Pickleball Court at Beulah Village Park
PICKLEBALL ANYONE?!
It’s one of the fastest growing sports activities in the US. And YOU can play this fantastic game right in the Village Park in Beulah, where a great pickleball court stands waiting for you. It’s adjacent to the recently re-surfaced tennis court by Beulah Beach on Crystal Lake.
WHAT IS PICKLEBALL?
Quoted from Wikipedia:
OVERVIEW: The sport is played on a court with the same dimensions as a doubles badminton court. The net is similar to a tennis net, but is mounted two inches lower. The game is played with a hard paddle and a polymer smaller version of a wiffle ball. Pickleball is similar to tennis, but with differences. A pickleball ball typically moves at one-third of the average speed of a tennis ball and the court is just under one-third of the total area of a tennis court.
Originally invented as a backyard pastime, pickleball is now an organized sport represented by national and international governing bodies.[citation needed] The United States Pickleball Association estimates there are more than 100,000 active pickleball players in that country. In Canada, where the game is still relatively new, there are more than 5,000 players in four provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, and Ontario. Meanwhile new organizations like the Singapore Pickleball Association and the All India Pickleball Association[1] are bringing the game to Asia. Central Florida hosts over 108 courts in The Villages, a popular retirement community located near Orlando Florida. In Davie, located in South Florida, there are five Pickleball courts on a converted hockey rink. In Oakland Park, Florida two Pickleball courts were placed on a converted hockey rink. Hoilday Park in Fort Lauderdale has four Pickleball courts in their Hockey Rink.
The game started during the summer of 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington at the home of then State Representative Joel Pritchard (who, in 1970, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the State of Washington).[citation needed] He and two of his friends, Bill Bell and Barney McCallum, returned from golf and found their families bored one Saturday afternoon. They attempted to set up badminton but no one could find the shuttlecock. They improvised with a whiffle ball, lowered the badminton net, and fabricated paddles of plywood from a nearby shed.
HISTORY: The unusual name of the game originated with Joan Pritchard, who said it reminded her of the “Pickle Boat in crew where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats.”[2]The popular story told today is that it was named after the family dog. Joan corrected this story in interviews but the story persists. As the story is told, the whiffle ball belonged to the dog. Whenever an errant shot happened, Pickles would run and try to get the ball and hide it. They named the game for their dog’s ball, “Pickles’ Ball”, then it became Pickleball. The truth is the Pritchard family didn’t get the dog until 1967,[3] so actually, the dog was named after the sport.
THE COURT: The pickleball court is similar to a doubles badminton court. The actual size of the court is 20×44 feet for both doubles and singles. The net is hung at 36 inches on the ends, and 34 inches in the middle. The court is striped like a tennis court, with no alleys; but the outer courts, and not the inner courts, are divided in half by service lines. The inner courts are non-volley zones and extend 7 feet from the net on either side.[4]:11
THE PLAY : The ball is served underhand from behind the baseline, diagonally to the opponent’s service zone. Points are scored by the serving side only and occur when the opponent faults (fails to return the ball, hits ball out of bounds, steps into the ‘kitchen’ area [the first seven feet from the net, also known as the non-volley zone] in the act of volleying the ball, etc.). A player may enter the non-volley zone to play a ball that bounces, and may stay there to play balls that bounce.[4]:A-22 The player must exit the non-volley zone before playing a volley. The first side scoring 11 points and leading by at least two points wins.[5]
The return of service must be allowed to bounce by the server (the server and partner in doubles play); i.e. cannot be volleyed. Consequently, the server or server and partner usually stay at the baseline until the first return has been hit back and bounced once.
In doubles play, at the start of the game, the serving side gets only one fault before their side is out, and the opponents begin their serve. After this, each side gets 2 faults (one with each team member serving) before their serve is finished. Thus, each side is always one serve ahead or behind, or tied.
In singles play, each side gets only one fault before a side out and the opponent then serves. The server’s score will always be even (0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10…) when serving from the right side, and odd (1, 3, 5, 7, 9…) when serving from the left side (singles play only).[4]:A-15