Allow me to begin with an admission. I haven’t exactly been a fan of pickleball, the sport that is sweeping America like thorny tumbleweeds blowing across the windswept plains.
I’ve always been jarred by the sound of it: Thwack!
Though pickleball, a hybrid paddle sport, is increasingly sharing space with tennis at many courts and clubs around the country, it has nothing like the feel of tennis or the booming sound of that fuzzy ball on the strings, struck just right.
Instead, graphite pickleball paddles careen against yellow plastic balls, emitting a high-pitched bleat.I went down to one of the game’s new meccas in my hometown, Seattle, a sliver of courts in the verdant park that wraps around the aptly named Green Lake. To describe it with better accuracy, these are three tennis courts that have been more or less commandeered by pickleball.
It’s a turf war that’s become common nationwide in recent years as the pandemic drove demand for both sports. Pickleballers are clamoring for respect, more resources and courts, creating a sensitive balancing act for parks and recreation departments around the country.
I naturally landed on one side of the battle. Way back when — read, during the administrations of Presidents Reagan and Clinton — I was one of the better players in the Pacific Northwest and often the best for my age division in Seattle. From ages 14 to 30, I won the city championships a half dozen times, sometimes playing matches or warming up on the three Green Lake courts.
On my pilgrimage to the transformed (pickled?) venue, I quickly found a shepherd. “So, do you want to give it a try?” asked Peter Seitel, a former owner and manager of a computer-engineering firm who is now known as the mayor of these courts. He’s an organizer, champion of pickleball and one of the locals trying to get the city to pay more heed to the sport.I played my first games with Seitel, 68, as he taught me the rules and strategies. And I was hardly the only newbie greeted with open arms that day. Everywhere I looked, experienced players were guiding rookies with welcoming patience. The scene felt open and democratic compared with my experience with tennis, in which you often must prove you’ve got game before you can really be accepted.
There were intense games and relaxed ones. A 60-year-old woman held her own against a muscular 20-something. A fourth grader was just learning the ropes, moving from court to court to face off against people he’d never met. The racial and age diversity of the people playing pickleball felt refreshingly cool for a part of the city with a mostly white population and teeming with youthful tech workers.
Pickleball’s cozy community partly owes to the low barrier to entry. The time between learning the game and having fun with it is almost negligible. If you can play Ping-Pong and run eight feet in any direction, you’ll be rallying within a single day.Seitel and I played a few games, and I immediately held my own.Still, there were nuances. The scoring and positioning for instance. I’m used to hitting 120-mile-per-hour tennis aces, but the pickleball serve is a floppy underhand shot that barely leads to an advantage. During rallies, that pesky little plastic ball seems to have a mind of its own. One of the game’s biggest weapons is a soft knuckler that barely clears the net and is known as the dink. Not exactly my style.
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