Pickleball!

Pickleball has been quite the hype lately, and some of my badminton kakis have been talking about trying it out. We were lucky enough that one of them has a cousin who is opening a pickleball court soon, and we were invited to play there. Could I say that we were the testers? :P

The place is called Pickle Garage, and we can see why:

(the entrance is on the left side)

I reached earlier than my friends, and snapped a photo first:

two courts

After that, we received a quick briefing of the rules, and then we started playing.

The basics are: For the first serve and the return, the ball needs to bounce on the court before we are allowed to receive it (otherwise it is a fault on the receiver's side). After that we can receive the ball before or after it bounces. There is a zone in the middle, near the net, which is painted a different colour here, and they call it the "kitchen". Players are not allowed to enter the kitchen area until the ball bounces in the area. The service should be done while standing outside the court (behind the last line), and the serve should not go into the kitchen area.

There may be more details in the rules, but we simply started with those. I found that those of us who played badminton seemed to pick up the rhythm fairly easily. And as for me, I found that applying whatever I had learned for tennis worked quite well. Note: There was no overhead serve (I mean the one in tennis where we throw the ball up and hit it) for pickleball it seemed...we could just serve by hitting the ball directly, or we could drop the ball onto the ground first and serve it when it bounced up. (The latter is easier, so I just did that)

The ball is slightly bigger than a tennis ball I think...a hollow plastic ball with holes (pickles) on it. I think the holes make it bounce less high and less far than a tennis ball. The ball is also lighter, and the court is smaller than a tennis court...which makes it easier for me compared to tennis. Basically in tennis I had to run farther to get to the ball, and the ball was also faster and needed more strength to hit. In pickleball, these drawbacks (for me) are removed, turning it into an easier game.

The problem is that the court rental costs a lot...at least RM40 an hour as far as I've heard...and that is only during non-peak hours, aka working hours. I've heard that the paddle is very expensive as well, and probably because of that, most courts offer paddle rental (or include it in the court rental).

Anyway, it remains to be seen whether I will play again... it was really fun though. :D