Pickleball Growth Expanding in Peachtree Corners

The relatively new sport has more players than courts to accommodate them

Pat Foley remembers when the popularity of tennis exploded into its golden era in the 1970s. That’s when the 65-year-old Peachtree Corners resident picked up the game, and he continued to play it for decades to come. But as Foley has gotten older, the physical demands of tennis haven’t changed.

“I played tennis for a long time, and as we age, the tennis court seems to get bigger and bigger,” he said.

Now Foley is seeing the surge of another sport — pickleball. It’s like tennis but doesn’t require players to cover as much turf. In 2019, National Public Radio named pickleball the fastest growing sport in America, and according to news outlet Axios, participation in the sport increased by 21.3% between 2019 and 2020. An estimated 4.2 million Americans play the sport at least once per year.

“I had seen something in the news about it,” Foley said. “I had never played it. I really enjoyed it. It’s a very social game.”

Foley is a member of the Pickleball Flex League, which was started last year by Ace Tennis Academy owner Jeff Weaver and is designed to introduce new players to the sport.

Weaver has owned and operated Ace Tennis Academy since 1994 and developed it into one of the top tennis development programs in Atlanta, producing the winners of more than 35 national titles. But with the rapid growth of pickleball and no pickleball courts near Peachtree Corners to play on, he decided it was time to expand Ace Tennis Academy beyond tennis.

“It was time to introduce pickleball because pickleball is growing so much,” Weaver said. “There’s a want and a need for tennis players to play pickleball, but there’s also a want and a need for our members who don’t play tennis. We’re introducing pickleball and engaging more membership.”

A sport is born

The Pickleball Flex League allows members to play matches on their schedules. It’s a doubles-only league, which means players must find a partner of the same gender to form a team, and the league is divided into different divisions based on experience.

Each team communicates with other teams to schedule when and where the match will take place. Teams can designate any suitable court they choose to be their home court, where they will play three of their six matches for the season.

“We set up a flexible league because most people don’t have permanent courts,” Weaver said. “They have tennis courts with lines on it and they have to share time with tennis players. The flexible league allows them to schedule on their own time.”

Weaver said he first gauged community interest by hosting a meet-and-greet at its Field’s Club location in the Riverfield neighborhood off East Jones Bridge Road. The event drew a crowd of about 100 people. Now the league is beginning its third season. “We tripled in size from our first season to our second season,” he said. “We’re projected to probably double that or triple that this coming season.”

Foley, who has played in the league since the first season, said he not only noticed the growth in the second season, which took place last fall, but also the difference in competition. “Everybody that we played was better in the second season, and we didn’t play any of the same people,” he said.

Weaver said what the Pickleball Flex League currently offers is just the beginning. Ace Tennis Academy is in the process of converting two of its eight tennis courts at its Amberfield location, behind The Forum, into six full-time pickleball courts. When that happens, those courts will play full-time host to league matches, he said, and he plans to hire a full-time pickleball coach to the Ace Tennis Academy staff.

“Once we have permanent courts built, we will start providing a full-time pickleball instructor with those and start programming for our members. And then it’ll just blow up,” Weaver predicted. “Our goal is to build the pickleball membership to be as high as the tennis membership here.”

League membership costs $70 per player, and Weaver said he plans to expand the league from doubles to mixed doubles (a male and female on each team) and singles for its upcoming summer season. He’s also considered the possibility of forming a club team that would compete against other clubs from around Atlanta.

Need for public courts

But Weaver also acknowledges that an effort to establish permanent public pickleball courts would be beneficial to Peachtree Corners. “We’re also wanting to help the city and people in the area to lobby to have courts built in Peachtree Corners,” he said. “That would be a big plus for the pickleball community. You don’t have to be a member of the club to play.”

The city isn’t alone in having a lack of permanent courts despite growing interest in the sport.

Walter Putnam, a certified pickleball instructor in Duluth, said he has taught more than 800 people to play the sport in the past three years. “I haven’t had one person hand me their paddle back and say ‘Hey, this is not for me,’” Putnam said. “Everyone seems to like it. I spend about an hour and half to introduce them, and it only takes three lessons before they’re ready to go and play open matches.”

The question is, where can they go to play those matches?

Putnam is an ambassador for USA Pickleball, which means he travels through metro Atlanta raising awareness of the sport, establishing pickleball programs and lobbying to have public courts built.

Putnam said he has been working with Gwinnett County for two years trying to get more public courts built. He said the county has a 10-year plan to build 40 courts scattered throughout the area, but Putnam said ideally there needs to be one or two facilities that host 20 courts each. “We need a lot more than three or four here or three or four there,” he said. “We need a facility with something like 22 dedicated courts.

“This is an explosive market for pickleball. I’ve been predicting it for several years. It’s a slow process, but I would like to see something dramatic happen in Gwinnett County.”