This is a seismic day for the rapidly growing business of pickleball at all levels.”
The Gold Coast Pro is currently underway, you, me and a few of our friends very much enjoying the action from Snapper Rocks. This is, of course, the third stop on the World Surf League’s top-tier Championship Tour and the first with waves. Ronald Blakey, Joe Turpel and the rest of the booth gang calling the conditions “all-time” and “wow you’ve got to love it” though, and to our Coolangatta-adjacent friends, is it really? I covered the show back in 2009, or thereabouts, and remember it cleaner, not so wonky, but maybe that is simply a product of my faulty memory.
Professional surfing, in any case, sure has been on a ride since the billionaire Dirk Ziff “purchased” the Association of Surfing Professionals, back in ’13, and rebranded it as the “World Surf League.” There were big promises of turning the game into an international powerhouse, a rival to the National Football League and its 400 million fans or maybe even World Cup soccer and its countless more.
Alas, bullish dreams have not quite come to pass, that dagger twisted hard, over the weekend, when it was revealed that Pickleball Inc. had just landed a $225 million dollar investment for its Major League Pickleball and Professional Pickleball Association tours.
According to MarketWatch, “The funding values Pickleball Inc. at $750 million and brings together assets including equipment retailer Pickleball Central, tournament platform PickleballTournaments.com and court installer Just Courts. The strategy centers on combining leagues, media, equipment and infrastructure into a single ecosystem that can be more easily monetized.”
The World Surf League’s valuation is currently in an undisclosed location.
PPA Tour founder and Pickleball Inc. CEO Connor Pardoe was hyped, declaring, “This is a seismic day for the rapidly growing business of pickleball at all levels.”
But are you one of those who scoffed at pickleball and its dumb name and its old participants only to try it out and be won over? That will never be me. I’m a tennis man and cannot abide the destruction of tennis courts to make way for pickleball courts. Tennis is to pickleball what surfing is to sitting in a jacuzzi.
Prove me wrong.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
The WSL is just “a wannabe Pickleball tour ” – ah Bobby was sage!!!!
I played tennis in high school, solid player, got a couple junior college coaches interested. Pretty sure I’d be a world-class pickleball player and I’ve never even held the paddle.
I made the mistake of settling down in a wave richless zone. Loved playing ball sports as a kid. Pickleball checks a lot of boxes when its that knee to waist dosn’t..
Mountain biking does that for me
Yep. Vaast vs Toledo final for a Toledo victory.
Yep. Mandatory overlapped heats are required
Joel looking like he’s back on the nose beers
I’ve got about a half ounce left, roughy two quarters.
ah my dear child I’ll be here when thou hast need for consolation
that really depends on which version of LOB and which version of Mateus shows up today
Don’t know what pickleball is, sounds definitely stupid and American at the same time, but down here in southern euroland padel is all the rage – courts popping up like mushrooms everywhere.
It’s a recent fad that has this fitness/ social vibe attached to it which makes it inevitably irritating.
Padel is 50% more tennis than pickleball is.
well we’ll get on this crazy train in about 40 min cunny
If Ethan just tried for once he would win everything he’s that good
is the connie on or what
As usual the forecast has been wrong.
Being a world class break, Snapper will still throw up nuggets of gold but the conditions have been nothing like the clean, epic waves as foretold. There’s been great sections but nothing that would put Snapper beyond a B grade rating.
You wait till Sunday!
You wait till low tide!
You wait, you wait etc etc
Now, just hear me out for a minute…..What if multiple sports bureaucracies were simultaneously guilty of talking their book, fluffing the numbers and giving the whole endeavour the Ol’ Corporate Reach Around?
Unthinkable.
no way they aren’t running today given the national holiday
Kanoa is all over the jacuzzi part.
There’s some footage of a big shark chasing a foil surfer off the coast of Santa Barbara
Tavis Boise is the best name for a SUP foilboarder
Filming themselves riding electric foils = Ultimate gayness
Honestly surprised they weren’t wearing rainbow wetsuits.
that shark had the right idea
The athletic club I work out at has 40+ pickleball courts. As I pass them by on my walk to the gym, the full auditory assault of “Clunk!’ is absolutely maddening. But guess who’s been ahead of the game? JJF! Yep, you read that right! A Florence Marine X banner hangs from an observation deck above the main pickleball courts. It’s been a head scratcher, till now
https://www.florencemarinex.com/blogs/test-pilots/test-pilot-spotlight-connor-garnett?srsltid=AfmBOooipf8-ztZWr6tCGnChbes5WJiq4D1QzueoU39ydEugrHbSME_k
He knew when to leave the Tour in more ways than one.
Watching grown men play pro pickleball is like watching pro basketballers playing on the pee-wee courts. Highly laughable.