Rob Oller's Second Thoughts: In court wars, pickleball taking tennis to the cleaners
Even as Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic battled on court at Wimbledon, less celebrated tennis players surely considered battling a more threatening challenger in court – pickleball.
A number of lawsuits in recent years have pitted tennis against pickleball over site permits (who has or should have access to racket courts) and loss of real estate. Increasingly, tennis courts are being converted into pickleball areas. Protests also have been initiated by heated homeowners who want noise ordinances enforced against the clack, clack, clack of pickleball paddle against plastic ball.
As a third-party observer with no scraped skin in either game, I must say the bickering provides entertaining theater. Plot: Established sport attempts to hold off upstart. Twitter vs. Threads. Tennis was here first. Pickleball fancies itself the sport that can last. Game on.
If you play tennis, maybe you also play pickleball. It’s allowed. Or maybe you would rather stick a fork in your eye before playing the “hobby” that shall not be named.
I grew up playing tennis when you could hardly find an open court, when the sport’s popularity was propelled by Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Arthur Ashe, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, among others.
Tennis still has its stars. The sport is not dying. The United States Tennis Association reports that the number of tennis players grew by 33% between 2019 and 2022. But … pickleball has grown 159% over the same span, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
I enjoyed pickleball the one time I played it. Going in, I worried it might be more shuffleboard than sport, but afterward my thighs burned for two days. It’s a workout. And takes less toll on the body than tennis.
The Dispatch reported last week that 36.5 million Americans play pickleball, and not all of them are age 106 or older. The sport, a hybrid of tennis, badminton and table tennis, is trending younger and cooler. I want to try it again.
Eventually, tennis and pickleball players will need to learn to get along. Until then, give peace a chance.
Not for British Open betting purposes, but …
I found Golf Digest’s formula-driven analytics fascinating for helping predict which PGA Tour players had the best chance at winning this week’s Open Championship.
Not to get too deep into the data, but Golf Digest studied different shapes and heights of ball flights and combined with ball speeds determined who would play best in the windy conditions expected at Royal Liverpool. The 11 previous Open winners for which data was available averaged higher than the tour average on launch angle (angle the ball flies through the air); lower than average spin rate (amount of backspin on ball); and average apex no lower than 2 feet below tour average (shot’s highest point).
The formula correctly predicted the top three at last year’s Open – Cameron Smith, Cameron Young and Rory McIlroy – and spit out 20 names this year who will contend, including Smith, Young and McIlroy. Others to keep an eye on are Collin Morikawa, Scottie Scheffler and Westerville resident Jason Day.
The data also predicted six of the top 10 finishers at the Scottish Open last week, including eventual winner McIlroy.
Me? I like Dustin Johnson, who also is one of the projected 20.
Listening in
“I don't do this for a living, so it’s something you dream about. I've been playing in this tournament for almost a decade and now I’ve got some hardware to show for it.” NBA star Stephen Curry, whose eagle putt on the final hole won the American Century Championship on the shores of Lake Tahoe in Nevada.
Off-topic
When reaching a riper older age – ahem – there become fewer and fewer “first-time evers” to celebrate. Or curse. I’m not getting political with this, more just pointing out that after mumble-mumble years living in Ohio, the previous two months feature the first time I ever awakened to a yellowish haze caused by Canadian wildfires. Explain it away all you want. All I’m saying is this is new. And not pleasant.
I went looking for a scientific explanation and found this from Edward Struzik of Queen’s University in Canada, who authored “Dark Days at Noon, The Future of Fire.”
“Most fires in the boreal forest of northern Canada are started by lightning. A one-degree Celsius increase in temperature amounts to about 12% more lightning," Struzik told CBS News. “So the warmer it gets as the climate heats up, the more triggers there are for fires to burn.”
More lightning triggered more fires. And higher heat triggered more lightning. Makes sense to me.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: pickleball, tennis at war over real estate in battle of racket sports
