World Pickleball Championship: How a fledgling sport is scaling new heights

Now the town got a taste of champion picklers.

The World Pickleball Championship (WPC) concluded in Mumbai on Sunday. The five-day tournament, part of the global WPC Series that India hosted for the first time, had over 500 participants across various categories and levels (amateur and pro). There were picklers of all types — young, old, male, female — trying their chance at this event.

However, for around 75 players, about one-fourth Indians and the rest flying down from 18 countries, this was far more serious business. They are professional pickleball players who make a living out of a sport that, not too long ago, was looked at simply as a game of leisure.

In a sport that is growing at a rapid pace around the globe, these professional picklers are increasingly finding their space and tapping into its vogue. Pickleball might still be more a game for the masses; easy to pick up and cost effective, it could be played on any indoor or outdoor hard surface. But the professional touch to it is as much on the upswing as its popularity. And that’s happening in India too.

Professional path

Two years ago, the All India Pickleball Association (AIPA), the governing body for the sport in the country, had close to 8,000 player registrations across India. That figure now stands in the range of 30,000 to 40,000, according to AIPA president Arvind Prabhoo. The association conducts the national championships, four national ranking tournaments and several state, zonal and inter-zonal events throughout the year.

“That is where we scout talented players. We ask them if they would like to go pro, and then coach them,” Prabhoo said. “Some of them come from rural backgrounds, and they like to make a career out of this.”

Like Sonu Kumar Vishwakarma. A cricket-playing kid from Jharkhand’s coal-rich city of Jharia, the 22-year-old began playing pickleball seven years ago. The reigning men’s national champion in singles, he nearly quit the sport a couple of years ago due to lack of funding and increasing expenses of travelling for tournaments in India. Just around then as he won an AIPA ranking tournament, Prabhoo spotted him as a young talent and persuaded him to shift to Mumbai. Vishwakarma is now funded by AIPA, which takes of everything around his pickleball needs as he competes professionally in international tournaments.

“The decision to shift to Mumbai and become a professional pickleball player changed my life,” Vishwakarma said. “I earn enough money now to take care of myself. I earn from tournament prize money, I have a sponsor, and I coach too. Over the last six months, sponsors have really picked up in our sport.”

AIPA has a pool of around 20 such players who are fully funded while they compete at the top level. Pickleball has ever-increasing tournaments at the international and Asian level where the cream of India’s picklers plies its trade.

“It’s like a proper circuit,” said Isha Lakhani, India’s former professional tennis player who was ranked in the world’s top 25 in juniors a decade ago and took up pickleball in 2022. “I’ve been out for 7-8 tournaments at least so far this year. The association has been making us play as much as possible.”

Earlier this month, Indian players won five gold, four silver and five bronze medals across categories at the Asia Pickleball Games in Taiwan.

“In the last six months alone, I’ve played 4-5 international tournaments. There are domestic tournaments every month now,” Vishwakarma said. “Next year, I aim to play 7-10 international, 15-20 domestic, and then other franchise-based tournaments.”

Leagues, other avenues

That’s another avenue that could further spur the professional push in pickleball. Franchise-based leagues are sprouting around across sport, and pickleball potentially has a huge market to tap there. The World Pickleball League, the brainchild of former Indian tennis pros Gaurav Natekar and wife Arati, has already taken the plunge. The global franchise-based league, recognised by AIPA, is set to hold its inaugural season early next year.

“The World Pickleball League is just the first step of what we want to do in this sport,” Natekar, founder and CEO of the league, said. “We have a whole bunch of other plans for talent development, grassroots and infrastructure development, branding and sponsorship.”

The Arjuna awardee in tennis, whose father played and excelled at badminton, did a “deep dive” on the sport before dipping his fingers into it. He reckons the average age of pickleball players in India is on the downward curve.

“Two years back, everybody felt it was an old man’s sport, or maybe for people who can’t play tennis or badminton after a certain age. But that average age is dropping fast,” he said. “A lot of the young kids today are going to start playing pickleball. Why? Because they’re hearing about it, reading about it and watching it. And, most importantly, their parents are also playing it. So this sport is only going to grow bigger.”

And open up a lot more avenues with it for professional picklers. Vishwakarma, for instance, also earns money through coaching other players when not competing himself. For a sport on the upsurge with ambitions of getting into the Olympics, demand for coaches is going to increase proportionally.

“Since this is a new sport, it doesn’t have a lot of top-level coaches,” Vishwakarma said. “So all current crop of top players can fill that hole 5-10 years down the line. I’m 22, I can play at a high level till 35 and then move into full-time coaching.”

“A lot of us are playing this professionally now, and because it’s a new sport there are going to be more openings — in terms of playing, coaching, marketing, etc,” Lakhani said. “The community of pickleball is so much bigger compared to other sports, and that is what is going to help this sport grow faster.”

The road ahead

Pickleball being a concoction of all major racquet sports — tennis, table tennis, squash, badminton — will mean a large volume of players from these sports eventually shifting to this new thing, Lakhani said.

“Seeing the game grow and the volume of players coming in, we can’t even think what can happen in the next five years,” Vishwakarma said.

The growing numbers will also bring with it increased challenges, especially from an administrative viewpoint. AIPA has officially sought government recognition, and remains hopeful, said Prabhoo. For Indian pros to have a greater competitive presence at the world stage, the prerequisites are similar to other mainstream sports.

“What is needed for a new sport is a lot of tournaments, and international exposure,” Prabhoo said. “Only when you play with world-class competitors do you understand the nuances of the game better.”

Natekar believes this is just the start for pickleball. The key, however, in how it shapes up going forward in India lies in how well it is managed by the people in its ecosystem.

“In India, where, to be honest, a lot of the sports are struggling, whether it’s with the federation, player pool or sponsorships and all of that, this is the bigger question for how far this sport can go,” he said.

“Professionally, if the sport is handled right, sky is the limit.”