What exactly is pickleball?

 

^{Pickleball is a racket/paddle sport played inside or outdoors in which two players (singles) or four players (doubles) use solid-faced paddles to hit a perforated hollow polymer ball over a net that is 36 inches (0.91 m) high. Until one team violates a rule, opponents on either side of the net hit the ball back and forth. In 1965, children's backyard game pickleball was created on Bainbridge Island in the US. Pickleball was chosen as Washington's official state sport in 2022.} 

What exactly is pickleball?

Pickleball is a racket/paddle sport played inside or outdoors in which two players (singles) or four players (doubles) use solid-faced paddles to hit a perforated hollow polymer ball over a net that is 36 inches (0.91 m) high. Until one team violates a rule, opponents on either side of the net hit the ball back and forth. In 1965, children's backyard game pickleball was created on Bainbridge Island in the US. Pickleball was chosen as Washington's official state sport in 2022. 

 

The name of the game was changed to Pickle Ball because Joan Pritchard, Joel Pritchard's wife, commented that it reminded her of the crew pickle boat, where oarsmen were selected from the remnants of other boats. According to other reports, Pickles, the family dog of the Pritchards, inspired the name "pickle ball." According to the Pritchards, the dog arrived after the game had already been given a name, and it was the dog who gave pickleball its moniker. According to them, the misconception started when a writer who was interviewing the Pritchard in the early 1970s believed that readers would relate to a dog more easily than a pickle boat.

History

Creating the game

One Saturday afternoon in 1965, Pritchard and Bell went golfing and returned to find their families unoccupied. Although they made an effort to put up a badminton court, nobody could locate the shuttlecock. Pritchard and Bell tasked their children with coming up with their own game. At the badminton court, the adults and kids eventually gathered and started experimenting with various balls and rackets, including table tennis paddles. In order to accommodate driving the ball, the badminton net's 5-foot (1.5-metre) height was subsequently lowered to hip level.

Ball

The first ball used when the game was created was a wiffle ball. Since then, the International Federation of Pickle ball (IFP) and USA Pickle ball (USAP) have approved pickle ball-specific ball standards. Balls must contain between 26 and 40 regularly spaced circular holes and be constructed of a sturdy, moulded material with a smooth surface. They must be between 2.87 and 2.97 inches (73 and 75 mm) in diameter and weigh between.78 and.935 ounces (22.1 and 26.5 g). A list of preapproved balls is available on the USAP and IFP websites for tournaments that have been sanctioned by those organisations.