What's the Dill: Nashville Pickleballers Are Looking for Space

The fastest-growing sport in the United States isn’t soccer, or even MMA. It’s pickleball. 

By now you’re probably at least aware of the quirky game, sort of a mash-up of tennis, badminton and table tennis. Stephen Colbert hosted a celebrity pickleball tournament on CBS. LeBron James invested in a professional pickleball team. Major media outlets from The New York Times to CBS News have explored why exactly a middle school gym-class staple has suddenly become the up-and-coming sport across the country. 

If you’re not among the 5 million or so Americans playing pickleball, the setup is fairly simple. The game is played on a badminton-style court with a tennis net, a Wiffle-esque ball and paddle-like rackets. Players, usually in pairs, play to 11 points — like in table tennis — and only the serving pair can score. An area near the net called “the kitchen” is a no-volley zone, as it is in tennis. Because the court is roughly half the size of a tennis court, it’s easy to stay moving without causing as much wear and tear on the body. This makes the game accessible for players of all ages, fitness levels and body types. 

“There’s definitely some folks in their late 30s and 40s that come, but primarily I would say it’s 50-plus,” says Andrew Fishman, director of Camp Davis and Children’s Services at Gordon Jewish Community Center, a popular pickleball destination in Nashville. Fishman is part of an unofficial pickleball committee that formed at the JCC due to high demand for games.

Avid pickleballers describe an inherent social aspect to the game that is absent from other similar sports. Gone are the stuffy country clubs and strict dress codes of the world of tennis. The laid-back vibes offer a more welcoming atmosphere for newcomers. But without the local infrastructure of other more established sports, pickleball courts often have to be set up on the fly wherever space is available, whether that’s a basketball gym or, crucially, a tennis court. 

When the sport’s popularity skyrocketed during the height of the pandemic, many people set up shop at their local tennis courts by taping out pickleball court dimensions and bringing their own nets. Because of the battle for space, there’s a bit of tension between tennis players and pickleball enthusiasts across the country, and Nashville is no different.

“Tennis courts are very political things,” says Randall Bedwell, the founder of Pickleball Kids USA in Hendersonville — one of the few pickleball spaces specifically for kids not just in Middle Tennessee, but in the entire state. 

Building a pickleball court can be expensive, with an estimated cost of $25,000 to $45,000. And the demand for courts is far outpacing the supply in Middle Tennessee. The situation is even more dire for kids interested in the sport. Children are often not able (or welcome) to join in at adult-aimed meetups. Unless their school offers it in gym class, dedicated pickleball surfaces for kids are hard to come by — despite the game becoming increasingly popular with teens. 

“Nobody seems to be taking the time to [set up the infrastructure] with the kids,” Bedwell says. “And I think that’s a real travesty.”

Bedwell and his team offer lessons, organize summer camps and host tournaments. The former tennis pro and squash enthusiast has helped hundreds of kids learn to play racket sports, but he says pickleball is the easiest for them to pick up. 

“It is a really great way to get kids physically active,” he says. “The court’s small enough that they can talk to each other and socialize and have fun, and it’s not as intimidating as a tennis court.”

Bedwell has been working with local schools to add pickleball as a club sport, and has made early inquiries into pickleball becoming a TSSAA-sanctioned sport — both important steps for improving the local youth pickleball infrastructure. But even Bedwell defers to a higher authority when it comes to Tennessee pickleball royalty. 

Local P.E. teacher Stephanie Lane, a former Lipscomb tennis player who was inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 2004, is a multiple national pickleball medalist, serves on the nominating committee for the Pickleball Hall of Fame, and even helped write the pickleball rules portion of the AAU/USA Pickleball Association handbook. If you’re looking into Nashville’s pickleball scene, it won’t be long before someone directs you her way. 

Lane first got into the sport in the late ’80s at Lipscomb. Her tennis coach Trish Hodgson-Carruth would have the team play pickleball on rainy days when they couldn’t practice outside. 

“I wish that I had known back then that this was a real thing, because the rest would’ve been history,” Lane says. 

Lane picked the game back up a little more than a decade ago, but its presence was nearly nonexistent, at least at the higher levels, in Middle Tennessee. To compete at a high level, one would have to travel out West. But in 2016, when Naples, Fla., built the Naples Pickleball Center — the self-proclaimed “Pickleball Capital of the World” — the game began to make an expansion eastward. 

Before long, Nashville was bitten by the pickleball bug. But even with hundreds of dedicated pickleball players across the Middle Tennessee area, it’s still an ongoing challenge to find the funding for pickleball facilities, a problem that has rarely affected publicly funded tennis courts. 

“I just gave up on trying to share those courts because, I mean, I came from the tennis world, and I’ll be honest, they’re completely two different worlds,” Lane says. “I’m just tired of fighting over the courts, so I just don’t play there anymore. It’s not worth it.” 

Although the city has yet to fully embrace the sport, there has still been interest from pickleball’s highest levels. The Professional Pickleball Association Pro Tour was set to have a stop in Nashville this season, but it was quashed due to a lack of usable facilities. 

“If you build it, they will come, because Nashville’s a destination,” Lane says. “It’s just a matter of time before somebody finally throws the millions in that it’s going to take to get the land and to build the facilities. We just don’t have the facilities right now to host those.” 

There are 56 publicly available pickleball courts in Nashville, including popular spots like the Centennial Sportsplex, but many don’t have permanent pickleball lines and require players to bring their own nets. 

“Occasionally there is tension [between tennis players and pickleball players], but that’s to be expected anytime you have multi-use facilities,” says Jackie Jones of the Metro Board of Parks and Recreation. “However, considering the size of our park system, conflicts across the board for multi-use facilities are for the most part small but can also be loud. The ideal scenario would be for both sports to have dedicated courts, and we are working very hard to make that happen for now and in the future.” 

Despite the fight for space, pickleball continues to thrive in Nashville.

“Pickleball has changed my life in so many positive ways,” Lane says. “I just love to pay that forward and to let people experience it. I know it’s just a Wiffle Ball and a paddle and a court and a net, but it’s a community.”