Pickleball: More tennis courts converted as pickleball popularity grows among young people

It was the summer of pickleball for 21-year-old Matthew Aleman.

The recent graduate of Florida Atlantic University was staying with his parents in Port St. Lucie when he started seeing memes on social media and videos on YouTube about the court sport.

Aleman and his friends went to Winterlakes Park on Torino Parkway — the only nearby pickleball courts at the time — and an older couple taught them how to play.

“We ended up liking it a lot,” Aleman said. “We kind of made it almost a daily routine for the next three months. It kind of became an addiction.”

The popularity of pickleball continues to grow, especially with millennials and Gen Z.

More tennis courts are being converted across the nation and on the Treasure Coast to keep up with the demand for the sport, said Melissa Zhang of USA Pickleball, its national governing body.

“We haven’t seen this level of growth in previous years,” Zhang said. “The explosion of the sport and the amount of players that you can fit on the same surface area is why we’re seeing a lot of these conversions happening.”

Why is pickleball so popular?

The number of pickleball players in the U.S. grew 14.8% from 2020 to 2021 — and 21.3% from 2019 to 2020 — according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, which provides research, industry reports and custom research services.

“We’ve seen such a crazy, unprecedented amount of growth in this sport,” Zhang said, “and it really started during the (coronavirus) pandemic.”

Pickleball began to take off in 2020 because it was the perfect sport to play during social distancing. It was a way for the whole family to get outside for physical activity and social interaction, and it's easy to learn, Zhang said.

“It’s super inclusive,” she said. “I can’t think of too many sports where you have a grandfather playing with a grandchild.”

Why do millennials, Gen Z love pickleball?

The average age of players dropped to 38.1 years old in 2021, a decrease of 2.9 years from 2020, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. Players younger than 24 fueled the biggest increase from 2020 to 2021.

“It’s really exciting for us to see that demographic growing so quickly,” said Zhang, who's 27. “As a millennial myself, I have tons of friends getting excited about it.”

Two years ago, Zhang started playing pickleball with fellow millennials after work and became obsessed. She made it into a career when she found her current job as USA Pickleball’s director of communications and content.

She loves hearing about friends in their 20s getting “schooled” by 60-year-olds.

“It happens all the time,” she said. “I don’t know too many sports out there where you can find that same sort of scenario.”

What exactly is pickleball?

Even though pickleball’s popularity has exploded recently, it’s not a new sport.

USA Pickleball was formed in 2005, but the sport was invented in 1965. Three dads — Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell and Barney McCallum — created the game to entertain their children, who were bored with their usual summertime activities on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, Washington.

The game was named after the Pritchards’ dog, Pickles, who would chase the ball and run off with it.

Pickleball is a combination of tennis, badminton and ping-pong. It’s played on similar lines as a tennis court, but much smaller. Players use a whiffle ball and paddles that are twice the size of ping-pong paddles.

Why are tennis courts being converted?

In 2022, USA Pickleball’s database of places to play increased to 10,724 known locations. Nearly 1,557 new locations were added to the database at 130 new locations per month.

Between 35% and 45% of the sport’s growth in the last five years is because about 3,500 tennis courts were converted into pickleball courts, according to Carl Schmits, USA Pickleball’s managing director of facilities, development and equipment standards.

However, there hasn’t been a corresponding rebalance of resources, according to Schmits. About 250,000 tennis courts were built when that sport boomed in the 1970s and ‘80s, with about 33 million players. Today, that number has dropped to 23 million.

“We’re not trying to usurp tennis’ presence,” Zhang said. “We’re just hoping to be cooperative and make sure that there are enough facilities for everyone to play on.”

She experienced the lack of courts playing with friends in Denver, Colorado.

“We’d be waiting for over a half-hour in line to get onto a pickleball court,” she said, “and then you look and see the tennis courts are completely empty.”

In Port St. Lucie, the Whispering Pines Park Racket and Paddle Center opened in August with eight tennis courts that were converted into 24 pickleball courts. City officials had received frequent requests to convert tennis courts or build new pickleball courts. They met with pickleball players to discuss the lack of facilities.

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In Fort Pierce, an existing tennis court was converted into pickleball courts at Jaycee Park on South Hutchinson Island in December 2022 at the request of residents.

However, the Vero Beach City Council denied allowing the nonprofit Pickleball University, which operates the courts at Pocahontas Park, to convert tennis courts at Riverside Park because residents were concerned about noise.

“It definitely has been a recurring issue and topic among local city councils — just how to get proper access for the rising demand of pickleball,” Zhang said. “They, of course, are nowhere near able to find supply for this insane demand.”

Laurie K. Blandford is TCPalm's entertainment reporter and columnist dedicated to finding the best things to do on the Treasure Coast. Follow her on Twitter @TCPalmLaurie and Facebook @TCPalmLaurie. Email her at laurie.blandford@tcpalm.com. Sign up for her What To Do in 772 weekly newsletter at profile.tcpalm.com/newsletters/manage.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Pickleball popular among millennials, Gen Z, but not enough courts