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“I HAD TO really work on my dink,” confesses Stephanie Lane, after being dusted by a trio of senior citizens in doubles pickleball. Lane is referring to herself in 2012 (then aged 47), when, as the newly minted American pickleball singles champion, she was still relying solely on her tennis skills in this new game, or “playing tennis on the pickleball court,” as she frames it.

For the uninitiated, a dink is the term for a finesse shot in pickleball, wherein the sender hits the ball just softly enough to land in their opponent’s no-volley zone — a zone called “the kitchen,” because everything in pickleball seems to be delightful. You really need to stay out of the kitchen in pickleball (which I, athletic and bad at cooking, immediately liked the sound of).

I am hardly alone here. The Economist magazine reported pickleball as the fastest-growing sport in America in 2019 — and that was prior to its pandemic-fueled 39.3% two-year growth rate, per the Sports & Fitness Industry Association’s (SFIA) 2022 Topline Participation Report, released in February 2022. That’s not bad for a game that was cobbled together one weekend in 1965 with remnants of other sports equipment — namely a badminton net, ping-pong paddles, and a Wiffle ball.

There are now an estimated 4.9 million pickleball players in America (“pickler” being the term reserved for the true fanatics). I had been peripherally aware of the game through my father, an avid tennis player, who, for the last 10 years, would set up a pickleball court indoors so he and his friends could play in the winter months. I had thought pickleball was really just a game for folks of a certain age. But who knew? My dad: a trendsetter.

Jon Eisen, a 32-year-old banker in Nashville, called pickleball “the most fun sport in America.” Eisen is a former pro baseball player and sees pickleball’s allure as being rooted firmly in its supreme social dynamic.

“I started playing in 2020, during the pandemic, at a time with very little contact with anyone outside my household or my work,” he explained. “I would go to the courts and there would be 15 people there — all different characters and ages — and because of the speed of the matches, I’d end up playing with all 15 people. With tennis, you generally have one person you go to play with, and never interact with anyone else. Pickleball is like a party.”

A COVID-safe party at that — the size of the court creates a natural 6-foot distance between teammates. But the intimacy of the courts is notably conversation-conducive, unlike tennis, where you have to strain to be heard across the larger court. The festive environment Eisen refers to was present even on a cloudy Monday afternoon in March. To find the sports center’s pickleball courts, I just followed the laughter.

Furthermore, pickleball’s quick matches (games are typically played to 11 points) and primary emphasis on doubles creates a platonic speed-dating atmosphere, which seems inherent to the game’s spirit. Every pickleball devotee I spoke with referred to the community’s open and welcoming attitude, along with the game’s lack of formality, as part of its draw.

The game itself plays with scale in an interesting way that feels improvisational and perhaps even survivalist — a ttrapped-on-a-desert-island, make-up-a-pastime sort of feeling. And this is precisely how it was created in 1965; three families were on Bainbridge Island and wanted to play badminton, but didn’t have any birdies or rackets. They compromised with a Wiffle ball and some ping-pong paddles, and pickleball was born. (Incidentally, the name is often misattributed to their family dog, Pickles, who liked to run off with the ball. In actuality, the family named their dog Pickles after the sport was created. The genesis of the name came from the world of college regattas, where the non-starting oarsmen from various teams would assemble into what they call a pickle boat. The game was named after these boats due to its hodgepodge assemblage.)

When I played pickleball with my son, I felt a myriad of emotions. I was mildly embarrassed that I missed so many shots — it was indeed harder than I thought it would be. I chalked up my misses to the shorter-than-a-tennis-racket phenomenon, even though the last time I played tennis regularly was the late 1990s. I felt like a giraffe under water, because traversing a tiny court while running to catch a ball that’s plastic with holes in it (as opposed to rubber) made me feel long and gangly and slower than I wanted to be.

But small things have a way of making mundane things magical, like the tiny Tabasco sauce bottles on airplanes. There is something about the shrunken court itself that had me feeling not just ready to play, but also playful. When I consider these feelings, as well as that of wholesome connectivity and ease (while you can work hard in the game, you don’t have to in order to have a great time), I realize these are the forces I, like so many, am most in need of right now.

The financial accessibility of the sport also contributes to its egalitarian appeal. I bought a starter pickleball set of paddles and balls from Walmart for $32.70 on my way to my first game — no fancy gear required. (Though, of course, increasingly fab pickleball swag has been cropping up, as surfaced in our sidebar guide.) Furthermore, there is a spontaneity present on the courts that has felt particularly lacking in my life — given both my move from the pedestrian-oriented New York City to the car-bound culture of Nashville, and the suffocating sameness of life in quarantine. The community I encountered on the pickleball courts was one that, like me, clearly wanted a bit of social novelty.

My father recently told me he’s created a new form of pickleball, wherein the net is strung up in his racquetball court; the ball is now played against the walls as well. Leave it to my nutty dad to take something lighthearted and pleasant and ramp up the intensity and unpredictability. But I’ll probably play with him on my next visit. After all, he seems to be a trendsetter.