Originally published by the Wall Street Journal and written by Joshua Robinson.
The U.S. Tennis Association says that 10% of courts in America have been taken over or repainted since the pickleball boom began.
Throughout the spectacular rise of pickleball in the U.S., American tennis has always insisted that there was no war between the two sports. More people picking up rackets of any kind, the U.S. Tennis Association argued, could only be a good thing.
But on at least one front, there is no longer any denying that tennis and pickleball are in direct conflict. The battle for court space has arrived—and tennis is losing ground fast. Today, the USTA says, at least 10% of tennis courts in America have been taken over and repurposed for pickleball.
“There are not enough courts to support tennis growth,” says USTA chief executive Lew Sherr. “And court infrastructure being compromised with people playing pickleball on those courts or courts being repainted.”
The land grab should come as no surprise considering pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. In February, the SFIA reported a 223.5% increase in participation since the pickleball boom began three years ago, with more than 10 million people picking up a pickleball paddle over the past 12 months. And all of those new players are now spread across 65,000 courts at some 15,500 facilities nationwide, according to USA Pickleball.
“If I was in tennis’s shoes, I know that that wouldn’t be something I would appreciate either,” USA Pickleball CEO Mike Nealy said. “The market will find its way.”
The problem is all the more urgent for tennis as the sport experiences its own revival. The USTA expects to surpass 24.5 million players this year and has set itself a goal of having 35 million players by 2035. Sherr chalks up the growth of his sport, in part, to the pandemic—people were handed more flexibility in their work schedules and tennis was a socially distanced activity.
“But at a time that tennis is growing and experiencing really unprecedented growth, it does create stress,” Sherr says. “We’re trying, as best we can, to support tennis infrastructure.”
For private clubs, pickleball makes plenty of commercial sense. The same court that accommodates up to four paying customers for a doubles tennis match can be carved up into at least two separate pickleball courts, meaning that clubs can charge up to eight players to rent the same real estate. All it takes to convert a court from tennis to pickleball is a few licks of paint.
“The fact that it’s just so much cheaper to paint than build new is a problem for us at a time that tennis has experienced growth we’ve not seen in generations,” Sherr says.
Even top tennis players have been calling attention to the issue. At Wimbledon this summer, 24-time major winner Novak Djokovic said that he believed the economics of sports such as pickleball and its European counterpart padel meant that “tennis is in danger.”
“If we don’t do something about it,” Djokovic added, “we’re going to see more tennis courts converting to padel and pickleball because it’s cheaper.”
The USTA is ramping up efforts to fund more construction. But on the court, it’s also mounting a counterattack with its own chatty, tennis-adjacent game of minimal running. They call it Red Ball Tennis and, like pickleball, the USTA brands it as a “FUN adult social experience designed to bring new players to your courts,” according to the organization website.
The name comes from the fuzzy, softer tennis balls that are generally used to give children a feel for swinging a tennis racket and introduce them to basic technique. Now, the USTA hopes that it can expand the audience for the game by highlighting the aspects of it that people already enjoy about pickleball. It’s social, it requires little athleticism, and even beginners can quickly find themselves in a rally. Most importantly, the game takes place at tennis facilities without any permanent modifications to the courts. The USTA said that red ball is now being played by 20,000 people at more than 500 venues around the country.
Those numbers, however, pale in comparison to the millions clamoring for space to play pickleball.
“If we were not growing or tennis players were defecting it would be very different,” Sherr says. “Participation is not zero sum, but the court space is.”