The sound you're about to hear, supplied by James, our WDIY engineer, is very, very annoying to a large number of people.
*sound of pickleball on a court*
It can best be described as a "thwock." I speak, of course, of the sound a pickleball makes when it is struck by a pickleball paddle on a pickleball court played by pickleballers, of which, I now admit in the year of our Lord 2025, that I am one.
I began playing about two years ago at the Hanover Township Rec Center. There were reasons I started playing. It was winter — I don't ski, so what, I'm gonna start snow shoeing? And I wanted competition, something other than going to the gym and working with inanimate objects like treadmills and weights. People think pickleball is annoying? Gym equipment is annoying.
I was vaguely aware of some of the acrimony directed toward pickleball players. In the South Jersey town where I spend some time in the warmer months, there was a kind-of turf war. Think of it as West Side Story set in ritzy zip codes about pickleball, as pickleball courts overtook some tennis courts, and even some basketball courts.
But that isn't a problem at the Hanover Rec Center where pickleball is worked into the regular schedule; a varitable haven for people of a certain age. My age.
Soon after I became a semi-regular, a piece about pickleball appeared in the Washington Post written by my friend and former Sports Illustrated colleague Rick Reilly. It was one of a thousand articles written making fun of pickleball but being Rick Reilly, it was funny, and it was widely read.
Rick's bones to pick with the sport were multitudes. He hates the sound of the ball, of course. Well, it's just not that bad and you don't hear it at all when you're playing. He says pickleball people are constantly rhapsodizing about the sport, telling others that they, too, should play. I just haven't found that's the case and I rarely tell anyone I play, although...oh, wait a minute, that's exactly what I'm doing now. Rick didn't like the game because it makes amateurs feel like they're "real athletes." Yeah, like a million karaokers don't belt out Set Fire to the Rain and feel like they're Adele for five minutes. So what? And Rick claims that pickleball does not provide much exercise. Rick is a golfer, I've played with him several times over the years, and I can tell you — there's a sport where there's no exercise. You get more exercise washing dishes or even loading your dishwasher.
Now, he does raise a couple valid points. He doubts the legitimacy of the game because "you can take it up after breakfast and be pretty good by lunch." That's true in some cases, but I can tell you that you cannot become very good by lunch, or by supper, or by six months down the road. There seems to be kind of a pickleball wall. I should know because I'm standing at it. You get pretty good and then you better start practicing harder and paying attention to strategy.
Rick also comments on the volume of injuries, and yes, that's a factor. Since I've been playing, I've bruised a hip on a fall and I've strained a groin. One rule I've learned: do not back pedal. The art of back pedaling disappears somewhere around age 70, and I'm well beyond that. But, look, at my age you can get hurt doing anything. I've coined the phrase "wuwi" for certain injuries — woke up with it. So you might as well get injured doing something and being around people.
And if you can't stand the noise of the "thwock," there's an easy solution. Buy a pair of earplugs.
