It’s a big question – How did we get here?

How is it possible that nearly 14 million Americans play pickleball on a regular basis (in line with soccer and baseball), and millions more play casually?

What had to happen in order for the professional game to be regularly broadcast live on major network television?

Who would have thought even five years ago that all of us at The Kitchen and thousands of others would walk away from whatever field they were in before to pursue a career in pickleball, whether that be playing the sport, covering the sport, teaching lessons and clinics, selling equipment or dozens of other jobs in what is now a $2 billion industry – and one projected to be worth $7.9 billion by 2033.

A lot needed to happen in order for those things to be true.

We set out to answer all of those questions and more recently, speaking to influential voices who have been in the pickleball community for decades and saw first-hand how the sport went from a retirement hobby to a full-blown professional and amateur sport with multiple pro leagues worldwide and thousands of dedicated facilities catering to rec players everywhere.

Their perspectives varied, but their answers to the big question had a common theme: It all happened because of hundreds of well-meaning, hard-working, passionate individuals in local communities across the country. People who pushed for and often put up their own money to have courts built at their local park. Or others who had a bold vision: That pickleball could rival major American sports leagues as a spectator sport.

Although it was created in 1965, pickleball was mostly confined to the Pacific Northwest and high school and college PE classes throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, according to Steve Paranto, who grew up in Washington state and started playing in the mid-1970s.

In more recent history – roughly the past 25 years – there have been four distinct eras that have defined the sport’s trajectory, the first defined by slow and steady growth in America’s retirement hotspots.

2000-2010: Pickleball takes root in Arizona and Florida

Because pickleball was almost exclusively a sport taught in PE classes for the first 30 years of its existence, there were thousands of people who knew what it was but never played it after high school or college, says Paranto, who is in the Pickleball Hall of Fame in part because he and his father, Arlen, designed the first lightweight composite paddle in the 1980s.

From left: Wes Gabrielsen, Arlen Paranto and Steve Paranto with the world's first composite pickleball paddle. Courtesy photo, Pickleball Hall of Fame

Around the turn of the century a slow shift started to occur: Those people from the Pacific Northwest who knew the game from high school were starting to retire and become snowbirds, moving to warmer places like Arizona and Florida in the winter months.

They took the game with them, taping pickleball lines on the tennis courts at their retirement communities. It became a way for them to meet new people and make friends in their new cities – and if you’re reading this you’ve probably experienced how pickleball can be the perfect game for that.

“They started sharing the game that they had learned when they were young people, and that really was the first boom,” Paranto said.

The invention of the first portable net system during this time period was also a big development, because it meant that anybody could set up temporary pickleball courts at their local tennis courts. That evolution was credited to Bill Booth, who started the Sun City Grand Pickleball Club in Surprise, Arizona, in 2002 and was later inducted into the Pickleball Hall of Fame in 2023.

The game continued to spread slowly throughout the 2000s and eventually led to the first Nationals in Buckeye, Arizona in November of 2009. The tournament drew nearly 400 players from 26 states and several Canadian provinces.

“We thought that was a big deal, and it was at the time,” Paranto said.

By 2013 there were more than 700 participants at USA Pickleball Nationals. Courtesy photo, USA Pickleball

2010-2015: Pickleball spreads nationwide, tournament circuit ramps up

The 2010s were marked by huge growth in the number of courts nationwide. In 2008 there were about 1,500 courts in the country, and by 2015 that number was 12,800, according to USA Pickleball.

Much of that growth happened at private tennis clubs, because local parks departments hadn’t caught on yet.

“Parks departments were some of the last people to get on board with pickleball, because they thought it was a fad,” Paranto said. “They didn’t want to bother with turning tennis courts into pickleball courts. So it was the private clubs – private tennis clubs – that realized they could make more money by putting 12 players in a space where they previously had four players.”

By the middle of the decade pickleball’s momentum was undeniable, and local groups all over the country began working with parks departments to convert unused or dilapidated tennis courts into pickleball courts. In many instances it was nonprofit groups that raised the money for those projects, and continued court construction in the late 2010s set the stage for the participation boom that was looming in the post-COVID era.

“People always say the big growth happened because of COVID,” Paranto said. “Well, if we would have had COVID and there were no courts to play on, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

Now, there are nearly 70,000 total courts, according to USA Pickleball, and multiple public and private facilities in every mid- to large-sized city, with more being built every day.

Growth at the local level fueled the growth of a competitive tournament circuit. In 2013, the first Tournament of Champions was held in Utah, with more than $45,000 in cash prizes given out to the winners.

Timothy Nelson, who started playing in 2008 in Washington state and is the namesake of the “Nasty Nelson” serve, was one of the top players in the country by the mid-2010s and remembers seeing the game evolve during this era.

Timothy Nelson playing in Washington state in the early 2010s. Courtesy photo

All of the best teams at the beginning of the decade were the best dinking teams and mostly included veterans of the sport who had been playing for 20 years or more – names like Billy Jacobsen, Mark Friedenberg, Dan Gabanek, Enrique Ruiz, Don Pascha and Erne Perry, who was so good at jumping the corner of the kitchen line that they named the shot after him.

High-level tennis players hadn’t yet infiltrated the game at the highest levels, in part because paddle technology made it difficult to generate spin, so it was hard to be aggressive on dinks or third-shot drives. They also played with a different ball at the time – similar to an indoor ball of today – that didn’t bounce as high.

That made it a game of mostly strategy and deception, and the emphasis on those skills required more experience to reach the highest level.

“Those guys were the best of the best,” said Nelson, who himself earned the nickname “The Puppet Master” because of the way he disguised his shots and toyed with his opponents. “But that core of probably 10-12 players ‘aged-out’ around the same time and started playing fewer tournaments, which left the door open for the newer players to come in and start winning.”

Billy Jacobsen. Courtesy photo, Pickleball Hall of Fame

2015-2020: U.S. Open, pro pickleball scene emerge

In 2016 the first U.S. Open Pickleball Championships were held in Naples, Florida, and included the first nationally televised broadcast of pickleball on CBS Sports Network, according to USAP.

Some recognizable names were among the winners, including Simone Jardim in women’s singles, Kyle Yates and Dave Weinbach in men’s doubles and Sarah Ansboury and Christine McGrath in women’s doubles. In the 5.0 divisions, a 23-year-old Lucy Kovalova took first in women’s doubles, while a 21-year-old Catherine Parenteau won gold in mixed.

Simone Jardim and Lucy Kovalova play in the U.S. Open in 2021. Courtesy photo

It was the first of four consecutive men’s doubles gold medals for Yates, who dominated in the late 2010s before passing the torch to Ben Johns as the best player on the men’s side in the 2020s.

Jardim also won at least one gold medal from 2016-2019, including triple crowns in 2017 and 2018.

Johns, in college at the time, started to make a name for himself in 2017, winning gold in men’s singles at the U.S. Open and taking bronze in men’s doubles with Joey Farias. Johns and Yates also teamed up in men’s doubles and won gold in 2019.

Those two were the most successful players toward the end of the decade because they started at a time when the soft game was still the top priority, Nelson said. So while they were younger and more athletic than the previous best players, they also learned early on how to slow the game down, which gave them a leg up on other players who were coming in and prioritizing power.

“Kyle and Ben had the advantage of playing a little bit on the tail end of that previous era,” Nelson said. “Whereas a lot of people in the field in those later tournaments were just people coming in and banging the ball and not really playing at a high level (in terms of strategy).”

Kyle Yates and Ben Johns after winning a tournament in 2018. Courtesy photo

Nelson said another aspect that fueled growth in the late 2010s was fan interest for the first time. His YouTube channel and other players’ and organizations’ channels started to gain traction and get eyeballs on livestreams and highlights.

In 2018 USA Pickleball moved Nationals to Indian Wells Tennis Garden in Indian Wells, California, and saw registration explode to more than 2,200 participants. The event featured more than 17 hours of live-streamed content to a nationwide audience on ESPN3 and a 1-hour segment aired nationally on ESPNEWS. USA Pickleball also carried several live matches on Facebook and had a total reach of over 1.5 million viewers.

“We had great players before, but not fans,” Nelson said of the shift. “And in order for a sport to really explode, there’s only one way: There has to be stars. It could be somebody who fans want to root against and see lose, or somebody who they want to see win, but it can’t be somebody who they’re lukewarm about.”

Nelson certainly had that effect on people, often finding himself in the middle of on-court drama with opponents or refs. Yates also had a flair for the dramatic, and something interesting was always happening when he was on the court.

Nelson compared it to other individual sports like tennis or golf, which had icons like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Tiger Woods to push those sports into the mainstream.

“All of these kids were looking at those players and saying, ‘I want to do that. That looks cool,’” he said of the tennis stars. “Kyle definitely filled that role nicely (for pickleball). He was flashy, and he knew how to work the crowd. He got people interested.”

But the real Tiger Woods of pickleball was just getting started. And much like Woods, it was a teenage phenom who would later become the biggest star of the sport.

2020-2025: Pickleball goes mainstream, pro tours battle for control

It’s safe to say that pickleball’s massive growth over the past five years was directly fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees, looking for activities that were safe, outdoors and socially distant, found pickleball and fell in love.

The sport was, in many cases, free, with an already vibrant community pushing for expansion. And importantly, it was easier to pick up and more social than other sports like tennis or golf.

Because of the work that had been done at the local level in cities across the country in the 2010s, there was at least some infrastructure in place (although still not nearly enough) to support the growing interest.

As players flooded to their local courts, another storyline was bubbling to the surface as millionaires wrestled for control of the pro game. Like any good story, it came with a side of drama, a sprinkle of chaos and a lot of money.

Most people picking up a paddle for the first time don’t care who Steve Kuhn or Tom Dundon are. But the battle between their visions for pro pickleball — Major League Pickleball (MLP) and the PPA Tour, respectively — shaped the sport’s future more than can be measured.

Kuhn, a hedge-fund manager with a big heart, saw something in pickleball that no one else did: an economic opportunity. Even before the pandemic hit, he was already putting the wheels in motion for Dreamland in Dripping Springs, Texas — a pickleball paradise where the best players in the world could train, live and turn the sport into something bigger.

And before that he was hosting celebrity matches at his home in Austin, including one in 2018 that featured tennis hall of famers Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick, along with Johns, Tyson McGuffin and other pro pickleball players.

He wasn’t just throwing money around; he was laying the foundation for MLP, a team-based league that felt more like the NBA than the pro tennis tour. The team-based approach tied franchises to the geographical regions that investors called home.

When Major League Pickleball (MLP) first started in 2021, it generated significant buzz due to its innovative format, which was a major shift from the traditional singles and doubles tournaments in pickleball. The MLP format emphasized co-ed team play, strategic drafting, rally scoring and high-intensity, fast-paced matches.

The DreamBreaker, a singles tiebreaker used in tied matches in which a team’s four players rotated into the game every four points, added extra drama and unpredictability. Fans and players alike loved the energy, camaraderie and unique scoring system, which made every point crucial and kept matches exciting until the very end.

Steve Kuhn and other Major League Pickleball officials ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange in 2022. Courtesy photo, Major League Pickleball

But if Kuhn was the dreamer, Dundon was the shark. A Texas billionaire with stakes in everything from TopGolf to the Carolina Hurricanes, he invested in the more traditional PPA Tour and started locking down the sport’s top players with exclusive contracts.

What followed was pure chaos — a tug-of-war over the best talent that felt more like a season of Succession than a sports rivalry.

By the summer of 2023, things hit a boiling point. Kuhn started throwing massive contracts at players, trying to pull them into MLP’s orbit. Dundon and PPA Tour commissioner Connor Pardoe fired back. Players like Johns and Anna Leigh Waters became hot commodities, with offers hitting seven figures.

It wasn’t just about who played where — it was a battle for who would control the 'soul' of the sport and lead it to mass market legitimacy.

After multiple rounds of bidding wars and a briefly floated PPA team-based competitor to MLP called VIBE, a merger was announced. MLP and PPA would join forces, backed by a $75 million investment.

On paper, that should’ve been the end of it. But behind the scenes, power plays and boardroom betrayals kept rolling. Kuhn eventually stepped down from MLP, and Dundon’s influence grew.

While all of this was going on, MLP attracted a wave of celebrity investors, bringing mainstream attention and financial backing to the sport.

Some of the biggest names included:

• LeBron James, Draymond Green & Kevin Love – Invested in what is now Miami Pickleball Club.
• Tom Brady & Kim Clijsters – Backed the Las Vegas Night Owls.
• Patrick Mahomes – Became an investor in the Texas Ranchers.
• Drew Brees, Josh Allen & Jayson Tatum – Invested in teams like the Mad Drops Pickleball Club and the Florida Smash.
• Gary Vaynerchuk – Purchased and rebranded the New Jersey 5s.
• Eva Longoria & Michael Phelps – Part of the ownership group for the D.C. Pickleball Team.

Meanwhile, the PPA Tour was undergoing its own remarkable transformation, with seemingly every tournament attracting a record number of amateur participants and fans.

Chris Carson, better known as DJ Selkirk, had a front row seat as the tour grew from a small road show with fewer than 10 employees and only about 25 signed pros to what it is today – a full-blown production that generated 1 billion minutes watched on PickleballTV in 2024, 50 million views on YouTube and more than 350 hours of live event coverage on national TV.

While his real job was helping the tour with its marketing efforts, Carson was also the championship court DJ at each tour stop starting in late 2021.

“There was so much excitement in those early days of the tour,” Carson says. “It was all hands on deck to set up the venues, so we would show up on Monday ahead of the tournament and hang up all the banners and signage, build the grandstands – everything. It was a lot of work – it was hot, it was tiring, but it was fun because we felt like a family. We worked together, then we played pickleball together, then we would go eat together.

“And at the end of the week we would tear it all down, throw it in the truck and head to the next location.”

The eclectic collection of music Carson played during breaks on championship court created a festival-like atmosphere and elevated the fan experience – and the tour as a whole.

“It became a real show,” he says.

Crowds pack the stands during a PPA Tour event in 2023. Courtesy photo, PPA Tour

At the center of it all was Johns and his eventual mixed doubles partner, Waters, who became the youngest professional pickleball player in history at age 12 in 2019. By 14 she had won multiple times on the PPA Tour, and since 2022 she has remained the clear No. 1 women’s player in every division.

Carson saw Johns and Waters play nearly all of their individual matches for a two-year stretch because they were consistently on championship court. He might be the only person who can make that claim.

“You could see it early on in Anna Leigh – she had this competitive drive that was unmatched,” Carson says. “She brought such a fierceness from a very young age and it was such a cool story because she was doing it with her mom, Leigh, at first. And everybody was just saying, ‘She’s too young to be this good.’”

The mom and daughter were known as “bangers” when they first broke into the pro ranks, but their faster, more aggressive style of pickleball is now considered the norm. And Anna Leigh Waters’ two-handed backhand, a shot that was rarely used in the men’s game, became so dangerous that male players started adding it to their repertoire.

The teen quickly became the face of the tour – and the sport – and is now the highest-paid athlete in pickleball irrespective of gender.

While Carson would consistently see other players on tour get down in matches and become frustrated and mentally defeated, with Waters it was the opposite when she got behind.

“When she would turn around it was like this fire in her eyes,” he says. “She would just say to herself, ‘I am not going to lose,’ and she would even carry Ben through some matches after they started playing mixed together. Seeing that fire to win was so cool.”

Anna Leigh Waters, then 15, celebrates after a shot at the PPA Tour Atlanta Open in 2022. Courtesy Photo, PPA Tour

Waters’ rise also sparked a broader youth movement in pickleball as well as unprecedented fan engagement at pro tournaments.

“She would always throw game balls to young girls or young boys in the crowd, she would be patient and take pictures with young fans and she was so inspiring to those fans because it made them think, ‘Hey, I could do this. I wanna be like Anna Leigh,’” Carson said. “The crowd just loved her, and they still do to this day.”

Together over the past few years, Johns and Waters are 232-7 in mixed doubles, with 46 gold medals as a team and an 83-1 record in 2024.

For her career, Waters has 139 PPA golds, including 32 triple crowns, while Johns has 146 golds and 54 triple crowns. Second place is not close, and it’s hard to imagine it ever will be.

But while the past two years have seen continued dominance from the pair, the end of the 2024 season brought something many thought wouldn’t happen until either Ben or his brother Collin retired: the brothers stopped partnering, at least for now. Meanwhile, other top men’s pros have ascended, coming for Ben’s top-ranked status.

On the women’s side, Waters has yet to be dethroned, but the general state of pro rankings in 2025 is now one of great uncertainty. Instead of seeing the same podium results every tournament, fans have started to sit a little closer to the edge of their seats.

And they’ve seen a notable influx of athletes from varied backgrounds, enriching the sport's competitive landscape. Former tennis stars, such as Genie Bouchard and Jack Sock, have transitioned into pickleball, bringing with them diverse experiences and fan bases. Major League Baseball All-Star J.D. Martinez also announced this year that he intends to pursue professional pickleball after his baseball career.

Amateur game sees unprecedented growth

While all of those storylines were developing at the pro level, the rest of the world was falling in love with their COVID-era hobby.

Between 2020 and 2023, the sport’s growth defied logic: a 223.5% surge in participation. That’s 13.6 million people swinging paddles, and some estimates put the total number much higher. It’s not just boomers anymore — millennials, Gen Z, even kids are getting in on the action.

“Nobody really took pickleball seriously (other than those who played) until 2020 onwards,” says pro player Zane Navratil, who has been playing since 2013. “People laughed at me when I told them I played pickleball until 2020, when it became cool.”

The easiest explanation for the rapid growth at the amateur level is that pickleball is the ultimate equalizer. Former athletes love the chance to compete again, social butterflies use it to make friends and fitness junkies treat it as their cardio of choice. For some, it’s just about learning a new skill. Still others come to the sport with no prior athletic background whatsoever.

Pickleball's evolution from a niche pastime to a globally recognized sport has also been marked by significant strides in diversity and inclusivity, both on the professional circuit and in recreational play worldwide.

Jessie Irvine and Tyra "Hurricane" Black, transitioning from her own pro tennis career, emerged as prominent Black women in the upper echelon of pro pickleball.

And the 2024 Pickleball World Cup in Lima, Peru, exemplified global growth, attracting more than 500 athletes from 32 countries. Puerto Rico clinched the championship, with Peru and Chinese Taipei also on the podium.

Players celebrate during the Pickleball World Cup in November 2024. 

Efforts to promote pickleball in diverse communities are evident. Organizations like the Diversity and Inclusion in Pickleball Council aim to introduce the game to underserved populations, particularly people of color. Such initiatives are crucial, given that nearly 70% of casual players and over 80% of core players are white, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.

Adaptive pickleball programs have been developed to empower individuals with disabilities, ensuring that the sport is accessible and enjoyable for everyone.

The common experiences of pickleball players have led many to make new friends in their cities and online. The Kitchen’s Facebook group, which started in May of 2020, is the now largest pickleball community in the world and has helped connect hundreds of thousands of players in the years since.

It was started by Jared Paul, who at the time had gotten hooked on the sport and wanted to find other players in the Austin, Texas, area to play with.

It later became the first major media brand in the pickleball world, shedding new light on the sport and its key players both on and off the court. The Kitchen was also the first brand to blend culture and pickleball, bringing together athletes and celebrities who loved the sport. Names such as Jamie Foxx, Drew Brees, Rob Gronkowski, David Dobrik and many more have been featured on The Kitchen’s social media channels, and some of that content has reached more than 100 million people.

And through The Kitchen’s Facebook group, newsletter, Instagram page and website, players and fans have shared hundreds of stories of fun, friendship and even instances of recovering and persevering through tough times – all because of pickleball.

With this explosion of interest came another infrastructure boom. Courts started popping up everywhere, in public parks, private clubs and entertainment districts.

Municipalities across the continent had to rush conversion projects on tennis courts and new build projects to meet demand, leading to many cases of noise-complaining neighbors. Those growing pains were inevitable, though, in order for the sport to get where it is today.

Where do we go from here?

The pickleball takeover shows no signs of slowing down, as we’ve seen rapid expansion internationally in the past two years.

As of early 2025, all of the major pickleball leagues in the U.S. have established partner events and leagues in other countries, and other regions have themselves started organizing independent, international pro events.

The Pickleball World Cup was the first event to bring more than 25 nations together to compete in the same tournament, a possible first step toward pickleball landing a spot in the Olympics.

But even if that's still far off, collegiate pickleball is inching closer to becoming an NCAA sport. DUPR and the PPA Tour's formerly separate collegiate leagues have joined forces, and the number of schools set to participate this year numbers in the hundreds.

Countless intramural leagues existed before, but now, schools are starting to build their own dedicated facilities and offer pickleball scholarships.

A decade ago it would have been hard to predict where the game is today, so we can only imagine where things will be in 2035. If the past is any indication, we should be thinking big.