2022 USA Pickleball West Diamond Regional
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A stupid name. That's what famed tennis coach Nick Bollettieri thought of pickleball when his son Sean told him about the new sport he wanted to bring to The Tennis Club at Newport Beach.

"We are not doing it," Nick said at the time.

That answer eventually turned into a yes.

"As time went, he took credit for it," Sean recounted.

Sean himself was dismissive of it, too, when he first heard about it. His love affair with the sport did not start until he got humbled by two 70-year-old women in a casual 2019 match. 

As the owner of the country club, Sean refused to welcome the noisy sport with the weird name -- a name that to this day he admittedly still dislikes. Some people at the club persistently tried to change his mind and insisted he go check it out for himself. He gave in and made his way to a local park to end the discussion once and for all.

"There are four pickleball courts. They are completely full and there's probably about 60 people, no joke, that are waiting," he recounted of the 2019 experience. "I'm like, 'holy cow!' Immediately I put my paddle there. I was a former competitive tennis player, my whole family played very good tennis, so obviously I'm hoping that by the time my turn comes I'm not going to be playing some 75 year old woman or man."

Sean, now 47, paired up with a woman in her 60s. Their opponents were two women in their 70s.

"So I'm like, 'oh my God this is going to be such a joke,'" he said. "What happens? I get my butt kicked. My ego was totally challenged, I was totally upset."

Sean stopped coaching tennis over a year ago and now runs the largest pickleball club in the country.

His experience is far from unique. Steelers linebacker T.J. Watt got whooped by a grandmother at a Pittsburgh park last June when he thought pickleball would be an easy activity to help him stay active during the offseason. 

So why is it possible for random moms at the park to wipe the floor with the likes of Bollettieri and Watt in a sport? 

The answer to that question is the same reason pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the United States, and why high-profile celebrities such as LeBron James, Mark Cuban and Tom Brady have jumped on the bandwagon and are buying professional teams: Pickleball is accessible. 

What is Pickleball?

The sound of a hollow plastic ball with holes can be heard in many, many parks across the United States. Pickleball -- which combines many elements of tennis, badminton and table tennis -- can be played indoors or outdoors, in a court that is a quarter of the size of a tennis court. While singles is more popular in tennis, doubles is more common for pickleball. Just like Sean experienced, you can go to a pickleball court without a partner because the unofficial rule in public places is that you switch partners after each match.

It's a relatively cheap sport to get started with, because one can find affordable paddles at retailers such as Walmart, Target and even Ross. Most people can start dinking -- referred to as rallying in other racket sports -- decently enough in a short amount of time. 

What makes it accessible to a wide range of people is that strategy and a soft touch are essential and usually more important than how hard you can hit the ball. But that doesn't mean it's not a good workout.

"If you had told me three years ago that you get more cardio with pickleball than tennis, I would've thought you were crazy. But the truth about it is that there is more action in pickleball," Sean said. "With all the little rules pickleball has, it allows for a lot of rallying to happen, and the ball is really fast."

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Whoever reaches 11 points, and is at least two points ahead of their opponent, wins the game. The player serving announces the score every time, and you can only get a point on your serve. The score is made up of three numbers with the first two numbers representing the serving team's score and the receiving team's score -- in that respective order -- and the third representing either server #1 or #2. The very first team that serves only gets one serve and that server will refer to him/herself as server #2.

The very first server of the match will announce the following score: 0-0-2 (serving team: 0, opponent: 0, server #2). Later in the game, a score can look like this: 4-1-1 (serving team: 4, opponent: 1, server #1).

If it sounds confusing, it's because it can be for those new to the sport. Sean says it "sounds like an area code," so he would like to see it change while the sport is still relatively young.

Pickleball used to be considered an old people's sport, but as it continues to grow more popular, younger people are starting to play. Sean said three years ago the average age of those who play pickleball at his club was between 60-75 years old. Now, he said, it has gone down to 38 years old.

Leigh and Anna Leigh Waters are a great example of age just being a number. They became popular as a mother-daughter pickleball duo that in recent years started to dominate the scene. Anna Leigh, now 16, started capturing titles at age 12. Her mother is 43.

Growing popularity

Pickleball has been around since the 1960's, but it's grown significantly in popularity in the last few years. The COVID-19 pandemic played a role in introducing the sport to more people, as many looked for safe ways to spend time outdoors the height of quarantine.

According to the 2023 Association of Pickleball Professionals participation report released in January, in the 12 months between Aug. 2021 and Aug. 2022, 14% of adult Americans (36.5 million people) played pickleball at least once. That's a massive jump from the 4.5 million reported for 2021 by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) Single Sport participation Report on Pickleball.

The APP also said that 8.5 million people played eight times or more, and that 45% of those who played at least once said they plan to play more in the next six-month period than they did in the previous six months.

It is also growing at the professional level. The 2023 Major League Pickleball teams have a star-studded list of owners that, as of December, includes Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka and Jeremy Lin.

"They're buying these major league teams for really cheap. If you think about it, an NFL team costs half a billion dollars to purchase," said Sean, who has done consulting in the pickleball and tennis industries. "A pickleball team costs you like $2- $3 million. It doesn't make money yet and they haven't really figured out how to make money with it yet, but it's really fun and it's probably also good promotion for themselves."

Sean describes the current upward trend as the "honeymoon state" of the sports. It's an exciting time for -- but there are also many challenges. 

For instance, the actual sound of pickleball causes tension in neighborhoods across the country. Four pickleball courts fit in one tennis court, so the number of people who need parking spaces naturally increases. Sean said his own club struggles with parking spots during peak playing hours. 

"My parking lot is so full now, I have to rent parking spots from surrounding neighborhoods. I'm fighting with the city all the time to be able to keep my courts open," Sean said. 

The popularity also means that Sean's experience of having to wait a long time to play is not unique. Many tennis enthusiasts are also not always thrilled with having to share courts.

Those issues are still being addressed as the sport continues to grow, but there is another topic that has to be talked about: will it stay accessible and welcoming?

Keeping it accessible

Sean, whose brother is a well-known producer in Los Angeles, said he has noticed Hollywood studios are setting up pickleball courts because it's an easy way to socialize during breaks.

"Celebrities, a lot of them, play very good table tennis. I used to wonder years back why that is," Sean said. "I realized it was because it didn't take a lot of space and also because it's super easy to learn. You can start rallying if you have a 20 minutes to an hour break. With pickleball, you need more space than a table tennis table, but it's far less than a tennis court.

"It's become a billionaire sport because a lot of billionaires who don't have time to play sports or maybe were not into a lot of sports, they can pick up pickleball much easier."

While Sean is happy to see the sport grow, he believes that right now is the time to help shape it so it doesn't just turn into a "billionaire sport."

Nick Bollettieri, who died in December, will forever be remembered as a Hall of Famer who coached some of the tennis' biggest stars, but he also left a mark in how he impacted others lives. Alone with Arthur Ashe, he started the Ashe-Bollettieri Cities Tennis Program -- later known as the Arthur Ashe Safe Passage Foundation -- which taught tennis to more than 20,000 inner city youth while also providing health information and academic tutoring.

Sean's country club does one or two charity tennis events every year, but they do about 60 through pickleball. This year, the club is opening its doors to kids from nearby areas to teach them how to play pickleball for free. 

"The idea is that it's accessible to them. That's the most important thing," he said. "I think it's important to give back. My father gave back his whole career, for 61 years."

Most of all, Sean Bollettieri doesn't want pickleball to be tennis 2.0.

"Tennis is a stuffy sport. I don't want to be like tennis. I want to be like basketball," Sean said. "I can't change tennis. It's a traditional sport, no matter how much I try, I can't change tennis. I can help form pickleball."