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New York (AFP) – At the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, Amy Zhao enthusiastically spikes the ball and lets out a loud laugh. Tennis? Badminton? Ping pong? No, it’s pickleball that is all the rage in New York as in the rest of the United States where it is becoming more professional and sees an influx of investments.
On this weekday evening, there are several dozen of them, men, women, thirties or retirees, to share four new courts which have replaced pétanque courts in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The teams are formed spontaneously and we wait our turn while discussing, in front of the unique view of the illuminated skyscrapers of Manhattan, before an 11-point game. “It’s super fun. I always play with different people,” smiles Amy Zhao, a 52-year-old New Yorker.
David Masters, a 31-year-old computer software engineer, was seduced, discouraged by tennis in New York: “It’s 100 dollars (the price of the annual pass for access to public courts, editor’s note) and you have to get up at 6 a.m.” to find a slot, he explains.
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You mini-tennis?
With its neon yellow perforated plastic ball that floats a little in the air, its rackets reminiscent of padel tennis, its mandatory spoon serve and its small-sized court, pickleball can take on the appearance of “mini-tennis”. , or even “sub-tennis” for its detractors.
But what pleases is precisely this mix with badminton and ping-pong, which causes hyper-fast exchanges and improbable volleys. In addition to reflexes, placement on the pitch is crucial: you have to play high on the court, but with a ban on entering an area behind the net when you hit the ball on the fly.
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The game, invented in 1965 in Washington State by three fathers, including elected Republican Joel Pritchard and businessman Bill Bell, is on the rise in the United States: in February, the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) called it the “fastest growing” sport in the country, with 4.8 million regular or casual players in 2021, up 39% from to 2019.
A clearly visible surge in New York, where private coaches have appeared – at 75 dollars an hour for some – and where the fields have grown everywhere, sometimes in an artisanal way in sports parks, with strips of large scotch white to delimit the grounds and portable nets.
LeBron James in the ranks
“During the pandemic, people wanted activities. And pickleball ticks a lot of boxes, because it gets you outside, and it’s a sport that doesn’t require tons of exercise unless you want to play. at a higher level,” said Karim Kerawala, a 33-year-old clientele manager who is one of the most active players in Brooklyn.
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On the application where his group organizes meetings, the number of players has increased in one year from 200/300 to nearly 2,000, he explains. By admitting all smiles that for him, it’s a “new obsession”.
Several “professional” circuits are already competing for the American landscape, including the APP Tour, founded in 2019, and which was able to organize its first tournament at the end of May at Flushing Meadows, on the grounds of the US Open.
Its competitor, the PPA Tour, founded in 2018 and bought by businessman Tom Dundon, already owner of the Carolina Hurricanes ice hockey team, signed exclusive contracts for the 24 best players in the discipline, men and women. The circuit distributed three million dollars in bonuses in 2022, a sum which should “double in 2023”, according to Hannah Johns, director of content for the organization.
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“We were able to get bigger sponsors and we are now working with the most important network networks, which have helped us bring this sport to the general public,” she explains, quoting NBC, ABC, Fox, and by highlighting the broadcast this summer of a tournament on the national channel CBS.
And in this turbulent sector, Major League Pickleball, which wants to reach the goal of 40 million players by 2030, announced on Wednesday that American basketball star LeBron James had joined forces with fellow players Draymond Green (Golden State Warriors) and Kevin Love (Cleveland Cavaliers) to buy out a team.
© 2022 AFP
