The latest craze to hit here is pickleball. It appears to be the aging baby boomers’ answer to the hula hoop fad of our youth. Everyone MUST play pickleball. Towns(including ours) must convert tennis courts to pickleball courts or turn lovely open fields(the adjacent town) to pickleball courts. Realizing that it snows or ices over in New England for several months of the year the rush is on to convert abandoned malls into pickleball courts. In our town the tennis club applied for and was granted a zone amendment to add pickleball to their indoor courts.

Pickleball has proved a bonanza for orthopedists, sending countless seniors(86% of emergency room pickleball injuries were to seniors) to the hospital with injuries including partial and complete ruptures of Achilles tendons, plantar fasciitis, ankle sprains, and various foot and ankle fractures.

Noise complaints are rampant among the neighbors of pickleball who say that the noise is not just loud. Apparently the high pitch of the noise of plastic ball on paddle is irritating in a way that the quieter thump of the tennis ball is not. (Of course people next to tennis courts and basketball hoops are sometimes annoyed too.)

I have no interest in taking up the activity. I am amused, however, watching some men play pickleball with the intensity that resembles squash. The game is much less rigorous than that, but they may not be able to help themselves!

Is this a worldwide trend or is the United States alone in pickleball insanity?