Pickleball Drama Is the Best Kind of Drama

Do you ever feel like you have crossed into an alternate reality that is almost exactly the same as your previous one, except there’s now something that’s common knowledge that you had no idea existed? Friends, this is how I feel about the sport(?!)—game(?!), activity(?!)—of pickleball. Up until it showed up as a plotline on the Apple TV+ show Shrinking, I had no idea it was even a thing. Now, I see it everywhere.

Now, I have no opinion on the actual activity of playing pickleball; to each their own. I do, however, have an extremely vested interest in one of my new favorite things: pickleball drama. I cannot get enough of it.

I first became aware of this specific subgenre of neighborhood feuding this spring when one tiny park in a Chicago neighborhood became ground zero between pickleball players—who just want to play, dammit—and basically everyone else in the park, who found them deeply annoying, loud, and aggressive. Here’s an excerpt from a Block Club Chicago article to illustrate:

Parents say the courts were installed at Bauler Park with no community input and are calling for them to be removed, saying disputes over who should use the area and when have led to heated exchanges between the pickleball players and families who also use the park, 501 W. Wisconsin St.

Meanwhile, a group of pickleball players says the parents have antagonized players even during the hours pickleball is allowed at the park.

There’s so much going on here. I love it. First and foremost, I believe public parks are for everyone. So, the parents are jerks for sniffing about how the Chicago Parks District didn’t ask for their input, as if they own the public park and it’s their own little fiefdom! However, the pickleball players are also jerks because who wastes their precious free time, when not playing pickleball, going to a park to antagonize other parkgoers?! 10/10 neighborhood drama, no notes. (If you’re wondering how this particular feud is faring, 2 out of the 3 pickleball courts were removed by the city in May, a real “split the baby” kind of outcome, if you ask me.)

Here’s why pickleball feuds are so great: They are incredibly low stakes on the surface, and most of the time, everyone shoulders at least some of the blame. However, if you follow pickleball drama as if it’s your preferred sport, you’ll soon notice that it breaks down into the following three categories:

• Pickleball is taking over public space that used to be allocated for something else (see above or this fantastic article in the New York Times about one paddleball enthusiast’s one-man war against pickleball).
• Pickleball is not following the park guidelines for utilizing their courts, infringing on some other sport, usually tennis. These types of gripes can usually be found in your local neighborhood group; here’s an article from Lookout Santa Cruz about pickleball players getting kicked out of their court because tennis players had reserved it online. The outrage!
• Pickleball courts are simply too loud due to the equipment used to play the sport, and neighbors are complaining. (Here’s an NPR article about how loud pickleball can be, and a Chicago Tribune article regarding a city moving forward with their planned pickleball development despite protests from neighbors over the lights and assumed noise.)

Ultimately, what I find so fascinating and satisfying about pickleball drama is that typically, at its core, it comes down to some very real problems facing American society right now: the entitlement of the elites in molding their surroundings to fit their view of what is acceptable, whether that’s feeling entitled to public space and demanding the government invest resources into building out courts, or conversely demanding complete silence for your home, thus infringing upon others’ ability to use a public space as it was intended.

What makes it so entertaining is that, typically, it’s the elites on both sides, so you don’t particularly care who wins out. Both sides are so entitled most of the time that it’s a real “let them fight” type of situation. To observe it from the outside in, it really does seem like everyone needs to calm down and learn how to share. However, anyone who’s ever been involved in a fight knows it’s incredibly hard to let cooler heads prevail when you’re in the thick of something that matters to you.

To illustrate, here’s a newer entry in the genre of the pickleball wars, a woman in San Francisco is claiming she is unable to sell her $36 million home because of its proximity to outdoor pickleball courts and has launched a petition to get the courts environmentally assessed and for pickleball to stop in the public space. Are you ready for the kicker? She has her own personal pickleball court in her backyard. Man, if that just doesn’t say it all.

(featured image: Apple TV+)