PickleBlogger.com

Pickleball has been around since the 1960s, is a paddle/racket game played outdoors and indoors where typically four players, two on each team hit a hollow perforated plastic ball (40-holes outdoor ball – 26-holes indoor ball) using solid-faced graphite or fiberglass paddles over a 36-inch-high net. Teams on each side of the court hit the ball back and forth until one commits an infraction. Two can also play the game, one player on each side of the net. Pickleball was invented in the summer of 1965 by three dads, Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum in Bainbridge, a town outside of Seattle, WA. The three dads got together to discuss possible games for their kids to play during the summer, and Voilà, pickleball was born.

What is the pickleball experience? The pickleball experience may differ from community to community, for example, we have visited other HOA communities, and in some, the experience we noticed is basically uniform, players lined up their paddles and wait for their turn to play, the games are serious, but we didn’t see the social comradery we were expecting, although a less-close comradery did exist, I would not call it a social gathering,  the age range in these communities was the 60s to 80s, they all played well. In other communities we saw a different type of comradery, here, music was playing, and you can see how the players reacted, they expressed joy on the court, and they were much friendlier to one another, some doing their dance moves to the music.  Basically, same age group, but it was clear that the social atmosphere here was stronger, and some even commented that they looked forward to these games for the social closeness and their therapeutic effect. So the pickleball exper