There is a sour side to pickles.
The game’s rapid rise — between 2020 and 2022, it saw a 113% increase in participation, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association’s (SFIA) 2023 report — has led to ugly turf wars, raging noise complaints, violence, lawsuits and even potential. criminal charges.
“I had to go to our recreational sports center and tell the 70-year-old man: ‘If you threaten to hit the director of our sports center with a paddle again, I’m going to kick you out,'” said Chuck Line, the city manager in Glendale, Colorado.
He never thought his job might include lecturing senior citizens on how to play well.
But nothing is off-limits since picklers — short for pickleball players — started popping up in earnest in the Denver enclave.
A few months ago, a group of fierce competitors, aged 60 and over, refused to leave a rural tennis court when asked by maintenance staff.
The court was scheduled to be resurfaced, but the players stood their ground and shouted “you can’t make us” until the police finally arrived.
Parents complained that pickpockets had invaded children’s play areas at the Corporal John A. Seravalli Playground in the West Village of New York City. New York Post Pickleball players battled parents and park officials at Corporal John A. Seravalli Playground in the West Village of New York City.
In September, the Glendale city council finally passed the first of its kind — according to USA Pickleball’s managing director of facilities development and equipment standards, Carl Schmits — an ordinance after community tennis players complained that pickers were taking over the courts from dawn to dusk.
It is now an offense for people to bring pickle nets onto outdoor tennis courts, draw pickle lines on them, shovel snow from them or place chairs on their surfaces. Cameras will be trained on the renovated tennis courts to catch violators, who can be fined up to $1,000.
“It is a deficiency [with pickleball venues],” lamented Line. “People never felt the lack of a basketball court.”
In New York City, pranksters have clashed with parents after setting up courts in children’s play areas in parks such as Corporal John A. Seravalli Playground in the West Village.
But, it’s mostly tennis players who invade their territory.
In the Denver enclave of Glendale, Colorado, a turf war has erupted between pickleball players and tennis players. Denver Post via Getty Images
About 35% of the nearly 45,000 pickleball courts in the US and Canada have been converted from tennis courts, causing some to cry foul.
“If pickleball is so popular, let them build their own court :),” tennis great Martina Navratilova wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, last year.
The United States Tennis Association opines that the sport of kings is “thriving” and that “the number of people playing tennis is greater than the number of people playing pickleball, badminton, racquetball, and squash combined.” The 2023 National Tennis Participation Report found that nearly 24 million people played at least once in 2022.
Martina Navratilova has complained about pickleball taking over the tennis court. Anthony J. Causey
But, the SFIA report states that “pickleball continues to be the fastest growing sport in America. Participation nearly doubled in 2022, increasing by 85.7% year over year and by an astounding 158.6% over three years.”
In comparison, tennis participation will only increase by about 4% in 2022.
Mike Tarvin, northeast US sales manager for SportMaster, which produces coatings used for sports surfaces, including official pickleball courts, has been in sales for the company for 25 years.
He remembers mostly submitting requests related to tennis courts until about a decade ago.
“In the last three years, every phone call I’ve gotten has been, ‘I want to turn my tennis court into a pickleball’ or ‘I’m looking at putting a new pickleball court at my location, can you help me?'” Tarvin said.
As a picker himself, he expects the courts to eventually become what certain communities once were like backyard ponds.
Pickleball is reportedly the fastest growing sport in the US. Newsday via Getty Images
In March, the Association of Pickleball Professionals reported that an estimated 48 million American adults had played pickleball at least once in the past year.
The sport was originally seen as mostly a game played among the elderly, but the average age of players is now 35, according to the SFIA.
But, pickleball causes more rackets than any other racket sport.
The hard paddles and hollow plastic balls used to play the game produce louder “impulsive” sounds, as acoustic engineers call them, that can travel a greater distance than the sounds from tennis balls and rackets.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed across the country against homeowner associations and municipalities over noise concerns.
The design of the pickleball equipment makes the game very noisy. TNS
On Cape Cod, an injunction restraining pickles was made at a certain outdoor rink in the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, because of noise complaints from neighbors.
Dustin Fauth, who lives with his wife and two children a few hundred feet from the pickleball court, said in an affidavit that the constant “pop, pop-pop” of the game “came through the windows and walls” of his home and forced. her family to “play loud music, wear noise-cancelling headphones, close the window (or) leave our house to go somewhere else when we can’t take it anymore.”
Falmouth officials have addressed ongoing concerns over pickleball at their meetings for years. And, despite the injunction that has been in place all summer, pickleball players (some say, mainly from out of town) are still angering neighbors — and concerned city officials — by climbing fences to try to play.
On Cape Cod, a pickleball court was closed after complaints from neighbors.gopetition.com
Lance Willis, principal acoustic engineer for Spendiarian & Willis Acoustics & Noise Control, which conducts noise studies, used to do two or three jobs a year primarily around Arizona on 55 and older communities.
Now, he usually has four or five pickleball-related jobs at any one time and they are all over the United States in places like Minnesota, Vermont, Massachusetts, as well as in Canada.
“I have been involved in several legal actions [as an expert witness] where the neighbors are trying to get an injunction against the other neighbor’s pickle pit they have behind their house,” he said.
Willis spoke to The Post by phone while in Centennial, Colorado, where he is helping city officials craft an ordinance that will guide permitting of pickleball courts.
In March, the city implemented a six-month moratorium on building new outdoor pickleball courts.
In San Francisco, socialite Holly Peterson, who is married to Hotwire.com co-founder Karl Peterson, led a campaign in August that implored the city to immediately close the courthouse in its upscale neighborhood.
San Francisco socialite Holly Peterson – who is married to Hotwire.com co-founder Karl Peterson (pictured) – campaigned against pickle noise in her neighborhood, only to be exposed as a hypocrite. OWEN HOFFMANN
“As residents of Presidio Heights, the non-stop pickleball games at the Presidio Wall Court are ruining our peace and quiet. The noise isn’t just grating — it’s changing the way we live and our precious Presidio wildlife,” he wrote in a petition on Change.org, “The endless racket threatens our fragile ecosystem and the prestige of our community. It’s not just about us — it’s about preserving nature for future generations. Beyond that, home values within a 500-foot radius are sinking, held back by unrelenting noise. This isn’t just a blow to homeowners; it’s a blow to our local economy.”
But Peterson was called out on social media for hypocrisy days after the petition went live, when Reddit users discovered that she and her husband had been trying to sell their $36 million mansion — which features a karaoke room that opens onto the outside of her own home. pickleball court.
Still, controversies and complaints haven’t weakened the game’s appeal.
Peterson said the pickleball game at the Presidio was disturbing the peace. San Francisco Pickleball Community/Facebook
USA Pickleball, the sport’s national governing body, is involved in more than $200 million in construction projects for pickleball facilities across the country, from those in public parks to municipalities, private communities and small and large-scale sites, according to spokeswoman Melissa Zhang.
For Jay Granieri, a broker with ONE Sotheby’s International Realty in Fort Lauderdale who gave up tennis for pickleball, the neighborhood court has become a hot real estate amenity.
“I’ve been selling real estate for over a decade,” Granieri said. “I’ve never had anyone ask me about tennis, but I’ve had people ask me about pickleball. So that has to say something.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
