From a pickle-ball website:
Pickleball sound levels within 100 feet of courts will usually be around 70 dBa with no sound reduction efforts applied. This is as loud as freeway traffic sound.
70dBa is much louder than tennis, and the game should be played on courts that are designed to deal with the sound.
They can play on the designated pickleball courts they’re just lazy and entitled boomers
“Telling us to go to one of 16 other courts?” Wysocki said, “I mean, why would we go to another court when our pool is right there? Our homes are right here.”
Yup
I could see this being a big problem with indoor tennis courts, but I’m not sure that would be a big deal outdoors, would it? Pretty much every outdoor public tennis court I’ve ever seen was just surrounded by a chain link fence.
I can understand other objections, but that one doesn’t make much sense to me.
The pickle-ball people in the article mention that one of the reasons that they want to use this court, is "our homes are right here.” So it depends on how close those homes are, and what’s between the courts and the houses.
I like pickleball. It’s fun but best understood as human sized ping pong instead of mini-tennis. Imagine the table tennis sound a lot louder. I could imagine ignoring the sound if you like the sport but it grating on you otherwise.
The courts aren’t loud. The cheap paddles are.
70dba is about what a vacuum cleaner puts out. I doubt anyone is actually bothered by the noise level considering it’s an outdoor sport unless their home literally shares a wall with the court.
They have disputed the alleged severity of the sound by conducting their own decibel-level checks with their phones
I’m totally sure they calibrated them too
My parents are actually dealing with the opposite of this - they’re avid tennis players, and were rather annoyed when the tennis courts a few blocks from their house were converted to pickleball courts. And while it’s not too bad to temporarily set up a pickleball net on a tennis court, you can’t easily convert a pickleball court for tennis due to the dimensions.
Last I heard, their Medicare provider gave them pickleball stuff and they were going to try it.
Also, does anyone know where all this pickleball hype is coming from? I’m sure it’s a fun sport, but with how quickly it’s taken off it feels like someone is spending some serious cash to make pickleball a big thing, it doesn’t seem like organic hype.
I’m sure it’s not totally organic, but don’t discount the basic popularity of an easy-to-play sport that doesn’t require a lot of athleticism to get to a level where you’re just playing the game and not practicing until you’re good enough. And, on top of that, it looks kind of like tennis, which is nowhere near as easy to play and requires a lot more athleticism, so it has that as a draw.
Finally, Baseketball IRL.
Also, does anyone know where all this pickleball hype is coming from? I’m sure it’s a fun sport, but with how quickly it’s taken off it feels like someone is spending some serious cash to make pickleball a big thing
It didn’t take off quickly. It started as a backyard game in the mid 60s among bored kids, and grew very slowly for decades. I was playing on a court in a friend’s back yard in the 80s. His dad was a big enough fan to lay tarmac for it. It just hit a tipping point in the last 15 years or so when it became popular enough that people could start making money off of it. So yeah, people are putting money into it because there’s a profit to be made. But mostly the game just became popular because it’s fun, cheap, and easy to pick up.
You’re right. There’s a ton of celebrity endorsements and money involved. Everyone wants to be at the top of this new sports industry.
But I learned to play in highschool over a decade ago. It’s been around but only really gained traction over covid
The war between pickleballers and tennis players is the one war I currently approve of and I hope it escalates to the pickleballers lobbing slow serves at the tennis players.
There’s always at least one open tennis court at the parks near me. You can make like 4 pickleball courts out of 1 tennis court, so I feel like there’s gotta be a nice middle ground here
It’s got what plants crave DUUUHHH
And swore a Pickleball Court Oath to rival anything ever done at a tennis court.
