\n\u201cPickleball,\u201d says Maloof, the COO of USAP, \u201cis the wild, Wild West.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nils Nilsen\/Sports Illustrated<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nTo be fair, Murphy, almost immediately upon taking office, was combating insurgents from within (USAP, which, again, constitutes more than 90% of the IFP\u2019s membership) and without (that meddlesome Rifkind and his rival WPF). Identifying country membership totals as the simplest way to keep score against the WPF, Murphy installed Steve Sidwell as director of memberships and trotted out\u2014no kidding\u2014a No Country Left Behind policy. A contest between the two federations to accumulate 75 nations.<\/p>\n
Dinkheads<\/em>, the blog, ardently followed this arms race (\u201cNepal joins IFP!\u201d), though it often sounded like competing Girl Scout troops announcing who had sold more Tagalongs\u2014and often to the same grandma.<\/p>\nTHE DREAMER<\/h2>\n In 1991, Steve Kuhn graduated from his Ivy League school in the midst of an economic recession. He returned home to Minneapolis, lived in his parents\u2019 basement and applied for a job delivering for Domino\u2019s. \u201cOn the application there was a line that read Last School Attended<\/em>, and I wrote Harvard<\/em>,\u201d Kuhn remembers. \u201cThe manager smiled and said, \u2018Smart-ass.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\nKuhn evokes Rain Man<\/em> when he says \u201cI was an excellent driver,\u201d but also when he talks numbers. Between 2008 and \u201914, Kuhn\u2019s extraordinary understanding of finance and the upside-down housing market helped him take a relatively small hedge fund from $1 billion to $14 billion. He cashed out and began searching for windmills at which to tilt.<\/p>\nClean water in Africa. A reasonable approach to immigration reform. \u201cI met with 60 senators, 300 members of the House, and President Trump four times,\u201d says Kuhn.<\/p>\n
Then he moved to Austin, discovered pickleball and created a latter-day Xanadu. Kuhn refers to his 86-acre spread in Dripping Springs, Texas, as Dreamland. It holds a concert venue and a mini-golf course. And 16 pickleball courts.<\/p>\n
Somewhere along the way, Kuhn teamed up with Seymour Rifkind and agreed to build Rif\u2019s Pickleball Hall of Fame on the property. (Construction has yet to begin; right now it\u2019s online-only.) And Dreamland is a pro pickleballer compound, too; Kuhn is luring premier players to come work as instructors by allowing them to live rent-free in anything from a modular home to a five-bedroom ranch. He has designs on a Bollettieri-style academy, because, yes, the age of the pickleball brat is just around the corner. <\/p>\n
The dreamiest thing about Dreamland, though, is Major League Pickleball. Last November, Kuhn, using his plush venue and $150,000 in prize money as bait, assembled 32 of the world\u2019s top players, from both tours\u2014like Marvel and DC heroes in one film\u2014for a three-day event. Athletes were divided into four coed teams and played singles, doubles and mixed doubles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was the most important and best event in pro pickleball that ever happened,\u201d says Kuhn.<\/p>\n
Ever?<\/em> You\u2019ve got a jar of cocktail sauce in your fridge that\u2019s older than pro pickleball. Still, the reviews were universally positive. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be hard to go back to the other tours after this,\u201d Johns said afterward.<\/p>\nAbout that. After it was announced in January that Dundon had purchased the PPA, Kuhn ventured north to Dallas to inquire about how that three-year exclusivity clause would be applied to his new mega event. \u201cI was dreading that meeting,\u201d says Kuhn, \u201cbut people told me Tom and I would get along fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within minutes, though, the tycoon t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate devolved into a scene from The Godfather<\/em>. Dundon told Kuhn his stable of PPA talent would play in the MLP\u2014as soon as Dundon owned the MLP. Kuhn bristled. I buy you out; you don\u2019t buy me out! <\/em>\u201cThat meeting lasted 20 minutes, but it might have lasted two,\u201d recalls Kuhn. \u201cI don\u2019t know why I wasted those 18 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\nDundon\u2019s camp sees it differently. \u201cSteve wanted 10 events, and he did not want to pay for them,\u201d says PPA spokesperson Hannah Johns (yes, Ben\u2019s sister). \u201cAt that point, it\u2019s almost a third tour. There has to be a good reason we do this besides out of the charity of our own hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, Kuhn will host another MLP event at his compound (and two more elsewhere). That competition will feature zero PPA players\u2014even though Ben Johns lives in Austin \u2026 though, as you can understand, not at Dreamland.<\/p>\n
TENNIS TRIED TO SQUASH PICKLEBALL!<\/h2>\n Before Stu Upson vacated his role as the COO of the International Tennis Hall of Fame to become the CEO of USAP, he had some fun at the expense of his soon-to-be-former boss, two-time Grand Slam finalist Todd Martin.<\/p>\n
\u201cTodd just loves tennis,\u201d says Upson. \u201cHe thinks pickleball is Satan.\u201d Hence, in Upson\u2019s final staff meeting, when only Martin knew he was about to depart, Upson jokingly suggested a redesign on the hallowed site in Newport, R.I. \u201cLet\u2019s pave over all these grass courts,\u201d Upson said. \u201cWe can make 40 pickleball courts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The laughter was muted. Nervous at best. Is he serious?<\/em> Whereas skiers have had to learn to share the slopes with snowboarders, tennis and pickleball are playing a zero-sum real-estate game. And tennis is not exactly holding serve. Remember: fastest growing sport in America.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\nPickleball\u2019s pervasiveness is felt at tennis clubs\u2014and on blacktop, too; anywhere you can set up a net.<\/p>\n
Erick W. Rasco\/Sports Illustrated<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nOn a Sunday afternoon at the IronOaks Country Club in Sun Lakes, Ariz., pickleball\u2019s ascension is on full display. Nine of the club\u2019s 10 pickleball courts are in use, each with four players. Just one of its 10 tennis courts is inhabited, by two players.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s simple real estate,\u201d says Ben Johns, tapping his inner engineer. \u201cYou can fit four pickleball courts on one tennis court, and four pickleball players [each] versus two tennis players. That\u2019s an 8-to-1 ratio in the same space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johns was once a teen tennis player. Robert Elliott, whose Engage paddle is by far pickleball\u2019s top seller\u2014he developed it himself in his garage\u2014played on the men\u2019s tennis team at Villanova. Ken Herrmann played tennis in college, and long ago he was Seymour Rifkind\u2019s son\u2019s private tennis coach.<\/p>\n
Tennis manufacturers and tennis clubs are practicing the first rule of survival: Adapt or die. Which is why Prince and Wilson now make pickleball equipment, and why clubs have reallocated space. At IronOaks, for example, annual pickleball memberships eclipsed tennis memberships; as a result, they removed two clay courts and added eight for pickleball.<\/p>\n
At the time, IronOaks\u2019 tennis stalwarts went door to door with a petition, hoping to stymie this incursion. They argued that the thwack<\/em> of pickleball play was noise pollution. But this was Frank Sinatra trying to stop Elvis and the Beatles. \u201cThey told everyone it was about the sound the ball makes off the paddle,\u201d says one IronOaks pickler. \u201cReally, they just felt tennis being threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n