The fastest growing and most popular sport in the United States right now is not football, basketball, or tennis, but a ball game you may not have heard of yet—pickleball.
Pickleball was born in 1965 in Seattle, USA. It can be said that it is a hybrid sport of tennis, badminton and table tennis.Its name comes from a dog owned by one of the inventors; when the two inventors first tried playing, a dog named Pickleball often ran with the ball in his mouth, hence the name Pickleball.
The two inventors of pickleball, Joel Pritchard and Dan Evans
The pickleball court is exactly the same as the badminton court, except that the net is lower. The size of the ball is also similar to that of a tennis ball, but it is a hollow ball made of resin with many holes on the surface.The racket is shaped like an oversized table tennis racket. The style of play is similar to that of tennis, and the amount of exercise can be very intense, but the injuries caused by the exercise are less than that of tennis. Therefore, some people who have been playing tennis for a long time will turn to pickleball when they reach a certain age and want to exercise but do not want to be injured by sports.
Therefore, this sport did not just appear in recent years, but has been around for a long time. So why has it suddenly become the fastest-growing sport in the United States after nearly 60 years? What's the secret here?
1 Very easy to play
Pickleball is so simple that even a novice can master it in just an hour or two. Even beginners and veterans can play it.Of course, it is not easy to become a top player in any field, but pickleball has a low entry barrier and can attract more people to participate.
2 Comes with social attributes
There is a certain distance between people playing pickleball, but not as far away as in tennis, so that others cannot hear what they say. So people can chat while playing pickleball, making this sport naturally social.3 The driving role of the epidemic
In fact, in the 1990s, students in primary and secondary schools and elderly people in retirement communities were already playing pickleball.With the arrival of COVID-19, its popularity has skyrocketed as people need outdoor sports that allow them to maintain social distance.Pickleball naturally allows people to maintain a certain social distance between themselves and exercise.
Because of the epidemic, more people have started to get involved in pickleball and fell in love with it.
4 The “carrying goods” effect of celebrity KOLThe praise of well-known sports stars such as Kevin Durant and LeBron James, as well as the host of the talk show "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" Ellen, and the Internet celebrity Kardashian have played a big role in the mainstreaming of pickleball.The support and exposure of these popular athletes brought huge attention to pickleball and further promoted its popularity.
