The Birth, Rise,
and Briny Future
of Pickleball in Santa Barbara
Pickleball Takes Over!
By James Buckley Jr. | June 15, 2023
What is round, yellow, goes “thwock-thwock-thwock,” and actually benefited from COVID-19?
Pickleball, of course.
Pickleball is, for the seven people reading this who haven’t read about it somewhere else, a racket sport played on a small court using a plastic ball with holes in it. It was created in 1965 by a group of bored vacationers in Washington State who cobbled together an activity one afternoon using a variety of lonely sports gear. (The game’s name, by the way, does NOT come from one of the inventors’ dogs, as legend has it. Apparently, in crew racing, a “pickle boat” is one made up of random rowers, much as the game came together from disparate parts. Pickles the dog came along later.)
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