$450 paddles and millions in prize money: has pickleball sold out?
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As a family sport becomes more elite and more commercial, its founder’s son mourns the loss of a game once ‘played for fun’
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In Frank Pritchard’s telling, it was only meant to be a bit of fun. Or rather, a lot of fun.
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Pritchard was there in the summer of 1965 when his father, the congressman Joel Pritchard, and two friends devised the game of pickleball at the house they rented for the summer on Bainbridge Island in Washington state.
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They “invented” it using what they found lying to hand – a plastic, perforated wiffle ball, paddles shaped from plywood, and a net usually used for badminton.
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The primary intention, says Pritchard, was to entertain a group of bored children and adults during the kind of long,
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hot school summer holiday that manages to lodge itself in many of our memories.
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Almost 60 years later, pickleball has become the fastest-growing sport in the US with around 8.9 million participants.
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Last year, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA), supported by the sports entrepreneur Tom Dundon, agreed to merge with the Steve Kuhn-backed Major League Pickleball (MLP).