Northern Beaches Pickleball: Sporting craze signing up 100 new players a month
Expansion plans are on the cards for pickleball across the northern beaches, as the area boasts home to the biggest pickleball club in Australia. Here are the latest plans.
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It’s the all-conquering sporting craze that’s sweeping over the northern beaches.
Described as a cross between tennis, ping-pong and badminton, pickleball is signing up about 100 new local devotees every month, playing across 10 venues.
And its administrators want more players and more locations to cope with the game’s massively rising popularity.
The Northern Beaches Pickleball Association can now boast being the biggest club in Australia with about 1600 members.
Association president Rick Nelmes said the sport had traditionally been associated with older people, who take it up after playing tennis for many years.
The average age of its members is 58.
But Mr Nelmes wants to recruit more players from the younger generations to the game which, he says, “is more reflexes than running”.
He’s also on the lookout for more venues and volunteers to run the sport.
Pickleball originated in the United States in 1965 and is currently that country’s fastest-growing participation sport.
It is played with paddles and a plastic aerated whiffle ball, in singles and doubles formats, on a hard surface with a low net. While the Pickleball Australia Association only launched in 2020 it already has 255 affiliated clubs and 15,000 members.
The association estimates about 25,000 people play the sport casually across the country.
Mr Nelmes said that as well as existing venues at 10 locations, including Curl Curl, Dee Why, Beacon Hill, Narrabeen and Warriewood, the former Queenwood Tennis Centre at Oxford Falls is setting aside space for pickleball courts.
Pittwater RSL is creating six courts on its rooftop car park. Even the exclusive Elanora Country (Golf) Club has a pickleball competition for its members.
The Avalon Pickleball Association also has healthy member numbers.
Overseas, former tennis greats like Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf and Michael Chang play pickleball professionally in tournaments with $1m in prizemoney.
“The age of players is getting younger, everywhere,” Mr Nelmes said.
“Three years ago, just about everyone in our club was in their mid-60s. Now we’ve got 16-years-olds who are members.
“It’s part of the constitution to get the young ones playing and we’re continuously looking at ways of doing that.
“But it’s still a fairly new sport in Australia and a lot of people haven’t heard of it.”
Mr Nelmes said it was also a “fantastically social game”. The oldest player is 84.
“Anywhere we can get space now, we take it because we’re picking up to 100 new members a month,” he said.
“We have 10 sessions a day now, seven days a week across the venues.
“The only day we don’t play is Christmas Day.”
Alex Mercer, 47, from Manly Vale, has been playing doubles pickleball for 12 months.
She took up the sport after getting bored with her gym workouts and looking for a new way to keep cardio fit, without getting injured.
“I heard about it, funnily enough, through the (US) actor Matthew Perry (Friends), before he passed away,” she said.
“He used to play, so I Googled to find out what is this pickleball thing all about.
“Then I gave it a go, got right into it and now play about three times a week.
“It’s all about fun and fitness.”
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Originally published as Northern Beaches Pickleball: Sporting craze signing up 100 new players a month
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