Pickleball: I can stop anytime. Really.

So, Debbie and I have started playing pickleball, and by “playing” I mean “doing our best to not look like complete klutzes while avoiding a trip to the E.R.” Thus far we’ve avoided the latter, but the jury is still out on the former. [Alert Gazette readers will recall that I also characterized our initial forays into the wacky world of ballroom dancing in similar terms. Those efforts turned out pretty well, so we hope past performance does augur future results.]

Our little neighborhood has a very nice lighted tennis court that has been restriped to also accommodate pickleball, which makes it look something like the image shown at right, although ours isn’t quite as garish as this example. Given that the average age of the residents is north of 60, we unsurprisingly have very few tennis players, and pickleball is rapidly gaining new addicts adherents.

Now, if those lines look confusing…well, they are, and it takes a while to get used to which lines are appropriate to argue about whether a ball is out of bounds or not. Not that any of us argue about such things, as pickleball is a decidedly mild-mannered social game, not unlike, say, mixed martial arts or presidential debates, and with the same inscrutable rules.

But I digress.

About a year ago, we bought some cheap paddles and three balls — which we later learned were for indoor play; there is a difference — and banged them around the court a few times. We upgraded our paddles to slightly less cheap graphite models, although we couldn’t tell much difference. We even bought court shoes, which was probably our wisest investment. And then we stopped playing, mainly because we didn’t have anyone else to play with, and singles pickleball is hard and a tad boring because when you play against your spouse, you have to stifle your instinct for trash talking, if you know what’s good for you. And after 50+ years, I do.

Things changed about six months ago when someone in the neighborhood proposed a bimonthly, late afternoon get-together at the court to play pickleball and socialize, and we came up with a creative name: the Pickleball Social. It quickly became a thing, and we learned that there were six or seven couples and a handful of singles who were either experienced players or who wanted to learn the game. There were also a number of neighbors who just wanted to watch and drink wine. And socialize. And everybody brought their dogs.

The formality (and felt peer pressure) persuaded Debbie and me to upgrade our equipment once again, this time to carbon fiber paddles that purport to allow us to bend it like Beckham, so to speak, although that remains in the realm of theory thus far. This commitment to the sport also resulted in the inevitable upgrades to our wardrobes — another ballroom dancing parallel, of course — and various accoutrements such as gloves, sweat wristbands, and pickle juice shots.

These affairs are non-competitive, and newbies are treated with respect and patience. We have one rule, in recognition of certain, um, vulnerabilities: absolutely no diving for the ball (I violated that one right off the bat, and learned a valuable lesson).

We rotate partners — we only play doubles — and make sure everyone gets a chance to play as much as they want, and we’ve started setting up a portable net at one end of the court so that people can warmup or practice while a game is going on. Depending on how many people show up, we may shorten the games to 7 points rather than the usual 11, to give more people playing time. Our POA will eventually restripe the court to have two pickleball surfaces.

Attendance at the socials took a big hit during the summer months due to the brutal heat (half of the court is not shaded by the tall oaks and pecan trees sheltering the rest of the area). A few of us got together in the early hours of the morning to play, and that was fun, and now that the days are shorter and cooler, the crowd is starting to reassemble.

Neither Debbie nor I have any natural athletic ability, but we enjoy the challenge of pretending that that’s not the case, and I think we’re improving incrementally, at least to the point where fewer people are collapsing in laughter at our on-court foibles.

Not me. As far as you know.