Pickleball players are courting city officials for more space to play in Miami-Dade
The pickleball craze shows no signs of letting up in Miami-Dade County. Residents are clamoring for more courts and cities are scrambling to satisfy the growing popularity of the sport.
Municipalities trying to meet that demand are employing “creative” solutions, such as adding a temporary court onto a rooftop parking lot, planning a stand-alone complex that could cost over $1 million and striping pickleball lines onto preexisting tennis and basketball courts.
The different sports, for the most part, coexist just fine, said Manny Guerrero, assistant tennis operations supervisor at Coral Gables’ Salvadore Park, which has 13 clay tennis courts and the only two dedicated pickleball courts in the city of approximately 50,000 residents.
But in cities where officials plan to completely convert tennis courts into pickleball courts, the new sport on the block has drawn some ire from its older, more established relative.
“I call it the clash of the titans,” Guerrero said. “Tennis is still on top — for now.”
Some pickleball enthusiasts direct their frustration at elected officials for being slow to the draw, and for pitting sports against each other by forcing them to share or concede space.
“The municipalities need to step up to the plate,” said Lily Azel, the USA Pickleball ambassador for Miami-Dade County.
Debbie Font, a pickleball coach and Coral Gables resident, said she found it difficult to get her city, and others throughout the county, to provide more space for what’s seen as the fastest-growing sport in America.
“I never thought it was going to be like trying to move a mountain,” Font said. “I don’t see it fading. I don’t see it as a fad. It’s getting crazy.”
The sport uses a hard paddle, similar to the ones used for ping-pong, and a plastic perforated ball, like a small wiffle ball. It is played as if “you’re standing on a giant ping-pong table,” said Miami resident Matt Endara, a professional pickleball player.
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Pickleball has become popular partly because it’s easier on the joints than other communal sports such as tennis, basketball and soccer. It also requires less technique than tennis, and is a quicker game with matches that stop at 11 points.
The Miami Herald spoke with over three-dozen pickleball players, and most said socializing was a major draw to the sport. That’s especially true at courts that offer open play, where all skill levels are welcome. Some players show up alone and are paired with strangers, who are often eager to teach newbies the ropes.
“Pickleball can save lives,” said Odalis Pereira. “It saved mine.”
After the death of her husband, Pereira began playing pickleball at the start of the year to get out of the house more often. “This has really helped with the grieving process,” she said during a break between games at Tropical Park.
Well aware of the demand, several cities have announced plans to invest money in new infrastructure to meet the pickleball craze.
But players complain the municipalities are slow-moving, bogged down by budget cycles, master plans and community input sessions.
“I don’t understand how Miami is so behind the eight ball,” Endara said. “It just seems to me that Miami should be more progressive than that.”
Competition: pickleball vs. tennis
Similar to CrossFit devotees, pickleball players can be quick to proselytize on the benefits of their lifestyle, with many describing the sport as addictive.
“I was kind of hooked right when I started,” Endara said. “Once you start, you don’t stop.”
That eagerness can lead to some sibling rivalry between tennis and pickleball, especially when the more established racket sport is forced to concede court space to its trendy, young counterpart.
In some cities, pickleball lines have been added to preexisting tennis and basketball courts. In others, such as Coral Gables, Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay, officials plan to completely convert tennis and racquetball courts into pickleball.
“There’s definitely plenty of tennis and pickleball players that hate each other and the other sport,” said Julius Gavin, who teaches tennis at Salvadore Park and The Biltmore hotel in the Gables. He’s been playing tennis since he was 7 years old, and recently dabbled in pickleball.
The root of the tension is the need to share court space, Gavin said.
“I definitely can understand how it can make people feel upset, that tennis courts that are originally for tennis are now being converted to pickleball,” he said.
At Phillips Park in Coral Gables, wait times to use one of the two tennis courts can be up to an hour, said resident Frank Schulz, who was playing tennis with his son on a recent Tuesday afternoon.
The city recently announced plans to convert one tennis court into two pickleball courts. “I hope they don’t do that,” he said. “I think that’d be a terrible idea.”
“A lot of fighting will happen,” his son, Albert, chimed in. “It will be atrocious.”
Others complain about the noise of pickleball, which makes a distinctive “pop” sound when the ball hits the paddle.
“It makes a wallop every single time,” said Gables resident Bill Gibson, who also plays tennis at Phillips Park.
Those tensions boiled over into a “turf war” in Fort Lauderdale, where a group of community activists has been trying to block developers from building a privately run pickleball complex on public land in Snyder Park, the Sun Sentinel reported. One of the main concerns of neighbors: the noise.
But it’s not all bad blood between the sports. Juan Caicedo, who started playing pickleball about three months ago, said he might actually prefer it to tennis, which he’s played for most of his life. The very noise that irritates some is partly what keeps him coming back.
“There’s something about the sound of the ball — the pop — that is very addictive,” Caicedo said during a recent evening of pickleball in Bryan Park near Little Havana. “It’s like entertainment. It’s fun. I just disconnect from the world and my problems.”
The pickleball community is aware of the perception that they’re taking over court space, but they contend that the municipalities are putting them in the middle.
“We don’t want to dislocate or disenfranchise any sport,” said Azel of USA Pickleball, the national governing body for the sport.
Azel, a Miami resident, said she’s disappointed with her city’s options. Four parks in Miami offer blended courts that share the space with tennis or racquetball.
“The ‘blended line’ concept, as they call it, does not work,” Azel said. “Tennis players feel like, ‘we were here first, why are they taking days away from us?’ “
But Chris Evans, Miami’s interim parks and recreation director, said it hasn’t been an issue.
“As of right now, you can find a pickleball court on any day,” Evans said. “We haven’t had any conflicts as of right now between tennis and pickleball and we’re trying to keep it that way.”
Azel said the creation of the blended courts was “just for show” and an effort to appease the pickleball community without actually investing in the sport. She advocates for a dedicated pickleball facility with a minimum of 24 pickleball courts that are clustered together and lit.
Going Pro
Pickleball isn’t just for amateurs. World-famous tennis players Naomi Osaka and Nick Kyrgios and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes are owners of the Miami Pickleball Club, which is a Challenger Level Major League Pickleball team.
Last week, the team competed in the MLP Daytona tournament at the 49-court Pictona complex near Daytona Beach. The Miami Pickleball Club ranked third overall among 12 Challenger Level teams, following the Bay Area Breakers in first place and the Dallas Pickleball Club in second.
Endara, the pro player from Miami, will be competing next month in the U.S. Open Pickleball Championship in Naples, Florida, which is one of the largest pickleball tournaments in the world. East Naples Community Park, home to 64 pickleball courts, hosts the annual event, which draws over 2,000 players from 47 states and at least 20 countries, the Miami Herald previously reported.
“We need a facility of that type to even begin thinking about a regional tournament,” Azel said. “We are so behind the entire region and the entire country, which is shocking, because it’s a world-class city.”
Other South Florida cities have pounced on the pickleball opportunities.
On Sunday, in neighboring Broward County, four tennis pros will compete in the inaugural Pickleball Grand Slam at the Hard Rock Live in Hollywood: Andy Roddick, John McEnroe, Michael Chang and Andre Agassi. Tickets range from $46 to $506.
Evans said there are “absolutely” plans to host major tournaments in Miami, and that the city intends to request funds to build a dedicated facility. He encouraged the pickleball community to attend upcoming master planning meetings later this year.
The city is also considering adding dedicated courts to Douglas Park, the Kirk Munroe Tennis Center and West End Park.
“We know that pickleball is growing,” Evans said, “and we’re going to try to prepare for it the best we can.”
‘You can’t stick your head in the sand anymore.’
Players across Miami-Dade County have implored their elected officials to take action.
“You can’t stick your head in the sand anymore,” Palmetto Bay resident Jeffrey Epstein said at a Village Council meeting earlier this year. “This is going to be the most popular sport in America.”
He was one of over a dozen pickleball enthusiasts, some carrying a paddle in their hand, who attended the meeting to advocate for more courts.
The Palmetto Bay Village Council in March discussed plans to tear out the existing racquetball courts in Coral Reef Park and replace them with four pickleball courts. It also floated the idea of converting a 1-acre plot of village-owned land into approximately six to eight pickleball courts, plus a pavilion.
In the short-term, the village announced plans to draw pickleball lines onto the basketball courts in Palmetto Bay Park.
“As long as the hours are accessible, we wouldn’t really have a problem,” said Damien Gonzalez, who coaches youth basketball at the park three days a week in the evenings.
Joel Joseph, a Liberty City resident who regularly plays basketball at Palmetto Bay Park, said he also has no issue sharing the courts, as long as the play times don’t overlap. He also expressed interest in learning pickleball if the opportunity comes along. “I don’t have a problem trying a new sport,” Joseph said.
In nearby Pinecrest, plans are underway to convert one of six tennis courts in Coral Pine Park into four pickleball courts, with an estimated price tag of $40,000, said Rob Mattes, parks and recreation director. The conversion should be complete in the next couple of weeks, he said.
Over three years ago, noticing the sport’s growing popularity, the village decided to stripe pickleball lines on the basketball courts in Suniland Park.
“We thought, well, we’ll get a few people here and there but nothing too crazy,” Mattes said. “Throngs of people started showing up, and it stuck.”
The four courts are available for open play from 8 a.m. to noon three days a week. Scott Jacobson, a regular at Suniland Park pickleball, said it’s not nearly enough space.
“This is makeshift, and it’s not great. I don’t think they fathom the popularity of the sport,” he said, referring to city leadership. “We’re way behind the curve. The few courts they converted, there’s no way they can handle the amount of people who want to play this sport.”
Rooftop courts and million-dollar plans
In Miami Beach, demand for court space is so high that the city last month announced four temporary courts on the rooftop of a parking garage.
City Manager Alina Hudak, in a Feb. 13 memo, called it a “creative” measure in response to the “overwhelming popularity” of pickleball. She wrote that the city will monitor usage of the rooftop courts to determine “future program expansion and feasibility.”
Miami-Dade County operates several popular pickleball courts in the region, such as Tropical Park, which is busy on most weeknights. District 8 Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said that the county now operates 16 dedicated pickleball courts and that it plans to add 18 more.
Cohen Higgins said she is also eyeing her district as a possible location for a dedicated pickleball complex. She previously sponsored legislation to conduct a feasibility study for a facility similar to the Naples Pickleball Center, “where families can gather, friends can play, and championships can be held.”
Coral Gables is planning to invest in a dedicated pickleball complex with four to eight courts, bathrooms, seating and concessions.
The project could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, said Fred Couceyro, community recreation director. With all of the “different facility needs” factored in, the total cost “could be over one million dollars,” he said.
Building a single court could cost from $8,000 to $20,000 for the court surface, striping and net, Couceyro said, without taking into account fencing, draining and other infrastructure elements.
“It’s not just throwing a couple of fences in a grass lawn,” he said.
A possible location for the “big-ticket item” facility, as he put it, is Kerdyk Park in the Gables’ southwest corner. The city is developing its master plans, and the soonest that funding would be available for the project is October. In addition to converting one of the tennis courts in Phillips Park into two pickleball courts, the city is also considering adding two pickleball courts to the tennis complex at Granada Golf Course.
But what happens if pickleball ends up being a fad without staying power?
“If the unthinkable happens and everybody stops playing pickleball,” Couceyro said, “it doesn’t take much to convert eight pickleball courts into two or three tennis courts.”
The sport is becoming so ubiquitous that now there are “rumblings” about potential pickleball youth leagues emerging, he said.
Endara expects to see the next generation taking up the sport.
“There are going to be pickleball-trained kids,” he said. “They’re going to grow up with a pickleball paddle in their hand the same way that kids grew up with tennis rackets in their hand.”
