Several of us were having coffee at The Deck last Thursday. It’s a regular thing. We meet weekly to gossip, trash talk and discuss how the world would be a far better place if only we were in charge. You get the idea – typical conversations between type “A” men who have far too much time on their hands. Two constitutes a quorum, but this time five of us posted. The conversation, as it frequently does, turned to our various aches, pains, surgeries and recoveries. One in the group is scheduled to have a bionic knee installed. Most of us are carrying enough spare parts in our bodies to set off alarms in every airport in the world.
After the obligatory organ recital -- too young to know the expression? Be patient, you will one day understand -- the conversation turned to pickleball. All but one of us play, or played, pickleball. The outlier is a golf fanatic whose son is a kick butt pickler who recently relocated to Vermont. As we talked, the one with two new shoulders floated a novel idea that was embraced by the group. It’s a simple idea really. What he proposed was an over 65 coed tournament, sponsored by Optim and Chatham Orthopedic, for bionic picklers or ones who have boosted the net worth of local orthopedists. Think knees, hips, shoulders, ankles, backs and whatever else can be corrected with spare parts.
And why should Court Sports support such a tournament? To introduce something different and imaginative to pickleball nation. Pickleball is a competitive and highly social sport played by enthusiasts of all ages. Imagine the friendly trash talk as quasi-ambulatory picklers hobble about the court trying to prove that we’re not yet ready for the glue factory. Better yet, belly up to the bar and listen to the ancien régime weave fish tales of pickleball derring-do. What do you think aging picklers? Who’s game?
In an unrelated matter, after his third-round victory at Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic was asked to weigh in on pickleball and padel. (If you don’t know padel, Google it.) He responded, “At the club level, tennis is in danger. If we don’t do something about it, like I said, globally or collectively with the growth of padel in Europe and pickleball in the United States, we’re going to see more tennis courts converting to padel and pickleball because it’s cheaper.” Djokovic, who lost the final to Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets, might well be correct. Tennis is a wonderful sport, but it’s important to face reality. Apple reports that pickleball has passed tennis in popularity in the USA and an increasing number of colleges and universities are building pickleball courts and offering it as a club or intramural sport. High schools across the country are also jumping on the pickleball band wagon. With young people embracing the pickle frenzy, it might well be that increasingly underused tennis courts will soon morph into pickleball courts.