The Spread of Pickleball

People who know me well know that I love pickleball. It is just a great game this gives easy access for millions to try it, and hours of enjoyment (and exercise too) for those of us who are devotees.

I’m always interested when I hear something about pickleball. This year, author Dave Berry, wrote a blog about things that happened in 2023. Kind of a year in review. This is the way he started off that article.

It was a year of reckoning, a year in which humanity finally began to understand that it faces an existential threat, a threat unlike any we have ever faced before, a threat that will wreak havoc on our fragile planet if we fail to stop it — and it may already be too late.

We are referring, of course, to pickleball.

Nobody knows where it started. Some scientists believe it escaped from a laboratory in China. But whatever its origin, it has been spreading like rancid mayonnaise ever since, to the point where pickleball courts now cover 43 percent of the continental U.S. land mass, subjecting millions of Americans to the inescapable, annoying POP of the plastic ball and the even more annoying sound of Boomers in knee braces relentlessly telling you how much fun it is and demanding that you try it.

Dave Berry, Dave Barry’s 2023 Year in Review: Yes, the situation is hopeless, Boston Globe, Dec. 31, 2023

I love a little hyperbole. Just makes life more fun. But Berry is not far off. The sport is spreading like gangrene! And it is getting younger! I’m regularly playing with twenty somethings who have an athleticism that I remember and admire.