Pickleball is on its way to becoming the next sport to suffer a boom, after paddle tennis and cycling. The discipline that combines tennis, badminton and table tennis, has grown 35% in the number of practitioners in the United States in the last five years, up to 3.3 million people and seeks to expand in Europe in countries such as Spain, France or Italy.
The sport discipline has its origin in the United States in the mid-sixties, and it was not established in Spain until 2012, when Michael Hesp, an American player, founded the Spanish Pickleball Association, which currently encompasses all territorial federations.
Matches are played on a court the size of badminton, the wooden paddle is smaller than the tennis paddle and the ball, which is perforated, allows it to go slower and the exchanges to be longer. “All the factors that include pickleball make it easy to practice and attract the attention of the youngest and not so young”, highlights the president of the Spanish Pickleball Association, Roberto Pérez.
Pickleball is practiced by more than three million people in the United States
Since 2014, an average of almost 200 pickleball courts have been opened in the United States on a monthly basis. The phenomenon has been driven by the simplicity to carry out the installation, since it only needs a smooth surface and the delimitation of the field, since the players themselves usually carry the nets, which are portable.
The International Pickleball Federation currently has 57 member countries. In the United States, where the Usapa is the federation that governs pickleball, it has more than 30,000 federated and even has built a professional circuit that travels the country and even disputes international tournaments, such as the Spanish Open.
“Since 2015, the best pickleball players in the world have gathered for three days in Madrid, and this helps us to attract new players in Spain,” says the executive. Last year’s edition was not held due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but, for this course, more than a hundred players from all over the world are expected to attend. Organized by the Spanish association, the event will be part of the APP Tour from 2022 and, as a consequence, it must have a prize pool of at least 15,000 euros.
The Spanish Open will have a prize pool of 15,000 euros
At the moment, the mass of pickleball players in Spain (which exceeds one thousand) is concentrated in the autonomous communities of the Basque Country, the Canary Islands, Catalonia and Madrid.. The Madrid City Council itself has invested in the creation of tracks for this discipline in different parts of the city to include it in its sporting offer.
The association is currently in talks with the Higher Sports Council (CSD) for the sport to be classified as federated, although before it must meet some entry requirements (practitioners, clubs and associations) that they hope to be able to meet soon and qualify for subsidies to expand the scope of this sport, which wants to take the baton from paddle tennis.
The average price of a shovel is around fifty euros, and it has specialized brands such as Onix, Engage, Paddletek or Z-Zebra, of which the association is the distributor in Spain. Due to the growth that the sport has experienced especially in the United States, some brands with a notable positioning in tennis and paddle tennis such as Head, Wilson or Drop Shot, have already started to manufacture their own pickleball blades.
