NEW BALLS, PLEASE

HOW PICKLEBALL TOOK OVER THOUSANDS OF TENNIS COURTS

- STORY: ETHAN SINGER / NYT

In 2022, the Santa Monica Tennis Center in Southern California had a lone tennis court. Today, that court is gone.

In its place are four pickleball courts, attached to what is now called the Santa Monica Pickleball Center.

In 2019, Cincinnati’s Sawyer Point Park had eight worn-down tennis courts.

Today, the park has 24 pickleball courts, six of which are drawn atop the three tennis courts that remain.

The lost tennis courts at the Santa Monica Pickleball Center and Sawyer Point Park are hardly alone.

They are among the thousands of tennis courts identified by The New York Times that have given way to — or now share space with — pickleball.

By analysing nearly 100,000 aerial photographs, we were able to identify more than 26,000 outdoor pickleball courts made in the last seven years — a majority of them at the expense of once-exclusive tennis spaces and created since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. In total, we found more than 8,000 tennis courts that had been transformed for pickleball.

By 2024, 14 pickleball courts were being built or drawn each day, on average, across the country.

Our analysis is not comprehensive.

By trade group estimates, there are more than 270,000 tennis courts — and now 68,000 pickleball courts — in the United States, including indoor courts that we were not able to track. But the photographs are an expansive, bird’s-eye view of what has been happening on the ground in all corners of the country. There’s only so much ready asphalt to go around, and pickleball can’t get enough of it.

'AS MANY COURTS AS POSSIBLE'

Jon Neeter, the owner of the Santa Monica Pickleball Center, said his former tennis business had been doing very well for a single court with a pro shop. A lifelong tennis player and coach, he wanted his shop to be a home away from home for regular clients.