Tennis has a Pickleball Problem

if you were a tennis fan who woke up from a year's Long coma in 2022 you might have been in for a bit of a shock stopping at your local community tennis court you notice brand new painted lines on the court that had never before been there or worse yet what appeared to be an entirely different Court shape and net altogether with unfamiliar people loudly hitting around what looked to be a wiffle ball upon checking social media while waiting for the court to open up you see posts from some of your past favorite players announcing their departure from tennis and debuting some strange sounding sport pickleball Fed Up you return home remembering that the woman singles final at that Year's City open in Washington DC was about to begin upon eagerly tuning into the match on Tennis Channel you would have found you guessed it pickleball although recited in highly dramatic fashion the foregoing intro serves as a sample of what pickleball's most vocal critics have complained and argued against since the alternative rocket sport began its recent meteoric rise in popularity having gained in very short time abundant celebrity endorsement top-tier corporate sponsorship and investment and professional leagues that oftentimes already pay greater prize money winnings than comparable tennis tournaments despite sharing the same Racket and ball Heritage the unflinching rift separating tennis purists and pickleball Fanatics has incited worsening tennis court turf wars Nationwide and incessant social media fueled hatred spewed towards the newer faster growing craze with no apparent resolution in sight what future lies in store for the two racket sports that refuse to coexist to best understand you must first dissect exactly how pickleball silently Rose and prospered from the tennis industry's continued failures I mean after all what's the appeal of pickleball and so my first time playing like I remember thinking like okay this kind of sucks like I don't really like this at all this is Maggie romenzi Chow a former nationally topped ranked junior tennis player and standout division one athlete who now is a top 15 ranked pickleball professional Maggie's Journey from initial disdain to enjoyment to unbounded Obsession in a span of just a few years is one of the hundreds of thousands undertaken from people of all ages and walks of life many of whom had never even heard of the sport before the start of this very decade though participation in the sport of pickleball a tennis hybrid originated and localized within the American Northwest for years picked up Nationwide into the 2010s thanks in part to its widespread adoption within community centers and PE classes a worldwide pandemic pushed the sport into the spotlight in a way few could have ever foreseen due to the game's inherently socially distant nature and low skill barrier the number of pickleball players Nationwide dramatically Rose 37 percent to 4.8 million with close to 20 percent of all courts throughout the country built in the last two years alone the beauty of it all being of course that most property owned owners didn't actually have to do any construction one single tennis court often old dilapidated and many times unused could be repurposed into four new pickleball courts quadrupling the space's player capacity so when demand has the sport become that the number of for sale listings mentioning pickleball increased 86 percent in October 2022 from October 2021. my mother I can't even tell you how many people she's met through playing pickleball and and it's definitely changed her life it's given her so much more opportunity she doesn't compete she just loves to go out and play I mean she plays probably five or six days a week she's now on the board of her City trying to get pickleball courts in her community but let's be clear this isn't just old people playing by most recent estimate average age of the Casual pickleball player has dropped to just 34 years old a number that has been continually falling for years the significance youth interest fetches media exposure influences public acceptance and most importantly attracts a whole lot of money from the average American weekend get-together to the exponentially growing list of celebrity endorsements even garnering unwavering praise from innumerable Olympic level athletes the previously inconceivable scope of pickleball's appeal has attracted heavy interest from the world's biggest Benders eager to cash in on the speculative Gold Rush that a well-run professional scene could create Major League pickleball one of the numerous offshoots vying for preeminent leak status has already attracted seven-figure Investments for each of its 24 franchise teams from the likes of LeBron James Tom Brady garyvee and Nick curios to name just a select few who see events like the USA pickleball National Championships held in the Indian Wells Tennis garden whose 2021 Edition Drew more than 2 300 registered players and streamed on ESPN as proof that pickleball is indeed the next big racket sport but what happens when this well-meaning and highly inclusive upstart clashes with the reigning racquet sport tennis well depending on the stories you read you'd be forgiven for thinking it looked nothing short of War let's start with the obvious although the growing number of dedicated and many times state-of-the-art pickleball courts and Facilities throughout the country have given players more options of where to play than ever ever before the logistical headache of managing the exponentially expanding player base has caused most towns and municipalities to relent to what makes most sense on paper convert or re-line existing tennis courts with close to 6 000 pickleball courts built converted or added on in just 2022 alone averaging 16 created per day the number of parks schools and recreational centers that press on with maintaining the set number of tennis courts they were designed to contain based on community demographics continues to dwindle and the response from veteran tennis players has been less than enthusiastic pickleball lined tennis courts in Northern California were vandalized recently when oil was spilled throughout with threatening messages left behind warning future pickleballers of further consequences if they decided to return conversely elsewhere in California a group of 14 irate pickleball players made news when they dramatically stormed and occupied a set of Courts for themselves at a tennis only Club despite prior warnings leaving only when police arrived on the scene two examples of the ever-growing number of stories and first-hand experiences that Legions have encountered on both sides and although statistics do concur that the number of pickleball courts per player in the US Still Remains significantly below tennis courts per capita an understandable reason for continued increase in pickleball infrastructure many will argue that tennis purists get a pass on the next issue noise with research to back it up as visualized here a tennis ball hit loudly has been measured to produce a decibel reading that tops out around 58 decibels when standing 10 feet away for reference the world's Health Organization has cited the noise level limit of 50 to 55 decibels as acceptable noise exposure and nearby outdoor living areas so with sound dissipation tennis is generally okay pickleball noise assessments however tell another story one study determined that the rally sounds emanating from a bank of pickleball courts were producing around 67 decibels 10 feet from the sideline fence with noise measured at 61 decibels in nearby yards close to 100 feet away worse a second study measured the noise to be 73 decibels at the edge of another set of quartz with the resultant sound found at one neighboring residence coming in just shy of 70 decibels to put this into context humans perceive an increase of 10 decibels and sound level to be roughly two times as loud so with pickleball rallies coming in at nearly four times the acceptable ambient noise limit it's no wonder that one final assessment performed by an experienced acoustical engineering firm concluded that sound produced by ball was unnecessarily loud for the adjacent residential land at one location even with the proposed noise dampening technology but now if we stand back at look at the issues stated as a whole much of which have already been extensively reported on most can foresee that with advancing technology and improvements in infrastructure many of the obvious headaches that dog the recreational aspect of pickleball can be somewhat averted or at the very least significantly improved upon in fact it appears that the underlying problem at play currently isn't what pickleball is doing but what tennis is not you see though competing for court space and public attention may have brought the two sports into conflict recreational tennis is far far from being outnumbered by pickleball's Rising popularity tennis participation in the US has grown by 4.9 million players over the last two years an increase in and of itself that outpaces pickleball's entire player base driven in part by a rise in popularity amongst young people and communities of color and though the USTA USA's well-funded National governing body for tennis has in the past faced harsh criticism regarding its systematic failure to produce high-performing American professionals through its Training Center pipeline the amount of American men dotting the top 15 Rankings today is the highest it's been in close to 30 years a Resurgence and talent and relevancy that should be making the USA more excited to watch play and overall consume tennis than ever before ironically even when compared to the more culturally relevant sport of pickleball players on both sides will generally still agree that the game of tennis itself from a viewer's perspective both on TV and in person is far richer in overall entertainment value with Hallmark tactics techniques and acrobatics commonly witnessed in the older sport that make for stadium-filled Prime Time Entertainment in contrast the repetitive formulation and strategy behind virtually all high-level pickleball rallies relying primarily on dinking interspersed with occasional quick reaction power shots showcases a sport somewhat unfit for mass-market appeal an overall product Shackled down by its core gameplay mechanics yet by all metrics the overall public and institutional interest in pickleball not tennis continues to fervently rise in America why because unlike pickleball the unilateral corporate approach to tennis marketing media broadcasting and rights holding is severely Antiquated if not outright broken just see for yourself unimpeded by some autocratic hierarchical entity pickleball's various competing professional and organizational entities continue to race the bar outdoing each other by creatively showcasing their respective Brands and consequently their sport in modern ways tailored towards Western audiences with social media blitz campaigns featuring or reposting influencers playing and authentically enjoying the sport posted full length and clipped match footage that's widely shared and accessible across the internet and front page news headlines achieved by signing on A-list celebrity investors who further extol the virtues of the new sport making the quirky game with an even quirkier name seem really cool in comparison tennis continually fails to achieve mainstream appeal due in part to self-sabotage perpetrated by the overly complicated International bureaucracy that controls the sport seven separate organizational entities with their own CEOs layers of management PR staff and most importantly differing agendas for tennis's future the resultant consumer reality is one where shared match footage and gameplay even gifs are routinely copyright striked and blocked online despite no viable streaming or viewing option existing tennis TV the only sanctioned ATP streaming app in the U.S lacks the necessary streaming rights to the four grand slams WTA forget about it there is no way to legally stream women's tennis in America despite existing in a day and age where online engagement interaction and shared media continue to prove essential for brand growth corporate tennis particularly ATP and WTA remain with their heads in the sand in understanding how best to Market their product to the Casual viewer a breathtaking Lively and dramatic sport that due to the actions of a select few is met with indifference by most so while no existential threat exists for tennis and likely never will one can only hope that pickleball's continued growth and competitive pressure on the racket industry will serve as an impetus to corporate tennis as we know it forcing institutional change from the top down in a desperate effort to invigorate new audiences and get more people excited to watch and in turn excited to play in the meantime though for now Court space and noise concerns continue to inhibit cooperation between both camps there's tremendous potential for tennis and pickleball to complement rather than compete with each other by expanding the popularity of Racket Sports of all forms worldwide so long as players from both sports are willing to keep an open mind but as many of you know this is a tennis channel dedicated to serve as your definitive Guide to Everything tennis along with sharing all of tennis's greatest stories controversies and analyzes one totally non-pickleball related resource I've continually used for years now to significantly improve my own real-life tennis game has been the singles Playbook brought to you by my friends fuzzy yellow balls the sponsor of today's video why well for years I was one of those people that constantly lost to opponents I should have beaten and always thought to myself if I had just played as well in a match as I do in practice then I would have easily won my glaring mistake I was not implementing the correct tried tested and researched plays against the right opponent that's why I love recommending the singles Playbook because it visually teaches you the correct step-by-step plays to neutralize any type of opponent thrown your way servant volleyers aggressive bass liners Moon Ballers you name it each page has a diagram of the play and a QR code in the top right corner that takes you to a video explaining how to run it with the plays coming from some of the best players of all time like Martina Navratilova all adapted in to Playbook format so that mere mortals like you and I can use them from day one in our matches best of all by clicking the link at the end of this video you will receive access to a free video Lesson demonstrating one of the singles playbooks most popular and effective plays home base designed to help you neutralize aggressive bass liners just so you can see if what the singles Playbook offers is right for you no strings attached so be sure to click the link on screen right now for your free video Lesson showing you one of the many plays from the singles Playbook to take your tennis IQ to the next level

Channel: CULT TENNIS

Views: 883,494

Keywords: Pickleball Tennis, pikleball, ppickleball, cult tennis Pickleball, Pickleball vs tennis, Pickleball takeover, noah Rubin pickleball, Indian Wells Pickleball, us open Pickleball

Id: x4QJlGJJ5gI

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 26 2023