New York
CNN
—
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
The sound and disruption from pickleball, America’s fastest-growing sport, is driving some neighbors, tennis players, parents of young children, and others crazy.
Homeowners groups and local residents in dozens of towns and cities have rallied to limit pickleball play and block the development of new courts. They are circulating petitions, filing lawsuits, and speaking out at council and town hall meetings to slow the audible spread of pickleball frenzy across the country.
The number of people playing pickleball grew by 159% over three years to 8.9 million in 2022, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, a trade group.
The rapid spread has created dilemmas for public parks and recreation departments, which must balance competing interests with often limited space and funds. Retirement communities and country clubs also face challenges building space for people who enjoy the game, a scaled-down version of tennis with a smaller court, without antagonizing others.
Pickleball can be noisier than tennis because the game can fit more players onto the same space as a tennis court. Hits during a pickleball rally are also more frequent than tennis. And it’s a more social sport, so the games tend to be louder with players bantering during and after points.
Rob Mastroianni, a resident of Falmouth, Massachusetts, sold his house and moved after the town’s recreation department built pickleball courts 350 feet away from his home in a residential area.
“It’s a percussive pop. It pierces the air and carries,” he said.
He and a group of neighbors eventually filed a lawsuit last year against the town’s zoning board of appeals, claiming that the pickleball courts violated town bylaws prohibiting “daily injurious and obnoxious noise levels.” Their suit said the noise from the game was “substantially impacting [their] quiet and peaceful enjoyment of their respective homes.” (They won a temporary injunction and the courts are currently closed.)
“It’s a tough sell to be against pickleball,” Mastroianni said. “But at the end of the day it was creating mental and physical health problems with neighbors butting heads.”
“The constant popping…
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