In the United States, a sport with particular characteristics is growing. It is a kind of mini tennis, badminton, paddle tennis and pingpong. It’s called pickleball and it was created during a day of “boredom” in the summer of 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington. This is how one of the main followers of this sport tells it: Bill Gates, en su blog Gates Notes.
The billionaire states in his notes that “one of my favorite hobbies is now fastest growing sport in America“. Thus he refers to the “paddle” of the golden age of Bill Gates when he began to build his empire with only 19 years.
Gates defines, in a video, sport as a mixture of tennis, paddle tennis, badminton and pingpong. “And if you haven’t heard of him, I hope you soon will,” she suggests. “I’ve been a ‘pickler’, as people obsessed with this game are knownlike me, for more than 50 years,” he declares.
In this way, the billionaire suggests practicing this sport as one of the best hobbies when bored in the summer. “If you and your family are bored and looking for something to do this summer, I encourage you to practice it.”
“Boredom”, the key to the origin of this sport
Gate makes a chronology of the origin of pickleball and tells it that way. “Three parents who lived on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, came home one summer afternoon to find their children complaining that they had nothing to do. Then they found a net, a wiffle ball (a ball that has a variation of the baseball one), some ping pong paddles and they created a game on an old badminton court that the whole family could play”. The invention “was a success”, he points out.
Over the next year, the three friends worked together to develop a set of rules, formalize the court layout, and introduce a larger plywood paddle that was good for hitting the ball. Y they decided to call it pickleballGates details in the story.
Gates family at the origin
“My dad was friends with the inventors of the game, Joel Pritchard, a state legislator and later Lieutenant Governor of Washington, Barney McCallum and Bill Bell. He heard about its creation and, in the late 1960s he was inspired to build a pickleball court at our house. I’ve been playing ever since,” adds the philanthropist.
At that moment, the pickleball community was very small in America. “I doubt there were more than a thousand people in the Seattle area who would have watched the sport when my family picked it up. And I don’t think anyone expected it to ever become a national phenomenon,” Gates argues.
pickleball growth
Today, there are more than 4.8 million players in the United Statesa growth of almost 40% in the last two years. “I hope it just gets bigger. I knew things had gotten serious for pickleball when I opened The Economist and I found a story about the new fame of the game,” he declares.
“Win or lose, I can’t think of a better way to spend a summer day than as a Pickler. If you decide to try this sport I hope it brings you as much joy as it brings me and my family,” says the billionaire.
