Pickleball is a paddle sport that has recently grown in popularity in the United States. Combining tennis, badminton, and ping pong elements, pickleball is an entertaining game appropriate for all ages.
Three friends, Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum, invented the game in the summer of 1965 while spending their holidays on Bainbridge Island, close to Seattle. The game was born as a challenge to show Pritchard’s son, Frank, how to spend time on the island. Pritchard and Bell headed to the badminton court, picked up some old badminton, ping pong, and tennis equipment, and invented a new game. They used a perforated ball, a badminton net, and a pair of table tennis paddles.
The name pickleball was an idea of Joel Pritchard’s wife, Joan. The name referred to the so-called “pickle boat” races she used to attend in college. Marietta College, which Joan attended, had a rowing program, and the team participated in annual regatta competitions. After the main competition, leftover rowers would engage in “pickle boat” races for fun. This concept inspired Joan to name the newly invented paddle game.
By 1967, the Pritchard family and their neighbor Bob O’Brian shared a permanent pickleball court. The court has a playing area of 20 by 44 feet and a 34 inches net. On each side of the net, there is a 7-foot non-volley line called “the kitchen.” Like a tennis court, the pickleball court is divided by a center nice into a right and left service area. The much smaller dimensions allow for four pickleball courts to fit in the space of one tennis court. This makes the game more social as players are much closer to each other and can interact while playing.
Pickleball rules are similar to ping pong and badminton. The game can be played as doubles or singles. The main rules are that there should be no volleying in the kitchen, only one bounce per side, and serves cannot land in the kitchen.
To start the game, players must serve underhand, below the waistline. They must hit the ball diagonally across the court; hitting the net is acceptable if it does not fall in the kitchen. The game traditionally ends when the first person or team reaches 11 points and has at least two points over the adversary. The game may also be played to 15 or 21 points.
The easy and fun game quickly spread outside of Bainbridge Island. By 1975, the game was known nationwide, and in the following year, it was named “America’s newest racquet sport” by Tennis magazine. In the same year, the first pickleball tournament took place at South Center Athletic Club in Tukwila, Washington.
The United States Amateur Pickleball Association (USAP.A.), established in 1984, was responsible for pickleball’s further growth and expansion across the United States. By 1990, pickleball had spread across all 50 states. In 1999, the first pickleball website launched, and in 2005, the USA Pickleball Association (USAPA) was established, along with an official website that included all previous entries from other pickleball websites and allowed players to find sites where they could play.
USAPA has seen exponential growth in the last decade. The association went from just over four thousand members in 2013 to 70 thousand in February 2023. Pickleball has now been named the fastest-growing sport in America for the third consecutive year by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA).
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