This afternoon, Bill Gates’ personal public account was updated and released the latest note “Fifty years ago, I started playing this little-known sport with an interesting name. Now, it’s on fire.” In the article, Bill Gates said, “I’m a little surprised and delighted that one of my favorite leisure activities has suddenly become popular. For decades, the sport was mainly confined to the Pacific Northwest, and now it has become more popular. To be the fastest growing sport in America.”
The sport Bill Gates refers to is called “pickleball”, which can be seen as a mix of tennis, badminton and table tennis.
It is understood that the sport of pickleball was born in 1965 because of boredom. Three fathers who live on Bainbridge Island near Seattle came home one summer evening to find their children complaining about having nothing to do. So they found a net, a waffle ball and some ping pong bats to create a sport the whole family could play together on an old badminton court.
Over the next year, the three friends worked together to create a set of rules that regulated the layout of the pitch and introduced a larger plywood bat that was good for hitting the ball. They decided to name the sport Pickleball.
Bill Gates said his father and the three inventors of the sport – Joel Pritchard (former state legislator and later lieutenant governor of Washington), Barney McCallum and Bill Bell is a friend.He heard about their invention and was inspired to build a pickleball court in his home in the late 1960s, and Bill Gates has been playing ever since.
Today, there are more than 4.8 million pickleball fans across the United States, and participation has grown by nearly 40 percent in the past two years.
Bill Gates really loves pickleball, saying: “Win or lose, I can’t think of a better way to spend the summer than playing pickleball.”
