Why Are 24 Million Americans Obsessed With Pickleball?

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Hey everybody, okay, we are going to be making quite a racket on our show today. God, that’s probably the worst dad joke I’ve ever used before. But we are talking about two sports: tennis and then pickleball. And before all of you pickleballers go crazy, I realize that pickleball involves a paddle and not a racket. I just wanna put that out there. But we’re gonna have a great interview with one of the experts in pickleball. So if you are a pickleball aficionado, or if you just see your neighbors playing this crazy new sport and wonder what the hell they’re up to, it’s going to be an interview that you’re definitely going to want to listen to. But first, we have one of the OG racket sports, tennis. The U.S. Open Grand Slam tournament is getting going in New York City. So this is a big, big chapter every year in the world of tennis. And we have Giri Nathan with us. He’s a staff writer and also co-founder of The Defector and one of the preeminent sports journalists when it comes to covering tennis, and he is in New York City and is gonna be following the U.S. Open very closely. Giri, thanks for being here. We appreciate it.

GIRI NATHAN: Yeah, thank you, guys, for having me.

DG: I mean, massive news, right? In the U.S. Open on the men’s side. I mean, the number one player in the world, Jannik Sinner, is out for this tournament. Tell us what happened here.

GN: Yeah, it’s been a pretty shaky summer overall, in terms of the dominant storyline in the men’s game had been the clash between these two new superstars, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, and they rose so quickly and thoroughly that they pretty much had, like, a standing appointment in the final of every big tournament last year. And the only thing holding them back right now is injury. I’m sure if both of them were healthy, they’d be right back at it.

DG: Let’s start with Sinner. I mean, do we know, did he just find out that the injury was a lot worse than he thought and he had to jump out at the last minute, or what exactly happened?

GN: The yeah, it was a pretty interesting storyline where he won Wimbledon in July and

DG: Yeah, recently.

GN: Yeah, very recently, so, you know, clearly feeling good enough to win those seven matches in a row and then take his fifth Grand Slam title, but in the week since, he pulled out of the kind of warm-up tournaments for the U.S. Open and you don’t really think too much about that in the current era where players kind of load manage their schedules, but suddenly we start hearing some reporting that he was having an issue with his right knee and I would say pretty much out of nowhere in the lead-up to the U.S. Open, the news got a little more dire, and he took himself out of the draw.

DG: And what about Alcaraz? I mean, what is his injury, and I guess what does it say about how hard some of these elite athletes push to overcome injury, even maybe at great risk, when they wanna be there and be playing in tournaments like this.

GN: Yeah, he has a, he had an injury to a tendon in his right wrist, you know, his dominant wrist. It’s doing most of the work for him out on the tennis court. And it kind of triggered it acutely in Barcelona earlier this year, during the clay season. But we’re definitely seeing injuries tick up in general. I think the game would be unrecognizable to someone who hadn’t, you know, tuned in for the last 15, 20 years just in terms of the physicality of it, the power and speed that we’re seeing. And while Sinner and Alcaraz have proved, for the first chunk of their career, very much up to the test physically, they’ve been very consistent week in and week out, I do think this year has been a trial in some ways where Alcaraz has had to miss the two tournaments where he’s really been the favorite for three years running now due to this wrist injury. And it’s really forcing these players to prioritize their long-term future in this sport, as opposed to just optimizing for winning the slams in this present season. And I think you’re seeing players sort of criticize the tour itself for extending some of these tournaments longer than they used to be in the past. The 1,000-level tournaments have actually become two-week events instead of one-week events. So for a lot of these players, the downtime-— the time where you’re completely off the clock, you’re not traveling, you’re not working, has been reduced. It’s been squeezed in the last few seasons. And some of the players do draw the link between the demanding scheduling and the uptick in injuries, but I think we still gotta wait maybe for a more rigorous analysis, but anecdotally, it does seem to be an issue, and I think it was a tough decision for Alcaraz to sit out the entire summer, basically.

DG: And, and those pressures, the tour deciding to add more, more tournaments and add more to pack the schedule, is we’ve seen that obviously like in other sports with like the NFL adding a week to the season. Is it all about money, or is it something else in tennis?

GN: Yeah, 100%, I think it’s one of those things where you just look at, they’re able to ticket basically twice as many days as they were in the past. And they were able to just increase those merchandise, food, ticketing revenues. And the players have at times kind of gestured at some kind of collective action to kind of stand up to the tour and make sure scheduling stays on player-friendly terms. But, honestly, we haven’t seen much. The biggest example of that so far has been kind of a semi-protest of media availability, where this kind of big-name players, we’re gonna take a stand against the powers that be, and we’re not gonna make ourselves available to the press, which did play out at a couple of tournaments over the summer. But I think it’s tricky, because it is a sport that is so kind of individual in its nature for that kind of collective labor action to take place. It’s, in some ways, you have to go pretty far back into the history of the sport to see that kind of interesting pushback to kind of the institutions.

DG: So if we did see some sort of labor action, that would be a massive moment in tennis not to be taken lightly.

GN: Yeah, and Novak Djokovic, you know, arguably the best player in the history of the men’s tour, had dabbled in some of this. He kind of started this little upstart players’ union called the PTPA, but it never really took flight, kind of as he envisioned it. And he actually distanced himself from the project.

DG: How old is he now?

GN: He’s now 38?

DG: Late 30s, right? Wow, late 30s.

GN: 39, sorry.

DG: Thirty-nine. And he’s still going, right?

GN: He’s still going.

DG: I mean, could he have a shot in New York? I mean, with Alcaraz sort of vulnerable and Sinner not there?

GN: It’s almost unfathomable at this point. We’ve really not seen anything like it, but at age 39, he has kind of pared down his playing schedule where he’s basically a part-time tennis player. He only shows up to the most significant tournaments, the four slams, and basically a lead-up tournament sometimes to the slams. And despite the lack of kind of week-to-week reps, which you think are kind of essential for most tennis players to keep up their level.

DG: Yeah, one would think.

GN: He’s is right up there; at the slams, you can count on him to get by pretty much anyone except Carlos and Jannik, the two young superstars who have really inherited the game from him. And…

DG: So he has a significant shot here. I mean, if you’ve got a weaker Alcaraz and no Sinner there.

GN: Yeah, definitely. If you look even as recently as the Australian Open this year, in January, he was able to get to the semifinal. And at that point, the task ahead was to beat Sinner and Alcaraz in a row, which is a pretty Herculean feat for anyone in men’s tennis. And Djokovic played one of the best matches of his late career. He beat Sinner in five sets, and then he just ran out of gas, I think, against Alcaraz in the final, but the fact that even at age 39 he’s arguably the most competitive with those two guys in the best of five in the most important tournaments is pretty— I can’t think of longevity like that in many other sports.

DG: Yeah, Tom Brady, maybe that name comes to mind, but we all know that story.

GN: Yeah, you could throw Brady in there, Messi, LeBron in their own way, but I do think the individual aspect of the sport adds another dimension to it as well.

DG: Well, you, you actually, I mean, you wrote a great book, “Changeover,” about these two guys, Sinner and Alcaraz. For people who have not followed their journey and their sort of rise together in tennis, what’s the key thing to know in the narrative and what they mean for the sport right now?

GN: Yeah, they’re a really appealing study in contrast. I think Alcaraz is more of a showman, a little more mercurial. He brings this incredible blend of power and finesse that we’ve really never seen in the history of the game. And Sinner is a bit more kind of icy and methodical in his approach, and incredibly entertaining player in his own right. But I think what makes them so unique is they’ve really taken in little elements of the DNA of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic and developed this really modern style that everyone’s trying to play, and they simply have mastered. And some of the maybe key things to look out for there is not just how hard they hit it, but how fluidly they move on the court in between shots; they’re both really comfortable sliding on all surfaces, where Djokovic was kind of notorious for bringing in this new movement style where you kind of move into full splits when you’re running into the corner of the court. And his flexibility was really revolutionary in the game in a lot of ways, and I think Nadal deserves some of the credit there as well. But these two young guys really, you can tell they’re the first generation that was shaped almost from tennis infancy by watching these big three players. And although they do have their own distinctive styles, I think they were able to look through some of those technical innovations and take it a step further because they really are hitting it harder and with more top spin than really any generation that came before them.

DG: Let me ask you about the women’s side. It sounds like there’s “Eala-mania” in New York City. Alex Eala is, I mean, you’ve described her as maybe the most prominent athlete who’s Filipino since Manny Pacquiao, which is saying a lot. What does she all about, and why are people so psyched?

GN: Yeah, just to take a step back for a second, I think one of the really cool things that plays out in tennis, because it is such an international sport, is when a new player comes in and just activates a new diaspora population out there and really gets a new set of people engaged in tennis. And we’re seeing that play out really amazingly with Eala, and the Filipina tennis fandom is booming right now. If you go to any tournament in the world, their enthusiasm, their volume, it’s really cool to see. And Eala has a bit of an unconventional game, doesn’t maybe have the traditional power and serve that a lot of dominant players on the WTA have right now, but she’s very crafty, very aggressive in her core positioning, and has pulled off an incredible streak of upsets against top-10 players that makes me think, you know, maybe she’s going to be one of them herself pretty soon. Entered into the top 20 this summer. So definitely one to watch, and especially I would say in, when you’re at the U.S. Open in Queens, literally one of the most diverse places in the world, in terms of, you know, linguistically, every player who shows up there, it’s just so cool to see their people turn out and to bring the signs and the flags and the chants in the native language. And I’m pretty sure the Filipino fan base is gonna bring it for Eala over the next three weeks for sure.

DG: And am I wrong, isn’t that sort of what the U.S. Open has always been known for on the tour? I mean, this is, we should say, like a fairly homogeneous sport, especially when it’s being played elsewhere in the other Grand Slams, but get to New York and it’s just like a totally different feel, a celebration of diversity and multiculturalism.

GN: Yeah, it’s absolutely incredible. I think, I would say that in terms of the players on the court, it is step by step, slowly diversifying, still pretty much dominated by Western and Eastern Europe, but we are seeing that broaden out. But I personally have never felt the diversity in the fan base quite the way I feel it in the U.S. Open. Although I will say that’s probably been complicated in recent years by how incredibly expensive it’s getting to go to the tournament. Even so, you really see, I mean, the canonical examples to me are just the qualifying rounds. I think of the Brazilian player, João Fonseca, who at that time was still a rising star, and just a teenager. And you would feel like you’re in Rio, just if you were sitting in the stands for that match, just people really do show up. Yeah, yeah, it’s an incredible energy. It’s very hard to replicate that anywhere else in the world because you don’t have so many different populations coming together the way you do in Queens.

DG: What was your entry into tennis? Did you play, or have you just been following it as a writer?

GN: I played at just, you know, kind of a high school level, and I still play on and off, though it’s pain to get a court in New York City. But I think the thing that really brought me in, from a writing perspective, was that it’s a great way to write about people. It’s an individual sport, and you get to see a player’s style of play, but also their kind of temperament and how they carry themselves, and, like, the interplay between those things, and they’re really just out there on the court alone. It’s a very emotionally kind of bare performance compared to a lot of other sports. And yeah, I’ve always enjoyed profile writing. It’s one of the things I really enjoyed about working on my book was kind of following the rise of these two different types of people, basically. And I think one of the other things is just an incredibly visually pleasing sport to watch, especially if you have a chance to watch it on clay or on grass; it’s got a nice geometry to it, and every player has their own style of movement. So it’s, there’s a lot to chew on for a writer. I think I’ve really enjoyed it so far.

DG: What’s one storyline on either the men’s or women’s side that you’re really following that we might not have ever thought about this year?

GN: I think on the women’s side, it’s a pretty interesting era where we’re seeing these three very dominant players in this generation, Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, and Iga Światek. Each of them have their own kind of different way of approaching tennis, a different style, but they’ve been pretty dominant over the last few seasons, and especially at the Grand Slams. But I think this tournament in particular is looking pretty open because Sabalenka has had a pretty disappointing season by her standards, Rybakina’s potentially worrisome leg injury that she suffered in Cincinnati last week, and Iga Światek is still coming back. She’s on a bit of a rebound, I would say. She did win in Canada two weeks ago, but it hasn’t been business as usual for her. So I think it’s a big opening for another player to come in and scoop up this U.S. Open, and I would definitely throw Coco Gauff in there as one of the contenders. She’s been kind of right one tier down from those players, and she remains, you know, the darling of American tennis fandom for sure. She’s always got the crowd behind her anytime she’s playing here.

DG: And really she’s worked on her serve a lot, right? I mean, hasn’t she really improved her serve to a point where she has a much better shot this year?

GN: Yeah, she’s a fascinating player to watch because she does have these technical flaws, which I think sometimes we can overstate them because she has won two slams and has been at the top of the game for so long. But she does struggle with her serve and her forehand, which we typically think of as like the two most foundational shots in the game. But the fact is, she does everything else on the tennis court at such an elite level that she can get by. So it really comes down to whether she can execute on these two problem shots. And they kind of determine her fate at a lot of these tournaments. So things are really clicking right now. She was doing really well in Cincinnati on her way to the title. And I really would almost look at her as one of the favorites for the U.S. Open, which she of course won three years ago too.

DG: Well, before we move on to our interview about pickleball, I’ll just ask you, do you play? Do you have any views on that sport that is on the rise in the US.?

GN: Yes, yeah, it’s a great question. I have received a couple of invites to play pickleball, but something always comes up.

DG: We all have. (Laughs) Same way. I always, I don’t know if that’s— I might make sure that something comes up because I don’t love it yet myself, but…

GN: I think I’m struggling to wrap my head around it completely. I do play tennis, and I hope that tennis can continue to live healthy. There’s a bit of a turf war between these sports in a lot of places, in terms of just some of the tennis courts are getting repainted as pickleball courts. But on the flip side of that, I do think pickleball is helping so many people stay active, especially older people who wouldn’t necessarily be getting up and moving like that. So I would consider myself perhaps not pro pickleball, but anti-anti pickleball. Where I think some of the tennis purists get a little bit too condescending towards the pickleballers. Whereas, like, maybe it’s not for me, but I’m glad people are out there doing it.

DG: Yeah, well, pickleballer and author, Clare Frank, is about to try and win both of us over into the pro pickleball category. Giri Nathan is a co-founder of Defector Media also a staff writer there, helping us set up the U.S. Open Grand Slam tennis tournament, which is getting going in New York City. Giri, thank you so much. Really nice talking to you.

GN: Yeah, it’s my pleasure.

DG: If you live in the United States, you’ve probably heard this sound.

[PICKLEBALL GETTING HIT]

DG: Pickleball, and you might only know it as the sport older people do, you know, to stay active. It’s low impact, highly social, and pretty easy to learn, but it is not just your grandmother’s game anymore.

[MUSIC]

BROADCASTER: The fastest-growing sport in the U.S., with nearly five million players picking up a paddle last year.

DG: Since COVID, pickleball has taken the United States by storm. It’s one of the fastest-growing sports in the country, with nearly 500%,— yes, you heard that right— 500% more people playing this game now compared to five years ago. Now, don’t be fooled. The rules can get a little complicated, and this is coming from someone who has actually played it a few times. Pickleball basically combines the sounds of tennis, the look of ping pong, and some of the rules of badminton to create a pretty addictive and yet really competitive game. What started off as a sport for older people who wanted to stay active has turned into a bona fide phenomenon.

CF: Some of it is the easy on-ramp; some of it is you get to feel like a jock again in life, you know, because it is easy and it’s fun. And you can always, like, pickleball will meet you where you’re at.

DG: Clare Frank was a firefighter for more than 30 years, who after retirement became an author and pickleball expert. In her latest book, “Just One More Game: A Pickleball Quest,” she goes all into the world of pickleball. After facing a health scare that made her question if she’d ever play the sport again, Clare decided to find out everything there was to know about the sport. How does it get its name? What is the kitchen? And why can’t 24 million Americans get enough of this?

Often on the show, we talk to elite athletes who can do the impossible, but today it’s about people like you and me, and like Clare, who just wanted one more chance to play.

I will admit to you all now, I was very slow to get onto the pickleball train, and I’m still not completely there yet.

I’m a little worried because I have a very close friend who has been trying desperately to get me into pickleball for like three years now. I usually say no, he finally got me out there. I loved it; I was sweating more than I remembered in any sport recently. I didn’t understand any of it. I didn’t understand the kitchen. And he thought that he had me hooked, but I haven’t gone back yet. And now he’s gonna hear our interview, and he’s going to say, like, “Oh, oh, you did an interview about pickleball. Like you’re mine now.”

CF: Well, you’re joining the cult slowly, you know, which is, so you know what you’re getting into.

DG: It’s a slow burn.

CF: (Laughs) It’s a slow burn.

DG: Take me to the stage in your career and life when you sort of stumbled upon pickleball.

CF: So, I was retired as a firefighter and I’d, um…

DG: After 30 years, right? 30 plus?

CF: After 30 years, I retired as a chief, and I was determined to be a writer when I retired from firefighting. It was in my— I got some of my mom’s desire to write, and it’s in the family.

DG: Well, congratulations, you have checked that box as well.

CF: But so I wrote, I was going to just write about anything except firefighting to just be done. Like I gave firefighting everything, and I was gonna quit cold turkey. And I ended up, you know, when you sit down and you start writing, you don’t always have control over what comes out. You think you might want to know. And it’s maybe like with you in journalism, you think you know where a story is going to go, and it just, you got to follow it. You got to follow wherever the leads go.

DG: Yeah, and thank God for that. I teach that all the time. Like, never assume, you know, ahead of time, like do the reporting. Yeah.

CF: So it was like that, and I ended up writing my first book was about firefighting. So I’m at the back end of that. I’ve retired, and the book is in the can and waiting to work its way through the publishing process, and COVID hits. I have a couple family members that come to live with me. My sister is living with my husband and I and then eventually we brought my mom in on hospice, and they both passed, not from COVID, but during that time period.

[MUSIC]

DG: I’m so sorry, my god, back-to-back and during COVID, that must’ve been horrific.

CF: And I guess the hard thing about it, the relevant part of it being during COVID, was there was no, like, family gathering; there was no closure as we Americans deal with, you know, funerals and death, and it was just, they were gone, and they were ashes, and I had the containers, and there wasn’t a… you know, the same way to process everything, all the big feelings, right? So a friend just said, well, come play this thing called pickleball, which I thought sounded ridiculous, but probably fun and, you know. I had no idea what it was. I just, I thought it was a form of, you know, in baseball when you get in a pickle between the bases, like that’s kind of, I had thought it was some version of that, that older people somehow could play at the community center. So that’s where I was, and I wandered onto the court, not expecting what happened, you know.

DG: And what did happen that first time?

CF: Oh, well, I showed up to watch. I was drinking a cup of coffee, brought my coffee, and I wore my slides and socks, not tennis shoes, and I was going to witness this thing, and a player had…

DG: What the hell is this thing? I’m gonna, I’m going to check it out.

CF: I’m going to check it out while I caffeinate and try to comprehend it.

DG: Right.

CF: And a player left, and they needed a fourth. And so the person that talked me into going said, “Well, I know you’re a firefighter. You’ve got a bag of stuff in your car, and something has tennis shoes in it; go get your tennis shoes, we’re gonna play.” And I also know.

DG: You shouldn’t have brought tennis shoes anywhere.

CF: Right?

DG: Yeah, that was your mistake. Shouldn’t have made yourself so available.

CF: Now I know. I set myself up. You’re right. You are 100% right. So, yeah, I jumped into the game, and I think one of my favorite quotes about pickleball, and I give him full credit, is Rick Reily, the golfer and writer. He wrote an article— I think it was for The New Yorker or The New York Times called ” Why I Hate Pickleball,” and he said, “Any activity that you can pick up right after breakfast and be good at by lunch is not a sport.” And that’s kind of how I felt. Like, I picked up the paddle, and it, like I said, your odds of getting a good smack in are pretty good. So I felt like, yeah, this is something that I could get into. And it was like, it was post the spike in COVID, but it was still like we were trying to figure out the social distancing rules and what actually mattered. And this was far enough away that you felt like you weren’t getting someone spit on you when you were playing, you know? And so that’s how it started. That was first one’s free, right?

[MUSIC]

DG: Okay, so for those of you who have never played pickleball, I’m gonna try and explain the rules as simply as possible because it can get complicated fast.

It’s pretty similar to your average racket sport like tennis, except the paddle is smaller and the ball is bigger. It can be played individually or in teams of two, and the goal is to be the first to 11 points, but it’s made harder with the fact that you can only serve underhand, the paddle can’t go above your wrist, and the ball has to land diagonally from you. Once you’ve served the ball, there’s what’s called a two-bounce rule where each team or player has to let the ball bounce once before actually hitting it. And then there’s the kitchen. Yes, the kitchen, an area that extends seven feet from the net on each side where you can’t volley. So either the ball bounces, and then you hit it, or you lose the point. See, it’s not so bad, right? Okay, it was kind of complicated.

But anyway, if you can grasp these couple of rules, it should be pretty easy to play pickleball. And that’s one of the main reasons Clare says it is so popular. Just about anyone can play.

But I guess I wonder, you know, like I’m 50 now, and I am in that moment of my life where I’m like, how athletic am I gonna be able to be? What can I do for workouts, you know, and the rest of my life? And I guess— what is it about pickleball over other sports? Like, is it as simple as this is a sport that you can pick up really easily at any age? Or does it go deeper than that? That it’s become so popular among people sort of middle-aged and beyond?

CF: Yeah, so the fastest-growing segment of pickleball is like 25 to 34-year-olds.

DG: Oh really? Wow, okay. So it’s the fastest-growing sport in America, but it’s actually younger people who are the reason for that.

CF: The age group that has the highest participation rate in pickleball is 55 plus. So some of it is the easy on-ramp. Some of it is you get to feel like a jock again in life, you know, because it is easy and it’s fun, and you can always, like, pickleball will meet you where you’re at. If you are an intermediate player, you will, there will be other intermediate players, and you will have great games. You know, it’s finding the right level of play. If you’re a beginner, you’ll find beginners. If you are advanced, you will find advanced. If you want to do competitive tournaments, that’s all available to the, you know, to the common person. So you don’t have to be a pro. You don’t have to be, you know, exceptional or a prodigy. It will, you will find a spot. The only thing you, I mean, it is a quicker game. So your lateral movement needs to be intact. People with bad knees have probably the biggest problem, but then you just find a slower game. You know, you just find other people with bad knees to play with. They’re there. (Laughs)

DG: From the minute she got on the court, Clare was hooked. It did not take her long to get good at the game, and the better she got, the more she wanted to play. Her competitive personality and love of teamwork from her time firefighting kind of made this the perfect outlet for her. It was the only thing on her mind until a health scare made her question if she’d ever be able to play again.

Take me through how the journey intensified, because you started being in tournaments and leagues. You’re ending up at something called PickleCon. I mean, you just started; you just, you leaned in.

CF: I went all in, but I didn’t go all in until I, like, formalized, told myself, like I was kind of experimenting with pickleball and trying to, you know.

DG: Hesitant at first, yeah.

CF: Right, right. And getting a little better and going a few times a week. And I was playing with my sister, and we enjoyed it together. She’s a tennis head, so she was automatically better than me because that’s where her sport was tennis. But then I had a lump on the back of my neck that I had to have removed. And it ended up being fine, but it was, while the doctor was deep digging to remove it, I like had this fear: what if I can’t play pickleball anymore? That was the question that came into my head. It wasn’t, you know, what if I need chemotherapy or what if this is it or— you know, I had plenty of exposure. There’s cancers in my family history. Firefighting is, you know, a lot of firefighters get exposed to stuff then and then the big C takes them out, but the question, the fear, and this was comical and scary to me that that was the question that came into my head. Like, what if I can’t play pickleball? And that’s when I kind of knew, like, oh, I guess I’m in pretty deep. And since I’m in deeper than I thought I was, let’s go all in. Let’s go figure it out. Let’s find out how, how does this sport, you know, how was it taking over my life like this? And how is it taking over the country, and why— It’s, you know, it’s got this meteoric rise. Why? What is, is this a fad? Is this here to stay? So I just had all these questions, and I decided I’m gonna do this. This will be the next thing that I do. I’m going to do a year of saying yes to any pickleball adventure that comes my way.

DG: How have you answered that question? Like it, you know, you say it surprised yourself that when you had that scare, that was the thing that you were afraid of losing the most. So as you dove in and learned more about this and felt whatever this brings you, how have you answered that question, like why this has consumed you?

CF: So it took, you know, kind of the whole, my whole book that I wrote on pickleball to explain it. There’s no one answer. It’s because of the dopamine release, and there’s all these different channels to get that dopamine release through pickleball that doesn’t apply to every other physical sport, but it does apply to pickleball. It applies to some other, lots of other sports, but I’ll go on and chase a rabbit here, but.

DG: Yeah, chase away. I’ll go with you.

CF: So I was, I was doing the CrossFit thing for a while, and you know, the dopamine cycle for something like CrossFit is you get, you start to get your dopamine release when the endorphins kick in at a certain, you know, midway into your workout. But there’s no, like, you know, getting in the car and you’re putting on your workout clothes and then getting in the car, driving to the box. None of that is joyful. You’re like, “I just got to get there. And if I just get there, I’ll get the workout in and then I’ll feel good.” Right? Like that’s the, the cycle. So it’s like, “Eh, not so fun, not so fun, not fun. Oh, I feel good now. Oh, thank God it’s over. Not so fun, not so fun.” Like that’s the loop.

DG: (Laughs) Yeah, yeah

CF: And with pickleball, it’s like, “I get to go play pickleball.” “I’m putting on my pickleball clothes.” “I’m driving to pickleball.” Like every, you know, phase of it, “I’m going to have so much fun.” So you’re getting a much more, like, it’s like, continuous-release vitamins or pills. It’s like they just keep dumping a little dose in, and it’s continuous. And that’s part of what, like, that’s a chemical reason that people get addicted to pickleball, like, so that’s one aspect of it. And then there’s all these other aspects, like there’s the social component and there’s vitamin D from the sun and, you know, the competition, because you’re right, I went from rec play, and part of my saying yes was to get, okay, I guess I got to see what the tournament scene is and like deal with that. It’s a different level of play, and it’s a different scene. You know, it’s not just fun. That one actually has less dopamine.

DG: Coming up, we’ll have more from our conversation with author and pickleballer Clare Frank.

Welcome back to Sports in America, and let’s get right back to our conversation with author and pickleball player Clare Frank.

Clare went on a year-long quest to say yes to anything and everything related to pickleball. Think conventions, summer camps, tournaments. It also meant she was determined to figure out how pickleball even started in the first place. And so she’d go to the source directly, Bainbridge Island, just about 10 miles west of Seattle.

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DG: Well, what I love in your book is that you take on some of the absurdities and quirks of this sport head on. I mean, some of the words— I mean, can we just start with pickleball? Like, where did that name come from?

CF: So, there’s a controversy over where it came from. The founders it was a couple that lived in Bainbridge Island, that had some bored kids in their, in their summer house, and they just put together all these mishmash— like they found some ping-pong paddles and a wiffle ball, and they lowered the net on their badminton court. And so it was, you know, this just made-up game. The controversy is the husband said that they named the sport after their dog, Pickles. They had this dog named Pickles, and so they just called it Pickleball. The wife, who had some connection to rowing, said it was named after a pickle crew, which is a boat of rowers who didn’t get picked to crew on the A-boat, or the Eight Boat.

DG: This is my favorite part of the story that the actual inventors can’t agree on why it was named that. This is fantastic.

CF: And nobody knows, like, throughout the whole book, every place I went, you know, a year-long quest to figure out all this stuff. I don’t know why they call it the kitchen, and I went to Bainbridge Island, because if anyone knew why they called it the kitchen, it would be a person at Bainbridge Island, and nobody knew. There’s no answer.

DG: I should back up for people who have not ever played pickleball. What is the kitchen? Just to explain to them.

CF: So the kitchen is actually, the official name for it is called the non-volley zone. You can go in the kitchen.

DG: Oh, I didn’t realize there’s an official— Okay, so the official name is not kitchen. That’s just a nickname.

CF: No, that’s just a nickname. It’s a non-volley zone, and it’s on either side of the net; it’s a seven foot deep. So there’s the net in the middle, and then it’s seven feet deep. You can’t hit the ball on a volley without it bouncing. If your body, if your foot is in the kitchen, you know, you can, you can be in the air space, but your foot can’t be over the line.

DG: That’s very annoying because I hate the kitchen. Like my one time playing pickleball, I violated the kitchen space like almost every time. It would be good to know why it’s named that, which is really, do you have any theories?

CF: So one theory is that there’s some relation to there’s a shuffleboard; I think thing there’s a biscuit in the kitchen. I’ve never played shuffleboard. So I don’t know, but that’s one theory. I’ve asked people, and they’re like, well, it’s about the same size as every kitchen I’ve had, which I don’t think is the true origin of it. I think it was probably just one of the kids playing, made a joke, and it stuck, but nobody remembers that. So…

DG: I always assumed it was like, “It’s too hot in the kitchen, don’t come in.” So it was a space that you can’t come in; it’s too hot in there; you’re not allowed. You’re not allowed to go in there.

CF: That’s not bad! I like it.

DG: Clare constantly saying yes to pickleball meant it kind of started to lose the fun it was initially intended to create. So she used her experience as a firefighter to help remind her what this is all for.

I do wanna ask you about one of your rituals, and this takes us a little bit back to firefighting. This was an aspect of firefighting: the accountability tags, which are like dog tags in the military that I never knew anything about. Can you explain that for us?

CF: Yeah, yeah. So the accountability tags, they’re like dog tags, and you have two of them that you wear around your neck. And if you go, they are most commonly used in structure fires. So if you go inside the structure fire, one tag stays out on a board with an officer making, you know, sure how many people are in or out of the building. And then one tag stays attached to you. So there’s, it’s an accountability system. Like we know who’s in there. And when you come back out, you collect your tag from the board. So, and then you’re whole with your two tags. And so it’s just a way to make sure that nobody gets lost in the darkness of a burning structure.

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CF: So there’s a tendency when we all fall into this, like we’re part of this pickleball community. And I was noticing, like, people are getting really upset if you call it an in ball out or, you know, somebody’s serve is not, doesn’t meet the, you know, that’s not underhanded enough. And people were getting, like, legitimately mad. I’m like, looking out at Lake Tahoe, literally like I’m playing on a court, or I can see Lake Tahoe. I can see an eagle’s nest in, like, a jefferyi pine in the foreground, and it’s a Tuesday, and people are just pissed; they’re right, they’re turning red; they’re mad.

DG: Competitive, yeah.

CF: Over this, like what, how do we keep ourselves in check, right? How do we remind ourselves what a privilege? What a privilege to have this view, what a privilege to have people to, and to be playing on a Tuesday, you know? It’s like, some gratitude is in order, not ire, not anger. And so because I’m a very competitive person, I didn’t want that person to be me. And sometimes it was me. So I had to do something to put myself in check. So I started wearing my accountability tags. And if I found myself getting upset, I just touched the tags. Like, you can feel your embossed name on it. And because the tags had the history they had, you know, that would just calm me down. Like, okay, it would give me the correct perspective on my place in that moment in life. And so I just started wearing them. And now I’m at a point where I don’t wear them during rec play, but I wear them during tournaments now because it’s still that, like, there’s no reason to be anxious or nervous or mad, or, you know. It’s a plastic medal, probably. You know, that’s at stake here, you know, maybe a T-shirt.

DG: Well, and I feel like the different characters and friends who you’ve met along the way in your pickleball journey, it was so touching, like you asked them what pickleball means to them in their lives. And I feel a lot of them are a version of that, like that it’s a way to continue appreciating life and living and the privilege of that. You know, particularly for people who’ve been through, you know, loss like divorce and loss of loved ones and health struggles.

CF: Yeah, I know exactly which conversation you’re referring to, but I had this conversation everywhere I went, but this particular one you’re referring to was in, it happened in a small town in Mexico, Los Barriles, Mexico, which is in Baja and along the Sea of Cortez, the eastern cape of the Sea of Cortez. And we were at a taco place, you know, eating in an open-air palapa after playing pickleball, and we just kind of went into this conversation with, why did you start playing pickleball? Why do you— what does it mean to you?

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CF: And it was everything from, you know, my friend Jerome, who was going through a divorce at the time. And this guy is 70 years old, and he’s getting divorced. And it means, you know, it’s like, it’s a different time of life to go through splitting up with someone you’ve been with for a while. And pickleball was his, like, way of saying, you know, I can come to the courts every day and try to be good and try to be better at this sport every day, and that gives me something to do rather than, you know, wallow, you know, in a circumstance that I had no control over. And my friend Carrie, who’s my doubles partner, she was like, it helped her get over and not get over cause you don’t get over, get through the death of her brother. And so, like, there’s all these really deep reasons. And it’s such a silly word, and it’s such a silly mish-mash made-up game, but because it addresses, it allows us to heal ourselves in a way and fill our time in a way that the sport is very silly and also has some real poignancy to it at the same time.

DG: Yeah, and that concept was really striking to me. I mean, the further we go on in life, the more things feel like they might be unraveling. And this is a way to actually do the opposite, I mean, to get better and see something improve as life goes on, which is incredibly important.

CF: Yeah, yeah, he said it well

DG: Well, it’s coming from you and your story, but it does remind me of the word recess. Like that, you know, why should we just have recess as kids, like adults need recess too. And that was a really important message that you’re sending as well.

CF: Yeah, I liked, that was kind of a rabbit that I chased when I was doing some research, and I discovered there’s this whole field called play science. There’s an Institute for Play Science, and they are researching human brains and animal brains and determining what, you know, we all have different motherboards and different need levels for play. My husband does not have a high need for play. Which is why he’s not attracted to pickleball. And I have a high need for play; you know, satisfying that becomes really important. And what we did, we ruined it. Like, we have recessed as kids, and then we, we changed it. We called it workouts. (Laughs)

DG: Yeah, yeah.

CF: You know, like, that’s a crap word that doesn’t feel good. And so, yeah, so pickleball is kind of reversing that, you know. It’s like, no, we don’t play pickleball. In fact, but I do. I tell my husband, I’m like, we went through a whole phase where I knew I was playing a lot more. And so instead of saying I’m going to go play pickleball, I say, “I’m gonna work out,” just to kind of make him think I was doing something that wasn’t as fun, but he saw right through it. (Laughs)

DG: Well, how good are you gonna get? What’s next in your pickleball journey?

CF: Oh, gosh. Oh, David, I don’t know. Part of me wants to just settle in where I am, but part of me knows that’s not who I am. So I think I’m solid into what’s called the 4.0 range. So, I need to keep that status, and it’s harder to keep that status. I think I’m actually rated on one of the systems as like a 3.99 something, and on another system I’m a 4 point something. But it gets harder to maintain that because then you have to engage in competitive play, and people are getting better all the time, you know, so I don’t know that I want to keep chasing a number, but my next, I’m really getting into the singles. I want to play some tournament singles. So that’s like my next step. And then we’ll, we’ll see if I can just settle in and calm down a little bit. I don’t know. (Laughs)

DG: (Laughs) Like, why calm down if it brings joy to your life?

CF: Why? Why?

DG: Yeah, why, why do that? I guess I just like sort of to come full circle. Like what, what do you think your journey into pickleball tells us about the role that sports play in our lives?

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CF: Pickleball, in some ways, feels like self-care. You’re doing something that’s so good for you on a social level, on a emotional level, on a physical level, and saying that, allowing yourself to do this, at least in my phase of my life, to accept that fun is okay and not have that guilt, you know, that’s like, well, I should be doing something. I should be doing something for my family. I should be doing something for my kids or my parents, or you can use this whether it’s pickleball or any other sport; you can use it to just it’s okay to take care of yourself and enjoy the activity that you are drawn to.

DG: I love that. Well, Clare, you’re an absolute pleasure to talk to, and I think you’re really helping out my friend in convincing me to play pickleball. I kind of want to get out there now.

CF: All right!

DG: So, yeah, I’m going to blame you when I’m when I get the addiction.

CF: Okay, you can blame me, and I’ll be your sponsor.

DG: That was Clare Frank. She is an author and pickleballer and former firefighter. Her latest book is “Just One More Game: A Pickleball Quest.”

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DG: Next time on Sports in America, there was a time when Mary Cain seemed like one of the fastest runners in the country. At just 16 years old, she was recruited by Nike to race professionally

MC: Nike, which is a multi-billion dollar company, is encouraging me. It was like a complete dream come true

DG: But then, Mary’s racing times started to slow. Soon she quit running altogether. What happened to the girl who was supposed to outrun everyone?

MC: I didn’t believe that my relationship with Alberto was abusive until probably like six to eight weeks before the New York Times piece came out. And that really, like, forced me to sit down and be like, what else was a lie? What else was bad?

DG: During her time at Nike, Mary says she experienced abuse at the hands of her coaches that decimated her mental and physical health. Mary Cain’s story is coming up next time on Sports in America.

[THEME MUSIC]

This is Sports in America. I’m your host, David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

Our engineer is Mike Villers. Our theme music is composed by Emma Munger. Our talent booker is Britt Kahn. Our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.

Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by Religion of Sports with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeartRadio app, wherever you get your podcasts.

And we also wanna hear from you. How about you drop us a line? You can write us at sportsinamerica@whyy.org. That’s sportsinamerica@whyy.org. Thanks, everyone. And we will see you next time for Sports in America.

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Host: David Greene
Executive Producers: Joan Isabella, Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Talent Booker: Britt Kahn
Engineers: Mike Villers
Tile Art: Bea Walling
Theme Song: Emma Munger
Sports in America is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.

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