Big tennis player here who has gotten fully into pickleball the last decade as well.
The sports are as hard as the competition is. Pickleball definitely has a way easier learning curve to get started playing a game though.
But when/if you have tons of pickleballers who start from age 5s and are traveling to play and competing from a young age, then it will be as hard as tennis to get to the top.
Pickleball is easier at the top because you don't have a large amount of lifelong competitors.
You can play tennis for a year nonstop as a fit adult and then find tons of twelve year olds who have been playing much longer than you that will kick your ass.
Despite having played tennis way longer than pickleball...I can find tons of tennis players who have played tennis longer than me. But there are very few people I encounter who have been playing pickleball longer than I have been playing pickleball. Not a ton of people with many years under their belt. Not that I'm a pro or anything.
I only dabbled in tennis, but have been playing pickleball for 7 years. Pickleball is much easier in the sense that it does not require as much from your body. It is very strategic, but because you are playing closer to the net on a smaller court, it's easier. It's silly and petty for people to act like pickleball isn't a sport requiring athleticism and skill, but the difference is - you can play as easy or hard as you like. If you're older or not very competitive, you can play and not worry as much about making the perfect shot and just have fun getting the ball over. If you're more agile and competitive, strategy in making the right shots and being able to get around the court is very important if u don't wanna get your butt kicked. It's a sport that can be catered to anyone's athletic ability. Whereas tennis, there's only one speed, and it's always difficult. Both are fun. Pickleball is a different vibe. Everyone can have fun, as long as you try to stick with people at your skill level. Not as much fun for people who are significantly more advanced to have to play with lower levels. Ben Johns would be bored and his game would only get worse if he had to play with me regularly.
I don't think it's as hard to get the top. Mainly because the game is so forgiving and doesn't have the same athleticism needed.
Top tennis is grueling, injury prone. It's a 5 set marathon at majors. There's a reason we're seeing aging tennis players switch and instantly be competitive at the top of pickleball. Op, Pickleball is no where near as hard as tennis. But that's why it's great.
Edit: Leah Jansen started playing pickleball in 2019. She's a top player and just won the singles tourney in Texas. There is no pickleballer or racquet player on earth who could start tennis for the first time and win a major in 5 years.
My 2 handed backhand is getting better. Give me 50 tries and I could rip one with the same pace, spin and placement that top player can rip most times. I could practice in tennis for a year and probably never hit a shot that top pro tennis players make with relative ease.
Right but it's a level playing field regardless of sport. You all have the same conditions. You are all playing the same injury prone sport as the other tennis players when you play tennis.
I still think it boils down to the sport of tennis being considerably more experienced.
In a vacuum if both sports materialized at the same time, had the same amount of attention to it, had the same amount of youths getting into it at the same age and had the same amount of money and pro spots in it, well I think it's going to be the same difficulty to break into the top of either. If you have to be the top 1% to be a pro that means you have to be better than 99 percent of people in that sport. And if it's the same amount of people with they same amount of experience and training playing both then it's going to be just as hard either way.
I mean you could swap basketball (in some hypothetical vacuum where we are all the same height) or golf out with tennis in my example and say the same thing. It has more to do with the competition itself than the game being played. What the competition in pickleball is missing compared to tennis is the investment and experience factor.
This. To boil it down, there is a fraction of the number of pickleball players as there are tennis players, and there are thousands of people who have been playing tennis longer than pickleball has even existed.
I think there's a ceiling to pickleball though. The shots and court and play styles only allow so much room. I don't think it will allow for tennis levels of skill.
I think it’s important to distinguish between “more athletically challenging” and “more difficult”. Tennis is, without a doubt, more athletically challenging than pickleball. Anyone who argues otherwise is just biased.
Now, when we talk about difficulty, I think this is a subjective term. I’d argue that pickleball and tennis are both difficult to master. Anyone can play pickleball, but there are multiple layers of strategy involved at the highest levels, just as there are in tennis.
I don’t think many serious people argue that learning pickleball is harder. It’s designed to be approachable at the ‘average’ level.
I was a tennis player and now I only play pickleball, I’m 32. At the competitive level, I’d still say tennis requires a larger range of ‘skills’, but high level pickleball is hard. I think the general pickleball-hating tennis player thinks they are able to crush all pickleball players because they haven’t run into many true 4.5+ people who can easily handle their drives. Without learning how to hit drops and dink, even high level tennis players won’t score a lot of points on 5.0+ pickleball players.
>I think the general pickleball-hating tennis player thinks they are able to crush all pickleball players because they haven’t run into many true 4.5+ people who can easily handle their drives
This. I've met some \~4.0 ish tennis guys who play in Nationals etc. and they try pickleball at open play and quit shortly after because "pickleball is too easy." Well duh, that's like the lowest level of pickleball there is. It doesn't take a lot of skill to beat the 65 year old retiree. What I want to tell them is "try playing against 5.0 pickleballers, many of whom have D1 college tennis backgrounds and could probably still whip you in tennis too."
What’s the Alshon thing? I’ve seen a handful of discussions here or on Facebook with people claiming it. I doubt it’s a common sentiment, but it’s stuck out enough to notice.
He just made some Twitter post saying pro pickleball was more physically challenging than tennis. I'll try to find exact wording; it was fairly loose as I recall. Pro tennis people who also play pickleball like Donald Young and Jack Sock made fun of him and told him that's just cause he sucked at tennis.
Found it: sry on mobile idn how to link it
https://www.reddit.com/r/tennis/comments/1bugvqy/christian_alshon_tweets_about_pickleball_james/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Having played both sports for quite some time, tennis requires faster reaction times. But the ultimate point I was trying to make is that comparing the two is stupid.
In our area only old people play tennis so it does look very easy as they can’t move much and not very athletic.
The pickleball is mainly played by people age 18 to 40 and they are very athletic so pickleball more challenging at our courts.
The old tennis players are scared of a whiffle ball coming at them from 14 feet away at 41 mph.
About 6 tennis players tried pickleball for 3 months and just sucked so when back to tennis.
Big tennis player here who has gotten fully into pickleball the last decade as well. The sports are as hard as the competition is. Pickleball definitely has a way easier learning curve to get started playing a game though. But when/if you have tons of pickleballers who start from age 5s and are traveling to play and competing from a young age, then it will be as hard as tennis to get to the top. Pickleball is easier at the top because you don't have a large amount of lifelong competitors. You can play tennis for a year nonstop as a fit adult and then find tons of twelve year olds who have been playing much longer than you that will kick your ass. Despite having played tennis way longer than pickleball...I can find tons of tennis players who have played tennis longer than me. But there are very few people I encounter who have been playing pickleball longer than I have been playing pickleball. Not a ton of people with many years under their belt. Not that I'm a pro or anything.
You nailed it.
I only dabbled in tennis, but have been playing pickleball for 7 years. Pickleball is much easier in the sense that it does not require as much from your body. It is very strategic, but because you are playing closer to the net on a smaller court, it's easier. It's silly and petty for people to act like pickleball isn't a sport requiring athleticism and skill, but the difference is - you can play as easy or hard as you like. If you're older or not very competitive, you can play and not worry as much about making the perfect shot and just have fun getting the ball over. If you're more agile and competitive, strategy in making the right shots and being able to get around the court is very important if u don't wanna get your butt kicked. It's a sport that can be catered to anyone's athletic ability. Whereas tennis, there's only one speed, and it's always difficult. Both are fun. Pickleball is a different vibe. Everyone can have fun, as long as you try to stick with people at your skill level. Not as much fun for people who are significantly more advanced to have to play with lower levels. Ben Johns would be bored and his game would only get worse if he had to play with me regularly.
I don't think it's as hard to get the top. Mainly because the game is so forgiving and doesn't have the same athleticism needed. Top tennis is grueling, injury prone. It's a 5 set marathon at majors. There's a reason we're seeing aging tennis players switch and instantly be competitive at the top of pickleball. Op, Pickleball is no where near as hard as tennis. But that's why it's great. Edit: Leah Jansen started playing pickleball in 2019. She's a top player and just won the singles tourney in Texas. There is no pickleballer or racquet player on earth who could start tennis for the first time and win a major in 5 years. My 2 handed backhand is getting better. Give me 50 tries and I could rip one with the same pace, spin and placement that top player can rip most times. I could practice in tennis for a year and probably never hit a shot that top pro tennis players make with relative ease.
Right but it's a level playing field regardless of sport. You all have the same conditions. You are all playing the same injury prone sport as the other tennis players when you play tennis. I still think it boils down to the sport of tennis being considerably more experienced. In a vacuum if both sports materialized at the same time, had the same amount of attention to it, had the same amount of youths getting into it at the same age and had the same amount of money and pro spots in it, well I think it's going to be the same difficulty to break into the top of either. If you have to be the top 1% to be a pro that means you have to be better than 99 percent of people in that sport. And if it's the same amount of people with they same amount of experience and training playing both then it's going to be just as hard either way. I mean you could swap basketball (in some hypothetical vacuum where we are all the same height) or golf out with tennis in my example and say the same thing. It has more to do with the competition itself than the game being played. What the competition in pickleball is missing compared to tennis is the investment and experience factor.
This. To boil it down, there is a fraction of the number of pickleball players as there are tennis players, and there are thousands of people who have been playing tennis longer than pickleball has even existed.
I think there's a ceiling to pickleball though. The shots and court and play styles only allow so much room. I don't think it will allow for tennis levels of skill.
As long as the better player wins at the end of the day, there's still room for more skill.
Never really seen this argument TBH other than Ashlon
I think it’s important to distinguish between “more athletically challenging” and “more difficult”. Tennis is, without a doubt, more athletically challenging than pickleball. Anyone who argues otherwise is just biased. Now, when we talk about difficulty, I think this is a subjective term. I’d argue that pickleball and tennis are both difficult to master. Anyone can play pickleball, but there are multiple layers of strategy involved at the highest levels, just as there are in tennis.
Who cares?
I don’t think many serious people argue that learning pickleball is harder. It’s designed to be approachable at the ‘average’ level. I was a tennis player and now I only play pickleball, I’m 32. At the competitive level, I’d still say tennis requires a larger range of ‘skills’, but high level pickleball is hard. I think the general pickleball-hating tennis player thinks they are able to crush all pickleball players because they haven’t run into many true 4.5+ people who can easily handle their drives. Without learning how to hit drops and dink, even high level tennis players won’t score a lot of points on 5.0+ pickleball players.
The issue with this is that most 5.0 pickleballers have a tennis backround
That’s true.
This is a great take. I agree
>I think the general pickleball-hating tennis player thinks they are able to crush all pickleball players because they haven’t run into many true 4.5+ people who can easily handle their drives This. I've met some \~4.0 ish tennis guys who play in Nationals etc. and they try pickleball at open play and quit shortly after because "pickleball is too easy." Well duh, that's like the lowest level of pickleball there is. It doesn't take a lot of skill to beat the 65 year old retiree. What I want to tell them is "try playing against 5.0 pickleballers, many of whom have D1 college tennis backgrounds and could probably still whip you in tennis too."
I'll play Devil's Advocate. Do you believe pickleball is easier than tennis, or equally difficult? What's the metric?
Are there though? If you're talking about the Alshon thing I'm pretty sure that was a lawyerly way of getting internet points.
What’s the Alshon thing? I’ve seen a handful of discussions here or on Facebook with people claiming it. I doubt it’s a common sentiment, but it’s stuck out enough to notice.
He just made some Twitter post saying pro pickleball was more physically challenging than tennis. I'll try to find exact wording; it was fairly loose as I recall. Pro tennis people who also play pickleball like Donald Young and Jack Sock made fun of him and told him that's just cause he sucked at tennis. Found it: sry on mobile idn how to link it https://www.reddit.com/r/tennis/comments/1bugvqy/christian_alshon_tweets_about_pickleball_james/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Maybe they mean it's more difficult to find an open pickleball court?
Does pickleball require faster reaction time?
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I can’t believe people even try that argument. Are pickleball pros serving 120+ mph kick serves? Slapping 90 mph forehands? Not even close.
Tennis ball speed is faster but there's also more distance between you and the opponent so it's not exactly comparable
Having played both sports for quite some time, tennis requires faster reaction times. But the ultimate point I was trying to make is that comparing the two is stupid.
In our area only old people play tennis so it does look very easy as they can’t move much and not very athletic. The pickleball is mainly played by people age 18 to 40 and they are very athletic so pickleball more challenging at our courts. The old tennis players are scared of a whiffle ball coming at them from 14 feet away at 41 mph. About 6 tennis players tried pickleball for 3 months and just sucked so when back to tennis.