Pickleball courts are popping up all over, as everyone from former presidents to NBA referees seem to be getting into the game.
Your timeline, your parents, your friends, your idols. Chances are someone has tried to tell you about pickleball, the racquet sport that has taken the world by storm over the past few years. From the amateurs to the pros, there’s a seemingly never-ending amount of money pouring into pickleball, and the ease of the game has only helped it catch fire.
So where does the sport stand today and why has it grown so rapidly? Where’s this sport going? Let’s dive in.
What is Pickleball?
It’d help to establish what we’re actually talking about. To the untrained eye, pickleball looks like a blend of ping pong and tennis. It involves wooden paddles, a perforated polymer ball (similar to a wiffle ball), and a court which shares the same dimensions with badminton.
You’ve got a small area called the “kitchen” by the net, where you’re not allowed to volley the ball and must allow it to bounce first before hitting it. This creates some ping pong-inspired points where players are just a few feet from one another trying to poke the ball over the net. You then have a larger area behind that where players can take a bigger swing at the ball, which would highlight your skills with other traditional racquet sports. It makes for a fun back-and-forth.
If you need help visualizing the sport, here are some highlights from the 2021 US Open Men’s Singles gold match.
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Article courtesy of https://boardroom.tv/
