts right outside my dorm and have easy access to playing tennis. If these tennis courts are constantly being taken up by pickleball players, I won’t be able to enjoy playing tennis while pickleball players continue using courts not made for them. Pickleball players should betray their paddles and switch to racquets so my courts stop getting taken up.
There are an estimated 48.3 million pickleball players in the United States, according to the Association of Pickleball Professionals, yet only 13,969 pickleball courts in the United States. There are simply not enough courts for pickleball players, and therefore players take over courts meant for tennis playing and practicing. Even the 270,000 tennis courts in the U.S. do not account for the 23.8 million tennis participants, making it even harder for tennis players to play on courts available to them.
Although this pickleball “sport” is new and upcoming, I don’t get all the hype about it. I see it as a knockoff version of tennis, which is more popular and uses the court to its full potential.
Tennis courts aren’t made for pickleball players. A pickleball court is 20 feet long and 44 feet wide for a doubles match while a standard tennis court for a doubles match is 78 feet long and 36 feet wide. Pickleball uses only a small fraction of the court, wasting its ample space when tennis players could be using the whole court.
Pickleball does not have a large fan base compared to that of tennis. The 2024 US Open, a popular tennis grand slam event located in New York saw an attendance of over one million fans over its 3 weeks, while the Pickleball National Championships in 2023 saw a total of about 50,000 attendees. While tennis hosts a couple renowned grand slam tournaments from all throughout the world, pickleball hosts one grand slam.
Tennis players are being shoved out of their own courts and being replaced with pickleball players. This is wrong. Since tennis is the more popular and traditional sport, pickleballers should throw away their paddles and pick up some racquets. With fewer pickleball players and more tennis players, the newly-unified racquet sport community could see benefits such as more courts being built, more players going into professional tennis and pathways to communicate with fellow tennis players instead of leaving when pickleball takes up the courts. So, ditch the pickleball paddles in favor of playing the real racquet sport: tennis.