In the flurry of the fast-changing fitness landscape, pickleball – a paddle sport that blends elements of tennis, badminton, and table tennis – has become the unlikely star of recreation among the younger generation in Asia, shedding its former label of being a racquet sport for seniors.
For 27-year-old Singaporean, Jeremy Soh, pickleball had started as a means to an end. He and his fiancée, Jeovanne Poernomo, 23, were on the lookout for a sport suitable for their parents when he stumbled across pickleball.
“It is marketed to be more friendly for people who are slightly older, who have mobility issues. Our parents have not exercised for 20 years so we thought this would be a great opportunity to introduce the sport to them,” he told This Week in Asia.
But what turned out as an activity for their parents quickly transformed into a passion for the couple, propelling them to travel to the likes of Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam for pickleball competitions and even setting up an academy and facility of their own – just months after they picked up their first pickleball paddle in November 2023.
“When we started to travel around to play pickleball, we noticed that the trend is opposite of what most people think about the sport. In Singapore, a lot of people think that it’s a sport for older people,” said Soh, citing how the sport has attracted players in their twenties and thirties, and in some countries, even children.
“We saw the sport is growing in the rest of Asia and we see the merit of a sport like pickleball that’s just as challenging in hand-eye coordination but not as physically taxing or difficult to learn like tennis. We see that as the driver of its growth in Asia.”
By May, the couple had set up a pickleball facility, Performance Pickleball, in Singapore’s northeast region of Punggol and launched lesson plans for players ranging from adult beginners to young children and sessions for staff of various organisations.
“People are shifting from golf courses for doing business to pickleball courts because it’s a lot more social. The games are shorter and time efficient that way so I can see a lot of corporates getting into pickleball,” he said, adding that there had been an increase in the number of companies reaching out to his team.
Pickleball can be played with either two or one player per team, though the doubles format is the most common. Players have to serve a plastic ball over a 36-inch-high net and let the ball hit the ground first to play it.
Typically, each round takes around 15 to 20 minutes and in a tournament, a match winner is based on the best two out of three games, with a full match taking about one hour.
Though pickleball had made its way to Singapore before the current millennium, coaches, associations and enthusiasts who spoke to This Week in Asia said that the craze picked up among Gen Z’s about two years ago. With over 2,000 players across Singapore currently, the number is expected to grow in the coming years.
Pickleball has its roots in the United States, invented by three suburban dads in Washington in 1965. Pandemic-related social restrictions in 2020 fuelled the sport’s popularity, with over 13 million players actively involved across the states currently.
Many have made the switch to pickleball from other traditional racquet sports because of its lower barriers to entry.
“Unlike other sports, where you might need years of training, with pickleball, you just need to be on the court for maybe an hour or two to get the basics of it, and you can start playing. But mastering the sport is something else altogether,” said Priyanna Subramaniam, 28, one of the co-founders of the newly set up Pickleball Lab, a shop selling pickleball equipment.
In Vietnam, the racquet sport has been growing with a “freight-train momentum” in the last six months and has become the hot summer sport of this year, with the number of players skyrocketing compared with the end of 2023, according to Vietnamese news outlet VnExpress.
In India, a company led by Gaurav Natekar, a former tennis champion, has announced that it will set up a professional pickleball league and plans to invest over US$10 million in the sport over the next five years.
In China, sports and fashion influencers have fuelled its popularity by posting photos of themselves dressed in stylish athleisure outfits and unique pickleball paddles. The country’s Instagram-like XiaoHongShu app recorded 2.5 million views for pickleball-related content in April alone.
Similarly, Singapore’s newest wave of pickleball players is driven by the younger generation, who have made the switch from other racquet sports like tennis and badminton or are newbies.
Darren Ho, spokesman for Singapore Pickleball, the republic’s official association, said his sport started “exploding into life” two years ago. The organisation of the sport has undergone a revamp over the period, with ranking systems and more tournaments in place.
“When I first joined the association [two years ago], the average age was about late forties to early fifties. Now we see a lot of young people crossing over from table tennis, tennis and badminton, so there’s more young blood,” Ho said.
A typical pickleball tournament at a sports facility would take up to 10 courts in the past, but the number has since doubled, he added.
Outside the arena of competitive pickleball, word about the sport had spread rapidly after celebrities such as Taylor Swift were seen with a paddle, said Richie Ong, the 37-year-old co-founder of That Pickleball Shop.
In a 15-second-long YouTube Shorts post in April, the American pop star can be seen donning a lavender pirouette skirt in a pickleball court, sparking an online frenzy for her skirt, which sold out just minutes after her post.
“Social media has a big part to play in the trend. When people see Taylor Swift posting a picture holding a paddle, I think many people will be interested. We also see tennis players like Roger Federer talking about pickleball as well. So I think this gets the younger generation interested in finding out more about pickleball,” he said.
Ong himself had his reservations when he first learnt about the sport, but realised that there was more than met the eye.
“Initially, I thought it was going to be quite easy to be good at it but after getting beaten by 60-year-old uncles, it really changed my mind.”
While pickleball has got a hip rebrand in the last few years, it was unlikely to be just a fad, Singapore Pickleball’s Ho said.
“The sport is really easy to pick up. It’s a multigenerational sport, you can have a grandma, a parent and the kids playing all within one court and everyone can enjoy it. You can’t get that with any other racquet sport.”
