5 ms·
Tennis great Steffi Graf got bitten by pickleball's 'fun factor'
- ipaddr 2y agoA tennis player picking up pickleball. What's next a hockey player that plays golf in the summer.
- bdangubic 2y agoyou mean field hockey, right?
- myvoiceismypass 2y agoI think it was a Happy Gilmore reference.
- bdangubic 2y agoohhhh shit I did NOT get that
- Ensorceled 2y agoIce hockey players famously play a lot of golf in the summer, so much so that when a team gets knocked out of the playoffs people accuse them of throwing the game so they can get back to their golf.
- mionhe 2y agoAnd suddenly I wish for an unholy mix between the two. Full contact golf, anyone?
- relaxing 2y agoStill field hockey. Or for a slightly different twist, Lacrosse.
- recursivedoubts 2y agooffhand observation: I prefer both playing and, if i'm gonna, watching "bad" pickel ball. once the game gets optimized it turns into lots of dinks in the kitchen until someone makes a mistake, rather than longer, more interesting shots. pickle ball is one of the sports in the United States where chesterton's quote still applies: > "It is a good sign in a nation when such things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is a bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on. " i hope that doesn't change.
- zemvpferreira 2y agoI'm with you and would hope pickleball continues to have its essence as a game, rather than a sport. It's much more interesting played for fun.
- yapyap 2y agosame with ping pong, if you ever see a professional match they can go for 5 minutes over one damn point
- BobaFloutist 2y agoThough frankly at a beginner level it feels like you're constantly chasing the ball, which is the same complaint I have with learning tennis.
- uses 2y agoFunny, as a casual player starting out, dinking was a skill I really wanted to gain proficiency in. But now most of my opponents just drive or overhead as hard as they can, which I think is very un-fun to play against. The points are short and there's a lot of randomness. And the best counterplay is to just do what they're doing.
- dwaltrip 2y agoLearn how to drop. It resets the pace
- yodsanklai 2y agoNever heard of "pickleball" until recently. Lots of article about this. Seems like a PR campaign of some sort. Is someone paying Graf to promote this game?
- thatguy0900 2y agoI think it's just becoming very popular. I can tell you at least "looking for a pickleball partner" is a very common line in dating apps at the moment.
- tokioyoyo 2y agoOh the peak was like 2022, I think. My city even banned it from public tennis courts, because of number of people getting into it and hogging the courts. Then unbanned. I actually see it less now when I’m on the courts.
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y agoThat was my assumption too. I first heard about pickleball a couple years ago where some billionaire sports team owner was on Bloomberg hyping up his investment. I think it was this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dundon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dundon
- conradfr 2y agoIn Europe it seems Pádel is all the craze.
- LeonardoTolstoy 2y agoPadel is great, and I do wish it would make it over to the northeast US somewhat. Paddle tennis has some presence, but Padel is basically nonexistent still
- TacticalCoder 2y ago[dead]
- gtirloni 2y ago
- lapcat 2y agoPickleball downsides: 1) It's loud, a lot louder than tennis. Tennis balls have felt, and tennis racquet strings have some flexibility, whereas pickleball uses a hard paddle and an unpadded ball. People who live near courts complain about the noise from pickleball. 2) Pickleball is coming to monopolize the local courts, making them inaccessible by tennis players. 3) Pickleball involves less running and physical fitness than tennis.
- browningstreet 2y agoAlso: those on pickleball courts tend to talk the whole time. It’s hard trying to play tennis adjacent to shared courts with pickleball.
- NickC25 2y agoIndeed, and a lot of the time the more casual players often bring stereos or speakers to the courts and blast music. It's incredibly annoying. A park near me tore up one tennis court and erected 2 pickle courts, and the people that play on those pickle courts are loud and obnoxious and blast music all the time. Note: I am a lifelong tennis player. I detest pickleball. Is it great to see new people playing a sport and getting active? Yes. Does it have to come at the expense of proper etiquette of sports that have been around much longer? No, but it currently is.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoAlso tennis has some of the best aesthetics of any amateur sport where pickleball is somehow more sexless than ping pong. It's fun tho. Truly a game for our time.
- jmknoll 2y agoIt’s the sweatpants-at-work of sports
- BobaFloutist 2y agoI sure hope you're not including the obnoxious women's dress code in that.
- apitman 2y agoOne reason pickleball is interesting is because it factors out physical advantages more than most other sports. You can get wrecked by a 9yo and a 70yo in consecutive games.
- tolerance 2y agoI don't understand anything about this sport except for that it's "controlled" by that a Texas billionaire and now I finally comprehend how sports are businesses. https://archive.is/vcraM https://archive.is/vcraM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dundon#Pickleball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dundon#Pickleball
- poulsbohemian 2y agoI met Joel Prichard several times as a kid… grew up in a poor neighborhood in the 1980s where we played Pickleball on the playground and in PE class… when I first started hearing about this new craze (from friends in the Midwest!), I absolutely lost my mind - you mean that game we played in the ghetto when we weren’t playing tackle football in the streets? I’d love to know the story of how it got from Bainbridge Island to my poor neighborhood, and at the time Joel was just the Lt. Governor, I never made the connection to Pickleball until adulthood.
- jrm4 2y agoMy pet theory is that the "improved" technology of tennis rackets paved the way for pickleball. "New" (to me, I'm 48 and played varsity in high-school) tennis rackets are actually now TOO light and the strings are too grippy, allowing for just stupid levels of spin and baseline control usually reserved for the pros. This severely reduces net play and increases a whole lot of court running. Pickleball brings back that part.
- dgeiser13 2y agoWhat's next? Professional cornhole? Oh, wait... https://www.iplaycornhole.com/ https://www.iplaycornhole.com/