The club’s pickleball association has swelled to over 80 players after two members who were former college tennis players but had given up the game discovered it as an alternative that restoked their fire for racquet sports. The club has spent $20,000 for eight full-time pickleball courts in response to the fast-growing demand.
Peter Marks hadn’t played tennis in 23 years, after two partial knee replacements and advancing age combined to keep him away from the game that had earned him a scholarship to the University of Missisippi. Instead, The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., reported, Marks became an obsessive golfer and didn’t even miss tennis that much, because it just wasn’t fun anymore, and was also frustrating, as he was no longer able to cover ground like he could, having to deal with constant pain.
But when Marks went to visit his sister and her husband in Memphis, Tenn., a year ago now, The Clarion-Ledger reported, he found them playing a game called pickleball that was similar to tennis, but with solid paddles and a smaller court and a perforated ball, much like a wiffle ball.
Marks simply wasn’t interested in playing, but when he was walking to his car, a Mississippi State alum noticed the Ole Miss sticker on his car and egged him on to play. He gave in, tried it out and fell in love, The Clarion-Ledger reported,
Marks the came back to Jackson and went to his friend Ken Hall Barnett. “Ken, I found something I can finally do,” he said.
The two had played tennis against each other in juniors and high school and even in college, as Barnett played at Millsaps College. Now, The Clarion-Ledger reported, they’ve found a way to keep playing something like it at the Country Club of Jackson.
The two men ordered a temporary net and asked the club for permission to take off the tennis net from one of its hard courts, The Clarion-Ledger reported. They started hitting the ball around, and people heard the clanking sounds of the paddles and began watching.
The club’s Board eventually let them get temporary lines and nets for four courts. Then came a pickleball association at the club, and soon even Board members were even playing, The Clarion-Ledger reported. By March, the Board was convinced to convert an area to full-time pickleball courts.
By July, the roughly $20,000 set of eight courts was complete, and there are now 81 members in the CC of Jackson’s pickleball association.
“It was a thrill to find something on a smaller court, that you can get out and move around, have the same strategy,” Marks told The Clarion-Ledger.
The group playing the game at the CC of Jackson was described by The Clarion-Ledger as “primarily middle-aged country clubbers running around [and] rediscovering their competitive streaks long after they thought their organized sports days said farewell. They are talking trash and yelling after a spike.”
In addition to Marks, a 63-year-old advertising executive who The Clarion-Ledger described as “more like the CEO of the Jackson pickleball scene,” players include Barnett, a 63-year-old financial adviser who is something of a natural on the courts, having won overall Male Athlete of the Year in May at the State Games of Mississippi. And Leigh Ann Ross, the associate dean for clinical affairs at Ole Miss School of Pharmacy, who fellow club members like to call “the enforcer.”
“I’m probably the most competitive one out on the field,” Ross told The Clarion-Ledger.
Tennis players tend to pick up pickleball easier, and it was that knowledge and comfort that led to a wake-up call for Barnett and Marks at their first competitive tournament, The Clarion-Ledger reported. They assumed their tennis background would give them a leg up and it did for a while, getting them to the finals. But then they met more advanced players in the finals who have been playing for 10 years and play almost daily, and saw the different strategies that could be used as they lost the finals match badly.
“It took us down a little notch,” Barnett told The Clarion-Ledger, “[and convinced us] that we better learn the skills of the game a little better.”
The group has loved seeing the evolution of everyone at the CC of Jackson in just the past year, The Clarion-Ledger reported, with pickleball developing into a community-like sport that has created relationships that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
The next evolution they want to see is in growth for the game in Mississippi. “I’d like to see it grow in the community,” Marks said. “I think there’s a gap there where you’ve got a lot of older tennis players that haven’t played tennis and are looking for something to do, and they love it.”
When the sport was introduced to a group of older female tennis players at the club, Ross told The Clarion-Ledger, “They quit tennis, because they liked it so much.”
The club members also don’t see why pickleball isn’t in more schools, as it is relatively inexpensive and easier to teach than tennis.
The online version of The Clarion-Ledger’s report, which includes video of CC of Jackson members playing pickleball, can be viewed here: http://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/2017/08/30/meet-country-club-crew-threw-itself-into-pickleball/613802001/
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