As feuding continues between tennis and pickleball players over limited court space, the Long Beach City Council will vote Tuesday on whether to develop a “Pickleball Master Plan” to help alleviate the conflicts.
The master plan would study the feasibility of converting tennis courts to dual-use courts, creating dedicated pickleball courts and creating storage space for park equipment like pickleball nets.
Pickleball was announced as the fastest growing sport in America for the second year in a row in 2022, with 4.8 million players nationwide and a growth of almost 40% in the last two years, according to data from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association.
Local pickleball player Mark Leonard described the game as “a mix of tennis, table tennis and badminton. It’s tennis on a badminton court, played with an oversized ping pong paddle.”
The sport is less intense on joints and doesn’t require high endurance, making it popular amongst retirees, though its popularity has seen growth in all age categories.
Like the rest of the nation, the sport’s popularity is growing in Long Beach.
“Pickleball is taking over Long Beach as the number one recreational activity all over the city,” said Councilmember Suzie Price, who authored the agenda item. “I know that because I get more emails, calls and text messages about pickleball than pretty much any other issue in the city.”
Last year, Parks and Recreation Director Brent Dennis was taken on a tour of the Seal Beach Tennis Center by Partners of Parks Board Member Mark Hardison, an avid pickleball player.
“Come to find on the tour that almost half of the people playing pickleball at the Seal Beach Tennis Center were Long Beach residents,” Dennis said. “So that, to me, expressed a huge unmet recreational need for people that live in Long Beach.”
The City has 67 tennis courts and only one dedicated pickleball court, according to Dennis, and the tour inspired him to form the City’s first Pickleball Advisory Group about six months ago.
“Through the pandemic, [pickleball players] used chalk lines and tape. They kind of established their own pickleball courts on paved surfaces,” Dennis said, noting that many carried around their own pickleball nets to create makeshift courts.
Such is true for the Long Beach Pickleball Club, one of the city’s many pickleball groups that set up courts wherever they can find a flat surface to play.
On Saturday, April 2, about twenty players gathered at Somerset Park on two pickleball courts created using chalk lines on a volleyball court. Members bring their own nets and racquets. They’ve done the same at Marina Vista Park, Bixby Park and the Bayshore Playground—which hosts another, larger pickleball club.
“It’s got a lower barrier of entry than most [racket] sports, but it’s still extremely fun and challenging. It’s so social and engaging, so everybody has a good time with it,” said Leonard, who started playing during the pandemic. “It’s a little different from tennis in that people of different skills and ages can still play together, compete, at a relatively interesting level.”
But no matter where they play, members have stories of run-ins with tennis players. Most conflicts arise over court space.
“We’ve had problems with the tennis players,” said Richard Zinner, who co-founded the club in 2017. “The gist is, we have 30, 40 people on one tennis court, and then you have two people playing tennis.”
Most tennis courts in Long Beach have signage listing the rules of the court. The most controversial for the group: “Tennis courts are for tennis play only” and “Playing time limited to ONE hour when others are waiting.”
Whether a third rule has been followed—“Tennis court etiquette and good sportsmanship shall prevail at all times”—is a subject of debate between the two groups.
Jan McDermott and her son Matthew play tennis at the Somerset Park courts “almost every Saturday,” the same time the pickleball group meets. They started playing during the pandemic and said that they “never had a problem” in the beginning.
“No one is ever going to come and question them because they have a big mob of people.” —Tennis player Matthew McDermott
Then, as pickleball players began using the tennis courts for their games, the two began having conflicts with the group.
“It did get ugly,” Jan said.
Both sides accused the other of calling, or at least threatening to call, the police on one another.
Jan said that the pickleball group “monopolizes” the courts, playing for hours despite the general rule that players can only play one-hour games on the court.
Since pickleball is a social group sport and one tennis court can fit four pickleball courts with four players each, there’s no exact way to figure out how long pickleball players should be able to use the courts.
The City has addressed the issue in some places by using a reservation system, but there was no indication that such a system exists at Somerset Park.
“No one is ever going to come and question them because they have a big mob of people,” Matt said.
His mother pointed out that the courts at Somerset Park have signage indicating that the courts are for tennis only.
“We can only play tennis here. That’s where the net is, that’s where the court is the size we need. They set up their own nets anyways,” Matt said. “I think that this arrangement, honestly, is best for everyone.”
Pickleball player Stephen Kelton said that the group should have equal access to the courts given that a tennis court can accommodate a group of 16 pickleball players at once, while a maximum of four tennis players can use a court at the same time.
“If we all hung our rackets like [tennis players], we’d be here for two or three days right? Yeah, we play three or four hours, but they should have a place for us.” —Pickleball player Stephen Kelton
“If we all hung our rackets like [tennis players], we’d be here for two or three days right?” Kelton said. “Yeah, we play three or four hours, but they should have a place for us.”
The City wants to address “low hanging fruit” to improve Long Beach’s pickleball ecosystem, such as converting tennis-only courts to dual-use courts using striping, Dennis said, despite players like Jen and Matthew saying more court markings would be “really confusing.”
“We’re just going to explore what’s feasible and what’s possible with the resources that we have,” Price said.
If the Long Beach City Council approves the agenda item, a report on the feasibility of those projects will come back to the council in 60 days.
“They’ve been studying and studying and studying for a long, long time,” pickleball player Chris O’Connell said. “This is, people say, the most popular, fastest-growing sport in America. And you can see there’s 18 or 19 people out here right now. It’s hard for us to seem to get their attention to do something as inexpensive as we think this is.”
The Parks Department is also looking at the feasibility of capital improvement projects to build dedicated pickleball courts throughout the City, Dennis said, but those projects would need funding.
“There have to be facilities here in Long Beach where we could have at least temporary taping,” said pickleball player Mary Doherty. “I’ve got to believe, in this big city, there’s some facility that has empty space.”
The agenda item will come before the council at its Tuesday, April 5 meeting. The Long Beach City Council meeting will take place at 5 p.m. at the Civic Center, 411 W Ocean Blvd.
