Pickleball is a sport played indoors or outdoors, singles or doubles on a rectangular court (13.4 m x 6.1 m). Players use a smooth-faced racket to hit a hollow, perforated plastic ball over a 0.86 m high net until one side is unable to return the ball or commits a foul. The sport was invented in 1965 in the US, becoming a sports craze in the US before spreading to more than 50 other countries, including Vietnam. Basically, pickleball is a hybrid sport between tennis, table tennis and badminton. Pickleball is considered easy to play, suitable for all ages.

Coach instructs how to play Pickleball - Photo: THANH LOC

Many ways... introduction

There are many ways to get into pickleball, each one is different. Some people play for fitness, some play out of curiosity, some play because they see others playing and “follow suit” for fun. But the common characteristic of all of them is: once they play, they can’t stop, becoming people who “eat with pickleball, sleep with pickleball”!

Many people think that pickleball is attractive to all ages and subjects because this sport is easy to start even for people with no sports background, and does not require much time to learn. Maybe that is why the "entry" is quite simple.

According to Mr. Le Ba Thanh Xuan (40 years old), a professional pickleball player and coach in Ho Chi Minh City, to play pickleball, players only need to spend a few hundred thousand to a few million VND with a "combo": racket, shoes, ball, clothes... and a desire to experience a new sport. Mr. Xuan has won many major awards at prestigious pickleball tournaments at home and abroad, most recently the Gold Medal for the 35+ Open Team at the Asian Open Championship. With experience in coaching hundreds of players, Mr. Xuan believes that there are two main groups that come to pickleball. One is the group of players who have never played any sport, who come to pickleball because it is easy to start and does not require technical skills to participate. The second group is for those who have played sports for many years, but gradually their age is not suitable to pursue that sport at a higher level, so they switch to pickleball as a way to stay healthy and gradually improve their level to be able to participate in suitable tournaments.

As for Truong Vinh Hien - the man known as the "pickleball prince" - he came to this sport because of... playing tennis. He has won the national Open Super Cup championship 15 times, including 3 singles championships and the first, second and third place in the Asian Championship. Hien said he is a tennis player who was the runner-up in the national mixed doubles. Once, the club where Hien practiced opened a pickleball court, he tried it out and found it very interesting so he gradually switched to playing both sports in parallel. Hien's story is not an exception, because nowadays most "high level" pickleball players have switched from tennis.

Writer and singer Akira Phan (right) at a pickleball tournament in November 2024 in Nha Trang City, Khanh Hoa Province - Photo: THANH LOC

Many people in different professions have been attracted to pickleball since time immemorial. Among them are many journalists, especially sports reporters.

“ Introduction” and “enlightenment”

In early July 2024, the first time I went to the pickleball court, I was a bit confused and shy but got into it quite quickly. Having been on the gifted table tennis team in high school and having played tennis for a short time, I got into pickleball quite easily.

There is everything about pickleball on social media, just go there and learn. First learn the rules, then learn the tactics, then learn the correct moves... Gradually, on personal facebook and tiktok pages, clips of Ben Johns (25 years old), an American pickleball player considered the most successful in the world today with hundreds of big and small titles, or Quang Duong (a world-famous 18-year-old Vietnamese-American pickleball prodigy) teaching how to play and tactics...

The technical terms you hear over and over again become familiar, such as: kitchen area (also known as non-volley zone); dink shot (a light, short shot used to force the opponent to hit back from a position close to the net); forehand shot (a technique of hitting the ball with the player's right hand, taking place on the same side of the body as the hand holding the racket); backhand shot (performed on the player's left hand side)...

A family pickleball group - Photo: THANH LOC

With a competitive sport like pickleball, no one can play it alone. Neither can I, and what I need to do is to take the trouble to “enlighten” others. My “enlightenment” has been successful when I have established a pickleball group of 4 couples and maintain playing this sport regularly.

Have fun but not too much

In direct proportion to the explosive growth of pickleball in many provinces and cities across the country, there are controversies on social networks about the nature, suitability and even the costumes of this sport. Strangely, despite such a "reputation", pickleball is still... hot!

When US Congressman Joel Pritchard and his two friends Bill Bell and Barney McCallum invented pickleball in 1965, they probably didn’t expect that decades later, in faraway Vietnam, there would be so many people playing and arguing about this sport. At first, their idea was simply to create a fun game to entertain family and friends where they lived.

For some reason, many people have the prejudice that pickleball is a sport for people who are “not strong enough to play tennis, not flexible enough to play badminton, not skillful enough to play table tennis”. Therefore, the term “health care” is used a lot to “put down” pickleball, especially when describing the repeated dink shot movement in this sport.

In strong opposition, Mr. Le Ba Thanh Xuan said that most of that was said by people who had never actually tried pickleball. “It is true that this sport has the presence of the 3 sports mentioned above and is quite simple to start, anyone can go out and play happily together. But to reach a certain level, there is no concept of health care here. You will need physical strength, power, dexterity, flexibility, judgment, and situational awareness, no less than other sports. On the contrary, this is a sport that burns a lot of your calories,” Mr. Xuan affirmed.

From a professional perspective, Mr. Le Do Nhu Hoai, Head of the Department of Sports Management (Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Quang Tri province) said that many people are worried that pickleball will emerge as a trend and then fade away, but he does not think so. “This sport has a level of movement, the possibility of leading to injuries is low. In Quang Tri province, pickleball is developing very strongly. We have sent staff to train referees, organize tournaments... to anticipate the future because it will certainly be needed in the coming time,” said Mr. Hoai.

It is a fact that pickleball has attracted players of many professions, ages, and genders. The pickleball court sometimes seems like a "red carpet" or "catwalk" when many beauties, supermodels, and hot girls in the Vietnamese entertainment industry appear. Not only celebrities dress up beautifully, but many other female players also wear tight-fitting outfits, short skirts, sometimes quite airy and "saving" fabric. There are also many people who go to the court mainly to wear revealing clothes. Therefore, some female pickleball players are "stoned" by many people.

However, ignoring that, the appearance of female tennis players in sportswear has brought a very healthy, fresh beauty to the pickleball community. "Women or anyone wants to be beautiful. Every profession, every human activity is aimed at beauty, so why not pickleball?", Ms. Nguyen Thi Lien (31 years old) - a pickleball player in Dong Ha City - wondered but implicitly affirmed "there is nothing wrong with women being beautiful on the pickleball court". Personally, the writer also agrees with this!

Nguyen Phuc