How many net racquet games does the world need? One more thing. Pickleball could be translated as “sour pickle ball”, but you don’t hit pickles back and forth here, but a neon yellow, perforated ball made of hard plastic. He looks like he was peeled from radioactive Emmental cheese. During flight, the air whistles through it, which works aerodynamically as a brake. “The speed is usually a third of the average speed of a tennis ball,” writes the pickleball department of the Berlin sports club TSV Spandau 1860 in the information sheet for their Friday pickleball training session.
Pickleball is a slower sport, which is why it is much more cruciate ligament and meniscus friendly than tennis or squash. That accounts for a large part of the appeal. The sport was invented more than 50 years ago in the USA, in Florida, where the first fans were found: in the state’s pensioner resorts. So there, where you usually play bingo, so as not to rust in your head. The first German clubs were founded in 2013. A German Pickleball Bund e. V. has also existed since 2017 and now has over 55 clubs.
“Pickleball is a great sport for the whole family,” says Silke-Angelika Schaudig. The 58-year-old organizes training in Spandau every Friday evening. As a player, she has competed in various championships. Schaudig emphasizes that Pickleball is actually not a competitive sport, but a relaxed one. A sport in which the focus is on the joy of playing together. In Spandau, people have been playing since 2014, on badminton-sized fields, with nets the size of a tennis net, and with hard plastic rackets reminiscent of table tennis bats (and a bit like paddles at the same time).
Even once very competitive tennis pros now rave about Pickleball. Steffi Graf, 52, said in an interview a few months ago Gala, Pickleball is her new favorite sport: “It’s easy and quick to learn. Even our daughter, who is athletic but not very into ball sports, likes Pickleball very much. And it’s also much easier for my husband and me, when the body pinches again.” Yes, even former number ones in the tennis world rankings are just people with wearing bodies. Somehow it’s a nice idea: how Graf and her husband Andre Agassi, also 51, talk about their little ailments and then say: “Oh come on, let’s grab a round of pickleball!” Even Hollywood stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney are not averse to a game, you know Vanity Fair very excited to report.
Pickleball is mostly played in doubles. Couples who are friends like to compete against each other in the retirement resorts of Florida. Too much ambition only strains relationships, so shooting yourself down is frowned upon. You still want to toast at dinner! As always, there are exceptions, or rather: Of course, among the 4.8 million people who, according to the USA Pickleball Association, like to play this sport in the USA, there are also some who are ambitious. Among them is Rick Barry. The 77-year-old former basketball pro is two meters tall and a member of the “Basketball Hall of Fame”. There is no cartilage left in his arthritic knees, and he was confined to a wheelchair for three months after a bicycle accident. You can still play pickleball, Barry wants to be champion in his age group!
At the same time, the sport seems to attract younger people who haven’t made it all the way to the top in tennis. Among the most famous players in the USA are Lucy Kovalova and Tyson McGuffin. She was once on the national junior tennis team in her native Slovakia, he is the current American pickleball champion and also previously played tennis. Are pickleball players like the violists in the netball sports orchestra?
However, there is not much evidence of excessive ambition in Spandau. Children as young as five play here together with women around 60. The oldest pickleball fan in the club is over 80, says Silke-Angelika Schaudig, the gender ratio is balanced. The trainer Annabell Tröndle, 34, explains the rules, and they are not as uncomplicated as you thought. For example, you are only allowed to step into the front area of the playing field, called “kitchen”, when the opponent’s ball has already been served there. Pickleball might be relatively relaxed physically, but the top hat has to work as the ball flies towards you with that sound somewhere between the high-pitched ping-pong of table tennis and the crisp two-mp-two-mp of tennis ball. Think: bingo, but with movement.