Wimbledon Jr Champ Leaves Tennis for Pickelball

[jimlosaltos]

Speaking of triggering events ...

ESPN: Former junior Wimbledon champ Noah Rubin leaves tennis for pickleball

https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/34769098/former-junior-wimbledon-champ-noah-rubin-leaves-tennis-pickleball

"I'm not a tennis traditionalist, but there's a love for the sport and when you see something like pickleball coming in and so quickly taking over, the knee-jerk reaction is like, 'Get the f--- out of here,'" Rubin told ESPN. "No chance is this [sport] going to be anything, no chance is this worth a look. But then I put my ego aside, and I was like, 'Wow, I get it now. This all makes sense.'"

Rubin isn't entirely sure when he'll make his competitive debut and admits he still hasn't figured out many of the specific details about his pickleball career, but he's excited to be a part of the growing sport early. There are currently three professional leagues -- Major League Pickleball (MLP), the Association of Pickleball Professionals (APP) and the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) -- and, since the organizations are all so new, players aren't necessarily beholden to one and many participate in various events across leagues. The sport's popularity has never been higher -- both at the professional and recreational level -- and last month LeBron James was announced as an owner of an MLP expansion team, alongside Maverick Carter, Draymond Green and Kevin Love. Drew Brees and James Blake are also investors in the league.

Rubin will be at the MLP's final tournament of the year this weekend in Columbus, Ohio, as a spectator and then will try to figure out his next steps. He said he wants to take his time in deciding his first event, but in the meantime he's hoping to use the social media and marketing skills he has acquired from running "Behind the Racquet" to help continue expand pickleball's reach.

[seano]

It's almost impossible to make a decent living as a playing professional. Odds are very heavily against you. Not that I was a player of that quality, but that's why I took the teaching route and had an almost 40 year career and was able to raise 3 beautiful children. No regrets, love the sport and teaching. Still fascinated by all of the games complexities. Should be interesting to see how Rubin does with pickleball.

[stotty]

Not that I was a player of that quality, but that's why I took the teaching route and had an almost 40 year career and was able to raise 3 beautiful children. No regrets, love the sport and teaching. Still fascinated by all of the games complexities.

Your career mirrors mine...same duration...same fascination.

[glacierguy]

When I was a university student, in order to keep warm in the winter in our inadequately heated rented house, we used to pile all the furniture across the middle of the sitting room to make a "net" and hit a spongeball across with our hands. I guess that's like pickelball. A difference being that there weren't corporations and armies of marketers trying to separate us from our money.

[jimlosaltos]

Talked to a local club pro that kind of whispered about the growing conflict with rapidly growing use of courts for pickleball and tennis. Members have taken it on themselves to mark off pickleball on courts and installed "rogue lights" on one court -- just 4 low poles with LEDs work versus more complex (and more regulated) lights for tennis.

The competition for court space & attention is real and intensifying.

A local newspaper article:
Pickleball vs. tennis: A battle over S.F. court space has everyone asking why the city isn’t stepping in

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/pickleball-court-recreation-17502945.php

Excerpts:

“You can eyeball 100 pickleball players on a Saturday, and then you see four tennis players on the other two courts,” Safdie said of the Presidio space. “The city needs to do something faster and not keep putting us off.”

“Everybody’s smiling when you’re playing, even if you’re losing,” she said. “I always say, this is a better pick-up place than a bar! There are all these young guys and women coming out and meeting each other and exchanging numbers. It’s all about the sport and having fun together.”

Jim Oakes, 82, is a tennis chair umpire, but said he hasn’t picked up a tennis racket in three years. He said tennis is more fun to watch, but pickleball is more fun to play. He even qualified for next month’s national pickleball championships in doubles and mixed doubles in his age division.


Article:
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Add pickleball — and its explosion in popularity during the pandemic — to the list of silver linings the city hasn’t fully seized upon to make life in our struggling city a little more fun.

Legions of pickleball devotees want more space to play, but several players who serve as unofficial spokespeople for the sport said they’re battling for courts with tennis players and feel brushed off by the city’s Recreation and Park Department. Some cities have rushed to convert under-used tennis courts to pickleball courts — like Cincinnati, which spent $500,000 to remake tennis courts into 24 pickleball courts that attract scores of players each day and will host a big tournament next year.

San Francisco, on the other hand, has taken its typical approach: It has a pickleball working group — yes, really — that’s been talking about the need for more courts for four years.

In that time, the city moved from zero dedicated pickleball courts to 11, meaning it added fewer than three per year. Six were former tennis courts, and five were built from scratch.

It does have 48 tennis courts on which pickleball lines are also drawn, but the courts don’t have dedicated pickleball nets — kind of like providing a basketball court with no hoops. (Six of those are at Stern Grove and are temporarily closed due to construction.) Meanwhile, the city provides 139 tennis courts. And, yes, they have nets.

The city has provided some portable pickleball nets, but it’s often up to individual players to purchase and store their own. It’s almost always easier to find tennis courts in the city to reserve online than pickleball courts because there are so many more of them.

“We’re moving at record speed here,” said Tamara Aparton, spokesperson for the Recreation and Park Department, which is probably true considering San Francisco’s usual speed of making change is akin to watching a tennis match in very, very slow motion.

She said the city will add another six to eight dedicated pickleball courts “in the near future.”

“The popularity of pickleball has indeed skyrocketed, and we’ve been working really hard to keep up,” Aparton said. “It’s still hard to keep up with demand while also balancing the needs of the tennis community.”

She pointed out that tennis players in the city are already down 24 courts after the closure of a South of Market tennis club to make way for an office campus — a construction project that still hasn’t started, yet made it harder to find space in the city to play tennis.

To report this column, I agreed to play pickleball for the first time — it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. I met Suzy Safdie at the courts near the Presidio Wall playground, and they were already packed with avid pickleball players who seemed like they were having way more fun than you’d expect on a foggy Monday morning.

Safdie, a 61-year-old resident of the Merced Heights neighborhood, said a friend introduced her to pickleball a year ago, and she was hooked. Now she plays four times a week — sometimes for six hours a pop.

“Everybody’s smiling when you’re playing, even if you’re losing,” she said. “I always say, this is a better pick-up place than a bar! There are all these young guys and women coming out and meeting each other and exchanging numbers. It’s all about the sport and having fun together.”

The adjacent tennis courts, I noticed, were empty. And that’s no shade to tennis players: I played tennis on my high school team and loved it, although my skills have gone the way of my hair-sprayed bangs and disappeared.

Pickleball is sort of like tennis — but with courts about a quarter of the size, smaller rackets, lighter balls and shorter games. It’s easier to learn, and people of all skill levels and ages can play together. Pickleball often works like basketball — players often just show up for pickup games, rather than finding people to play with in advance.

But its popularity means the city’s few courts are packed, especially on the weekends.

“You can eyeball 100 pickleball players on a Saturday, and then you see four tennis players on the other two courts,” Safdie said of the Presidio space. “The city needs to do something faster and not keep putting us off.”

If that Monday was any indication, pickleball pandemonium isn’t going anywhere. Random players kept approaching me, telling me how much they love the sport, which is believed to be the fastest-growing sport in the country.

Amar Anand has even made it his profession, ditching his tech job at Twitter to become a coach. His income dwindled, but he lost 50 pounds and is far happier.

“It’s really changed my life,” he said. “I get to play pickleball all day!”

Bill Lafferty, a retired firefighter, gave me an impromptu pickleball lesson and is an evangelist for the sport. He said the city is favoring tennis players in its allotment of courts and that some tennis players have been downright rude to the newcomers.

“If you talk to tennis people, they’ll tell you, ‘These are our courts,’” he said. “No, they’re community courts. You need to share.”

Jim Oakes, 82, is a tennis chair umpire, but said he hasn’t picked up a tennis racket in three years. He said tennis is more fun to watch, but pickleball is more fun to play. He even qualified for next month’s national pickleball championships in doubles and mixed doubles in his age division.

He plays all over the country and ticked off a host of cities that are moving more quickly than San Francisco to give pickleball players more courts.

He likened the battle for courts between pickleball and tennis players in San Francisco to “the Hatfields and McCoys fighting with each other” but said it’s really the responsibility of the city to make the division of space more fair.

And then he uttered a common refrain among residents of San Francisco when it comes to resolving all sorts of challenges.

“The city,” he said, “just has to get with it.”

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