By: Kai Wang
You’ve probably heard of the new craze, pickleball. More than 36.5 million people played pickleball from August 2021 to August 2022 according to a new report by the Association of Pickleball Professionals. 14 percent of Americans played pickleball at least once in that one-year. Over 8.5 million people have played pickleball 8 times or more. It’s the fastest-growing sport in America. Because Pickleball is easy to learn and doesn’t require much space, it makes a great new sport.
Pickleball courts are very small, meaning you could play pickleball on already existing tennis courts. You don’t even have to play on a dedicated pickleball court or tennis court because there are portable nets that are easy to set up on the market. You can carve a tennis court into up to four pickleball courts.
Pickleball is also easy to learn. The rules are simple and the game is easy for beginners to learn. If you already play a sport that requires a racket or paddle it is substantially easier to learn.
Despite pickleball being accessible for all ages, it does create a noise issue. A decibel is one unit of loudness. Decibels are measured logarithmically rather than linearly. This means each increase in ten decibels sounds twice as loud. A motorcycle at 100 decibels sounds twice as loud as a hair dryer at 90 decibels, which is twice as loud as a vacuum cleaner at 80 decibels.
Standing relatively close to a pickleball match clocks in at around 70 to 80 decibels, while tennis only reached between 55 and 60 decibels. Rigid paddles against hollow plastic balls make a lot of noise. So much so that many cities have come up with solutions such as limited hours for pickleball and, in some cases, banning the sport.
Even though it is considerably louder than tennis, pickleball is still a valuable activity because efforts to invest in pickleball courts have opened up more basketball courts, volleyball courts, and skate parks, so even if you don’t play pickleball other facilities have opened up.