The pickleball craze is taking over the South, and interest is growing faster than courts are being made. This leaves many enthusiasts with no option but to play pickleball on tennis courts.
If you have a tennis court and interested pickleball players, you have a few options available to you. Which one is best will depend on how permanent of changes you are willing to make. Let’s take a look at ways you can play pickleball on a tennis court.
Use the Tennis Net
Tennis nets sit higher than pickleball nets. However, this isn’t a major problem. You can easily make a tennis net work for pickleball simply by lowering it a few inches. To do this, get the center of the net to 34 inches and set the sidelines at 36. Depending on the posts supporting your net, you may need to purchase an adjuster to make this work.
Install a Pickleball Net
If you feel it is best to have an actual pickleball net, you’ll have two options: portable nets or installing removable posts. The benefit of going this route is that you can set this up in a way that the permanent tennis net and fence around the court serve as barriers to prevent the ball from getting too far away from the player. However, it can be more labor intensive for your staff.
Complete a Multipurpose Court Conversion
The biggest problem with playing pickleball on a tennis court is that the lines for each game are very different. This requires more work than lowering a net or setting up a temporary one.
Pickleball lines can be added to a tennis court, but this must be done correctly. Otherwise, it can create confusion for both tennis and pickleball players.
In our opinion, the best approach is to differentiate the lines for the two games by color. You can go either lighter or darker than the court base for your pickleball court. Just make sure lighter shades are far enough removed from white that they cannot be confused with the tennis court lines.
You can choose to paint these lines or use tape. Tape is ideal when you don’t have a heavy interest in pickleball but want to host players once a month or so. However, if you have a heavy interest in the game, paint is the way to go.
As for how to play pickleball on a tennis court, once the lines and net are in place, it’s game on; nothing needs to change about the game.
For more information about how to convert tennis courts to pickleball courts or building your own residential tennis court, speak with Talbot Tennis.