Passions: stepping on court with pickleball, one of our fastest growing sports

Players compete in the amateur men's doubles during the APP Chicago Open (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

I never cease to be amazed by the number of new sports which catch a wave of enthusiasm.

Take pickleball – a cross between tennis, ping pong, and badminton – which has got people to pick up a racquet, possibly for the first time ever, or certainly in many years. People like me.

I’d vaguely heard of it before finding it on the list of events at a health spa resort in Portugal where all the food came in liquid form – juice, blend or soup – and the only caffeine was by way of colonic irrigation. I wasn’t missing my Nescafe that much …

A quick watch online to figure out the rules, and we took to the court.

Pickleball is played on a small court – we played across a tennis court to give you an idea of the dimensions – so that cuts the running about in half, along with the need for Monica Seles style grunts every time you reach for a back hand volley.

It’s still a good workout, but for folk like me, who last stood on a tennis court at the park off Brighton Place in Portobello circa 1973, it made picking up a raquet and ball much easier.

The kit is pretty basic. Remember those plastic balls with holes in them you batted back and forth on the beach as bairns? That’s what you use. The racquets are paddles too – just like the ones you bought at the bucket and spade shop.

Just like tennis, you serve from the baseline, but underhand, so no requirement to study the fluid motion of Andy Murray, and if it lands in the box diagonally opposite, it’s game on. First to 11 wins.

The front of each side of the net is called the kitchen, largely because you’re supposed to stay behind the white line - hence the cry “get out the kitchen!”

The only slightly bonkers part of the sport is its scoring. Rather than a simple 1-0, 2-0, in doubles it’s a three-digit combo - your team’s score, the opposition score, and your server number, one or two. We spent more time wondering whether it was 1-2-2 or 2-1-2…

Still, it was great fun and also hugely social, and that is a massive part of pickleball’s appeal. It’s also very easy to pick up.

There are now clubs across Scotland, and a pickleball festival at Meadowbank on November 4 is already sold out.

And in case you’re wondering about the strange name? The American family who invented the sport named it after their dog, Pickles!

For a great introduction, visit https://www.pickleballscotland.org/

Allan Crow is Editor of the Fife Free Press, sister title of The Scotsman