Is pickleball here to stay? This sceptic turned near-convert hopes so

Years ago if someone had told me to dink, I would have thought they were being a ding-dong. Today, this silly-sounding term is what will save me from defeat, or so I’ve been told.

And to my horror, I am all ears.

Tennis and other racket-sport enthusiasts hear me out – I love these sports but there is something special about pickleball.

Is it the cackles you hear when you put the ball between players across the net? A love-hate relationship with that pok-pok sound? The sneaky satisfaction of smacking the ball into a frenemy?

Tennis has its tweeners, top spins and bagels, pickleball’s an equally quirky vocabulary of kitchen, volley Llama, Bert and Erne.

Purists can scoff but in its plasticky simplicity pickleball has mastered something many sports have not – levelling the field for people to discover the joy of play.

One Saturday I join a group of social players, a few with the lovely ground strokes and double backhands that come from hours spent in tennis, but whose interest drifted and now have discovered a love for something else.

One of them, Marianne Wee-Slater, 48, a former youth tennis player who had to stop due to injuries, sums it up: “Pickleball is very democratic and inclusive. You can have zero experience with any racquet sport and still pick up a paddle and have fun playing rallies. Also, it cuts across demographics like age, income brackets, skill levels.

“The proliferation of pickleball courts now also means it’s easier to organise and join social games than a game of badminton, squash, golf or tennis,” adds the founder-director of a public relations agency.

Others are newbies caught up in the pickleball fervour, simply because it is fun and easy to play.

Some of that cheer also comes from meeting new people in open play, where picklers can sign up for social and competitive matches to spar with others. Conversations with strangers are no longer awkward, because chatter inevitably drifts to where they play, how often and what paddles they use.

That $20 paddle from Shopee may sound awful, but second (judging) glances will be few, and what you get instead is advice on what to buy next to level up your game.

Even professional athletes are hooked. Los Angeles Lakers superstar Luka Doncic jokes after playing with head coach JJ Redick: “That was easy… I loved it, every second of it.”

Tennis legend Andre Agassi has a signature line of paddles with equipment brand Joola and now competes in tournaments. The eight-time Grand Slam winner, who famously wrote in his autobiography Open that he hated tennis, says of his newfound love: “I never thought I’d say this, but as long as I can walk I’m playing pickleball. I can’t wait to get back on the court!”

On a weekday I set off for The Kallang to watch my colleagues compete at the OCBC-Great Eastern Pickleball Open.

Agassi they are not and the games are over even before I arrive – so confident I am in their abilities – but what is this whiff of competitive spirit in the air?

Three days, over 1,000 people across four categories. To put the fever into perspective: in 2006 there were zero pickleball tournaments in Singapore – even though it was introduced here in the 1990s – in 2026 there are at least seven.

Bangers, dinkers, counterpunchers all have a place on the court, even trash-talkers, for what is passion without a bit of spice?

Before pickleball and that other Instagram-friendly sport Hyrox – with its side quest of collecting finisher patches – there was spinning, climbing, and reformer pilates. Waiting in the wings are padel, teqball and drone racing, if you believe the hype.

Trends can be fleeting and frivolous, though in practical Singapore where ROIs and KPIs rule in classrooms and boardrooms, any activity that gets potatoes off their couches and screens is a solid investment.

So, let them play. Play is how Fandi Ahmad learnt to prowl the 18-yard box, how golfer Shannon Tan topped the Ladies European Tour this season with 83.95% driving accuracy, how Yip Pin Xiu learnt to swim with her two older brothers.

Play is what a little boy in Bishan yearns for, when he asks my colleague at a PickleMall session at Junction 8 if he can join in the fun. Or the wheelchair-bound lady and her caregiver on the sidelines, clapping their hands in glee at our amateurish battle.

Maybe, one hopes, this first spark will inspire him to pick up a paddle.

Perhaps this adolescence romance will bloom into a lifelong love for sport. A passion that translates to one more weekend warrior, one more bum on a stadium seat, one more parent who says yes to his child’s dream to play sport full-time.

Is this an ode to pickleball? Not so much as a nod to sport, its tribes and many joyful varieties, be it basketball, skateboarding or a cheese-chasing race downhill.

As a former squash player trying to mellow my competitive side, I hope pickleball is here to stay, if only so I can stay out of the kitchen and bodybag someone.