What is pickleball and why are so many celebrities playing it? The Kardashians and Bill and Melinda Gates are fans, with Harry Potter’s Emma Watson joining Stephen Colbert’s Pickled tournament on CBS

Nov 17 , 2022

Pickled by CBS, hosted by Stephen Colbert and featuring Daniel Dae Kim and Emma Watson playing pickleball. Photo: CBS

With 4.8 million players in the US as of 2021, pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the country with athletes like Tom Brady, Andre Agassi and Michael Phelps picking it up

Leonardo DiCaprio, George and Amal Clooney, the Kardashians, Jamie Foxx, Will Smith and Ellen DeGeneres have all taken it on as a pandemic pastime too – so why is it so popular?

If you were wondering what Stephen Colbert is doing with CBS by hosting “Pickled” today on November 17, chances are you might also have questions about that new, weird racket sport that is taking Hollywood and social media by storm.

Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the US, with 4.8 million players in the country as of last year, growing 11.5 per cent on average over the last five years. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of racket sports as it’s played in a tennis-like fashion on a badminton court with paddles and a plastic, perforated whiffle ball.

Pickleball is a hybrid of tennis, badminton and table tennis played on a court a quarter the size of a tennis court, with hard rackets and a variety of whiffle ball. Photo: AP

The game comes with its own terminology and quirky slang (“dink”, “falafel” and “flapjack” are worth their own Google searches) but essentially, players take turns serving and scoring, the sport can be played in a singles or doubles format, and there are rules to prevent excessively fast play – only underhand serves are permitted and the “kitchen” is a zone near the net that players are not allowed to volley from.

Particularly in the last two years as people searched for outdoor activities during the Covid-19 pandemic, A-listers and professional athletes playing the sport have only increased the mania around it.

This is all coming to a head as Colbert hosts his celebrity doubles pickleball tournament, which features duos involving Emma Watson, Daniel Dae Kim, Luis Guzmán and Sugar Ray Leonard. And these aren’t even close to the biggest names to support the odd sport.

What started out as a suburban pastime invented by kids in Bainbridge Island, gradually began to hit its stride in the mid-2010s when the US Pickleball National Championships relocated to Palm Springs, California and the US Open Pickleball Championships were first held in Naples, Florida in 2016.

Pickleball started getting more popular in the mid-2010s. Photo: AP

Celebrities thereafter turned to the sport as a pastime as Bill and Melinda Gates (who have played since childhood), Leonardo DiCaprio, George and Amal Clooney, the Kardashians, Jamie Foxx, Will Smith and Ellen DeGeneres revealed their obsession with the sport in recent years. The Covid-19 pandemic also helped the sport along as people sought alternatives to indoor activities in the spacious US.