Pickleball Tournaments are “Popular”

A disturbing thought is currently making the rounds within tennis advocacy organizations; Tennis should examine pickleball to discover how to attract tennis players to tournaments. On the surface, it sounds like a good idea. Participation in pickleball tournaments is thriving at the same time that tennis is struggling. Unfortunately, any belief that tennis needs to look to pickleball for a solution to low participation in tournaments is an absolute fallacy.

Some tiger team has probably already been chartered to perform such a “study.” The report will inevitably conclude that tennis needs to shorten the format, conduct single-day events, serve pizza, and hire a DJ. I doubt that the aperture will be wide enough to consider the actual reason for the apparent popularity of pickleball tournaments.

Pickleball tournaments do not have to compete with pervasive pickleball league play. It is easy to attract players when no other available form of organized competition exists. Pickleball tournaments are thriving because that sport enjoys a population of players who are desperate for a place to play. Those players do not have leagues dominating their time.

While pickleball leagues are starting to emerge, the vast majority of players do not participate in the sheer volume of structured league play that dominates the tennis ecosystem. Tournament tennis players that do not also play USTA League are somewhat of a rarity. In fact, they basically fall into one of two categories: Players that do not have league play available in their local area, and players that have managed to alienate all the captains in their local leagues.

Leagues are an obvious place to look for prospective tennis tournament players due to the sheer size of the population. This weekend I will be examining some of the general pressures that make it very challenging to attract league players to tournaments. Today I am focusing on the tyranny of the calendar, which is a direct impact of the USTA League’s dominance of the ecosystem.

There are 52 weeks in the year. In the larger metropolitan areas, USTA League play is scheduled on top of about 48 of them. Basically, there is some type of USTA League every weekend except for the major holidays. Most league players do not know that tournaments exist, which is a problem. However, the league players don’t have the free time to spark the desire to engage in tournaments at all. It’s an insurmountable challenge for tournament advocates to solve in isolation.

In essence, tennis is competing against itself for adult players. USTA League enjoys a virtual monopoly, which isn’t healthy for the tennis ecosystem. Unfortunately, since League and Tournaments are separated in the USTA organizational hierarchy, there isn’t much chance that the USTA National League committee regards the ecosystem’s current state as a problem. USTA League is performing quite well by the metrics they have set up to measure their own success.

That is why a broad organizational understanding of the importance of tournaments within the tennis ecosystem is essential. That recognition has to come from a higher plane than the individual silos of USTA League and USTA Tournament (ACC) administration. Tournaments are already struggling for survival. Unfortunately, USTA League is also heading toward eventual collapse under the weight of its own success.

Tomorrow I will talk about the corrosive effect on the tennis ecosystem from the artificial plateaus that USTA League competition creates and reinforces. In the meantime, please do not pepper me with any suggestion that tennis tournaments need to be more like pickleball. It is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Trying to make tennis tournaments more like pickleball tournaments ignores the root cause and will only hasten the demise. If tennis tournament players wanted their events to be more like pickleball, they would just play pickleball.