Silly Name, Serious Sport: Peculiar Pickleball Nets Fans

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WHILE FOOTBALL INVOLVES FEET, and baseball requires bases, pickleball has absolutely nothing to do with pickles. Unless you count the cocker spaniel it was named for.

"The strangest thing about this sport is the name. I tell my daughter I play pickleball, and she dies laughing," says Don Taylor, 63, who picked up the game at The Villages, a Florida retirement community that boasts 150 pickleball courts.

His buddy Jerry Shannon, 77, agrees: "You wouldn't know if it's tiddlywinks."

In fact, it happens to be a racquet sport developed by a few folks in Washington state in the 1960s (including Congressman Joel Pritchard), who apparently shared a fondness for a dog named Pickles. The game borrows elements from more familiar diversions: It's played on a badminton court with the net lowered to 34 inches (about tennis-net height), the paddles look like slightly oversize versions of the table tennis kind, and the ball has the hole-y style of a whiffle ball. Scoring goes up to 11, like in badminton.

And the AARP crowd is turning it into a nationwide sensation — which is why mature types, like Shannon and Taylor, dominate the Skyline Sport & Health Club in Falls Church (5115 Leesburg Pike, 703- 820-4100, Sportandhealth.com) every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, when the basketball courts are transformed into the D.C. area's pickleball haven.

"There's just a wonderful feeling about it," gushes Margie Davenport, who gives her age as "well into the senior category" and is one of the stars of the Sport & Health crew, thanks to the number of medals she's racked up over the past few years.

Many of its devotees are former tennis fanatics who find the smaller court size easier to manage and the underhand serve kinder to their shoulders. There's little chance of injury (unless you happen to get in the way of the ball). Plus, it can be played indoors or outdoors.

Davenport says her friends find it so addictive they credit it with motivating them to recover after heart attacks, broken hips and other medical issues.

"I had breast cancer, and I couldn't play tennis anymore because of lymphedema [swelling due to damage to the lymphadic system]," says Carolyn Law, 58. "So, I switched arms to play this. It kept me going."

Although another one of the game's selling points is that it's easy, competing against the Sport & Health regulars — some of whom have more than a decade of experience under their belts — presents a challenge.

"The tennis pros come down thinking they'll beat us, and then they slink off of the court when they lose," chuckles Tom Sims, 72.

Just because they look like Grandma and Grandpa doesn't mean they won't wipe the court with you. Davenport's earned the nickname "Hard-Hearted Hannah" for her brutal style of play.

"It's harder than it looks," she says with a smirk.

While indulging their competitive streaks, players get the most critical benefit in the form of cardiovascular exercise. After an hour or two of running around, lobbing the ball and diving for tricky shots, they're definitely satisfying their docs' requests for aerobic activity.

"I sweat through two shirts," Sims admits. "I could never do that on one of those machines. The rest of this exercise stuff is too boring." Just wait until the kids find out about this.

Photos by Marge Ely/Express