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Pickleball is a racquet sport and while it resembles tennis in terms of playing style and court appearance, there is a considerable difference between the two sports. For starters, a standard pickleball court is 44 feet long, which is roughly 13.4 meters. A tennis court, on the other hand, is about 23.77m long.
Secondly, the sport is played with hard polymer balls which allows lesser bounce compared to tennis balls. A pickleball court has a seven-foot wide area on either side of the net called the non-volley zones. Here, players cannot hit the ball unless it has bounced. In tennis, players can volley anywhere on the court.
The sport deploys side-out scoring, which means that points can only be scored on the serving side.
The sport was invented in Bainbridge Island, Washington, in 1965 by Joel Pritchard, the former Lieutenant Governor of the state, and his friends Barney McCallum and Bill Bell. This year, it was named the official state sport of Washington.
The sport has gained a lot of popularity in recent years and a professional league named Major League Pickleball was formed in 2021.
Serena Williams confessed her admiration for the sport on the Ellen DeGeneres Show earlier this year. Former Wimbledon junior champion Noah Rubin recently retired from tennis and switched sports.
"The tennis court is just way too big and there's way too much ground to cover," Rubin told ESPN, adding,"I recently came across the pickleball court and it clicked, this is where I belong, this is home now. And in this sport, size doesn't matter."
Judy Murray warns tennis of pickleball's popularity
Tennis coach Judy Murray, who became the new ambassador for Pickleball Scotland, warned tennis about the sport's growing popularity in a tweet.
"Watch out tennis. Pickleball is coming for you……" the 63-year-old wrote.
Murray previously spoke about the sport's benefits and how it's suitable for people of all ages.
"Pickleball is a wonderfully addictive game that’s both fun and doable for all ages and stages," she said. "It’s the perfect way into and out of racket sports and it has massive potential reach in Scotland because it’s played on badminton-sized courts and every school and sports centre in the country has those."
Former top 10 player John Isner will be a part of a charity pickleball match on Thursday, with basketball legend Dirk Nowitzki as his partner. The pair will face golf stars Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler.
