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Pickleball Tennis turf wars overwhelm local Gov!

OMG, this reminds me of the Ukraine. Some fascist bastard is going to blow up the innocent woman and children playing doubles.


'FYI Pickleball DRAMA': Local Governments Overwhelmed By Tennis-Pickleball Turf Wars, Documents Show

Jason Koebler, 404.com

NOV 30, 2023 AT 11:29 AM


What I learned about the pickleball lobby and pickleball turf wars by reading thousands of pages of documents from inside local government.


'FYI Pickleball DRAMA': Local Governments Overwhelmed By Tennis-Pickleball Turf

This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here.


In late September, an arsonist set fire to a storage shed at Memorial Park used by the Santa Monica Pickleball Club, torching thousands of dollars worth of nets, rackets, balls, and other pickleball equipment.


“Unknown suspect(s) caused a fire that damaged city property (Tennis Court Gate),” a police report I obtained using a public records request says. The report adds that there is body camera footage of the incident and police-shot photos, but the city refused to release them to me because there is an ongoing investigation. The arsonist is still at large.


We still don’t know the motive behind the arson, but the news caught my attention because it happened while I was in the midst of trying to understand what I’ve been calling the pickleball wars. For the last few months I’ve been trying to understand what’s been happening behind-the-scenes in cities large and small by filing public records requests aimed at learning how common beefs about pickleball are, and what’s causing them.


If you don’t already know about “the fastest growing sport,” Pickleball is kind of like tennis, but played on a court a quarter of the size using a plastic ball similar to a wiffle ball and a hard racket. The smaller court, hard ball, and hard racket means that pickleball is louder than tennis, a fact that is brought up very often by homeowners and homeowner associations who claim, somewhat dubiously, that the noise from pickleball drives down their home values.


My hypothesis going into researching this article was that people who live in cities are mad at the noise created during the act of playing pickleball and they have probably complained to the government about it. What I found was surprisingly more complex: Thousands of pages of documents I’ve reviewed show that pickleball’s surging popularity is overwhelming under-resourced parks departments in city governments all over the country.


This may sound frivolous, but the documents also show what happens after we fail to build things in America: Compromises are made, and our cities’ already strapped public space and public resources become increasingly crowded and difficult to use. People fight about it.


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