Pickleball, Anyone? Young or Old?

PICKLEBALL IS A buzzword that has sprung up among both the young and the elderly in the past year. The racket sport originated in the mid-1960s, and it combines elements of badminton, tennis and ping pong. Pickleball is credited to Americans Joel Pritchard and Bill Bell, who invented the sport to make use of the badminton court in the backyard of Joel’s Bainbridge Island home after his son, Frank, complained about having nothing to do on a summer day. When the paddles and plastic balls they repurposed from their garage began breaking, their neighbour, Barney McCallum, stepped in. He constructed better, more reliable paddles, and these became integral to the game’s equipment and rules.[1]