Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm incredibly biased as someone who plays tennis recreationally, but nothing quite stirs up a feeling of disgust deep in my soul like pickleball.
I've tried out most of the major racquet sports and pickleball is the first time I've felt like a "sport" is Pareto inferior. Racquetball and squash require utilizing wall bounces, table tennis and badminton require quicker reflexes, table tennis also emphasizes more uses of spins, while badminton emphasizes drop shots and overheads.
Pickleball manages to simultaneously de-emphasize speed, strength, reflexes, power, spin, and touch. It's really quite impressive how it can blunt the importance of every aspect of athleticism and skill, all while producing one of the most annoying sounds known to humanity. This type of lowest common denominator slop is effective when you need to get together a group of people of disparate physical ability to play together, but it's largely antithetical my idea of "sport", both for playing and especially for viewing.
I've played all of the racquet sports you mentioned casually (including pickleball) except one, two of which competitively as well in a more formal capacity when I was younger.
I agree, as a sport pickleball is the worst of many worlds. It reminds me of the Robert California quote on the Black Eyed Peas: Pickleball is like tennis for people who don't like tennis, badminton for people who don't like badminton, racquetball for people who don't like racquetball. Yet, it has a relatively high floor and low ceiling, which is a feature and not a bug for people who like it for its Inclusivity and lack of athletic Ableism, especially to serve as a social event.
Pickleball is a recurring source of displeasure in online tennis spaces, including /r/tennis and /r/10s, sometimes with even a "total pickleball-player death when?" vibe. However, mainly for a different reason: the tennis players in such spaces feel there’s a concerted movement to non-consensually Replace them with pickleball players, a movement they’re largely powerless to stop.
They see their local tennis courts getting converted into pickleball courts, when tennis court availability can already be sparse depending on time and geography. Sometimes the tennis nets are removed and pickleball nets installed, the lines repainted from tennis to pickleball court. Sometimes pickleball nets are installed on each half of the tennis courts and the tennis lines are painted over with pickleball lines. Sometimes pickleball players just bring their own portable nets to takeover tennis courts. They report that pickleball players are more wont than tennis players to bring non-playing friends and family, so even when playing tennis on an adjacent court there are more hazards and obstacles in the forms of kids running around and bodies and chairs eating up space in the “out of bounds” regions between courts.
They also resent the unspoken and sometimes spoken message that pickleball is the future and they as tennis players should just bend the knee and yield their courts to pickleball players, for they are on the wrong side of history. Naturally, tennis Redditors refuse or neglect to Notice any parallels there may be between their predicament and other ongoings in the world.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link