Tennis vs pickleball: Will there be a winner in the racket wars?

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TORONTO — Susie Sheffman is caught in a love triangle. Her two lovers? Tennis and pickleball.

“People feel really hellbent on wanting me to choose, and I don’t understand,” said the 66-year-old from Toronto. “I really am torn between two loves, and I don’t know why I have to choose. Why can’t I date both?”

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Sheffman’s history with tennis began 30 years ago. As a kid, she had no hand-eye coordination and avoided sports. Later in life, her ex-husband and friends helped her learn the fundamentals. She’s played regularly ever since.

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Pickleball — described as a cross between tennis, table tennis and badminton — came into her life four years ago. She was instantly hooked.

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During the summer, Sheffman splits her time evenly between tennis and pickleball —  lest she favour one. She hits their respective courts multiple times each and every week. This year, because of tears in her shoulders, she said she will try to avoid playing both sports on the same day.

When Sheffman described why she loves tennis, she mentioned its quiet elegance, its timeless, refined beauty and the sport’s deep sense of tradition.

“It takes years to perfect. It’s more sophisticated. It’s less scrappy. You have to be much more thoughtful,” she said.

Pickleball, however, is aggressive, fast and very, very loud, she said.

“It’s extremely social, it’s high energy, it’s highly competitive, and it’s just plain fun,” Sheffman said.

“All of those qualities are qualities I would want to have,” she continued. “Yes, I want to be more elegant, quiet and refined, but I also want to be scrappy and high energy and have a lot of fun. I’m definitely on the team of doing both — or not having to compare them.”

Indeed, tennis and pickleball are often compared and contrasted. It makes sense why. On the surface, they’re similar. They both involve hitting a ball back and forth on a court divided by a net — although tennis players use rackets to strike a tennis ball, while pickleballers use paddles to hit a perforated ball. They’re both contested in singles or doubles and rely on shots like groundstrokes — balls hit after a bounce — or volleys, which connect with the ball in the air.

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But both sports are distinct — and can appeal to players, like Sheffman, for different reasons.

Broadly speaking, racket sports are thriving at the moment, with participation in tennis, pickleball and padel — a cross between tennis and squash that’s popular in Europe — all showing signs of momentum, according to a report released last fall by CAA Portas, a global management consultancy firm.

As another outdoor season arrives in Canada, tennis and pickleball players will once again flock to courts, eager to soak in as much playing time under the extra hours of sunlight. While tennis is steeped in tradition, pickleball is trendy. There is a history of tension between these two sibling sports, but as they continue to coexist, will one reign supreme?

Or can both live in harmony, so that everyone wins?

History of the sports

There are theories that the origins of tennis-like games trace back to ancient Egypt and Greece, according to the Lawn Tennis Association, the governing body of tennis in Britain, but the version we’re familiar with started in France in the 12th century, when monks used their hands to bat a ball against monastery walls or over a strung rope. Thankfully, rackets were introduced in the 16th century.

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The sport was primarily played indoors until the 18th century, when lawn tennis — played outdoors on grass courts — was created in Britain. Quickly, it supplanted croquet as the preferred summer sport, according to the International Tennis Federation (ITF).

Today, tennis is a global activity with 106 million players in 2024, according to data from the ITF’s Global Tennis Report. That’s up from 84.4 million in 2019, a 25.6 per cent increase. The ITF set a goal in 2019 to increase its player base by 30 million by 2030, and is on pace to achieve it.

Tennis’s growth, the ITF said, can be attributed to several factors, including its worldwide reach, the popularity of the biggest stars on the professional men’s (ATP) and women’s (WTA) tours, its appeal to a wide range of ages and its proven lifelong health benefits.

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In Canada, tennis is in a healthy place, too. Recent data from Tennis Canada and YouGov Canada said more than six million Canadians played tennis in 2025 — an increase of more than one million since the previous participation study was conducted in 2023.

By comparison, pickleball is a much younger sport, with a North American origin.

You can take a ferry from Seattle to reach Bainbridge Island, Wash., which is where pickleball was born in 1965. According to USA Pickleball, the sport’s governing body in the United States, Joel Pritchard, a politician, and Bill Bell, a businessman, improvised a new game with equipment they had lying around. They used table tennis paddles to volley a perforated plastic ball over a badminton net. Later, after discovering the ball’s high bounce on the asphalt surface, they lowered the net.

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The two men, along with another friend, Barney McCallum, are credited as the creators. The unique name, however, was the brainchild of Pritchard’s wife, Joan, who was inspired by the rowing term pickle boat, which refers to a hurriedly assembled crew of leftover rowers.

In the years since its advent, the hurriedly assembled racket sport remained a niche interest, mostly at retirement communities. In the last decade, though, pickleball has skyrocketed in popularity across multiple age groups in North America, with recreational, competitive and pro leagues popping up across the continent.

In the U.S., there were roughly 4.2 million pickleball players in 2020, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association’s annual Topline Participation Report (SFIA). In 2025, that number was 24.3 million.

In Canada, the participation stats aren’t as jaw-dropping, but pickleball is still considered a fast-growing sport. Pickleball Canada reported in February 2025 that an estimated 1.54 million people were playing, a 57 per cent increase since 2022.

While the national governing bodies for both tennis and pickleball report positive participation numbers, the demographics between the sports differ, according to the Sports360 Study conducted by the Canadian market research firm The Strategic Counsel.

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Based on 3,240 online interviews with Canadians aged 18 and up last spring, active tennis players skew more male, with 61 per cent identifying as male compared to 39 per cent female. Pickleball, however, is quite balanced, with a 50-50 breakdown.

When I was starting pickleball, I literally just went to the park, and I didn’t know anybody. Five minutes later, I had new best friends for life

Susie Sheffman

Tennis is also significantly more concentrated in large Canadian cities — with 60 per cent of active adult participants based in the greater Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa areas. Pickleball was more evenly distributed, with strong participation outside urban centres.

Another notable, though hardly surprising, piece of data: The median age of active pickleball players is 52, whereas the median age of active tennis players is 42.

Kaan Yigit, the study director, said the findings suggest pickleball is more than tennis players simply aging into a different game. Rather, it’s emerged as a distinct participation sport with its own demographic and geographic profile.

What’s behind pickleball’s popularity?

What’s driving people to play pickleball? The list is varied, from its relative affordability — basic equipment can be bought on Amazon for less than $50 — to its accessibility at parks and community centres across the country.

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One oft-cited reason, however, is the barrier to entry is lower than that of its tennis counterpart.

Natalie Araya, an experienced tennis and pickleball coach based in Toronto, explained that tennis is considered a hard sport to learn and to master. Ask any tennis player, and they’ll tell you it can take hours of lessons to nail down the basics and years to hone proper techniques. As for pickleball, the court is smaller, it’s less physically demanding, and it’s easier to pick up a paddle and start to rally. (Though, like tennis, it can take years to perfect your skills.)

“After an hour and a half, you can get players who just started the game to get an understanding of the sport and be able to play on their own. I couldn’t say the same for tennis,” Araya said.

Araya took up tennis at 10, and was playing competitively two years later. The sport opened opportunities, including a scholarship to play at a U.S. college. She later turned to coaching while also balancing her career as a registered massage therapist. In the past five years, she’s been more involved in developing pickleball.

She’s watched as participation surged, and while competitive leagues exist, pickleball excels as a community-oriented and socially driven sport, she said.

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Just ask Sheffman, who likened the experience of playing pickleball to “a mood enhancer.”

“When I was starting pickleball, I literally just went to the park, and I didn’t know anybody. Five minutes later, I had new best friends for life,” said Sheffman.

That warm embrace is what drew Mary Stein into the fold. The 57-year-old from Toronto had dabbled in tennis, but she found the game difficult on her body. She’d been curious about pickleball for a decade and finally took it up three years ago. As a beginner, she found it inclusive.

“With rare exceptions, people are very kind, they’re encouraging, they want you to learn,” said Stein, who primarily plays outdoors in Calgary while visiting family in the summer. “If you are really not that great at the beginning, you don’t feel like you’re not welcome or you’re being judged. And that’s really nice.”

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Like tennis, pickleball is contested in singles or doubles, but at the recreational level, it’s primarily played in doubles. It’s more economical to have more people playing at once, but with four players to a court, rather than two, it naturally leads to more cross-court conversation. The smaller dimensions — about a third of the size of a tennis court — place players in closer proximity, which lends itself to friendly chit-chat.

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Social enjoyment is what attracted 27-year-old David Summers to pickleball. A physiotherapist in St. John’s, Nfld., Summers plays pickleball regularly and views it as a mental reprieve from his tennis.

“Anyone who plays competitive tennis knows there’s a very big mental side of the game — that it’s easy to get down on yourself or start to lose the enjoyment, sometimes, in certain matches,” he said. “I just didn’t find that in pickleball. I found it was really social. We only really play doubles. It was just really easy to stay happy and enjoy playing it.”

The techniques

Summers started playing the game several years ago. A few members of his Memorial University tennis team came across two older gentlemen playing at their local tennis club. With their tennis season halted due to COVID restrictions and craving competition, Summers and a teammate borrowed paddles from the facility and challenged the men to a match.

Summers, then in his early 20s, had been swinging a tennis racket since he was five. He was confident his racket skills would propel him to a resounding victory over these two unsuspecting men, whom he estimated to be in their 70s.

Instead, Summers and his partner lost —  badly.

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“It was like the most humbling experience ever,” Summers said. “It wasn’t even close. It was like a completely different sport. And it was embarrassing, because it was like, how do these two relatively athletic young guys lose to these guys?”

When experienced tennis players try pickleball, they’re equipped with the co-ordination and receptive skills to track and hit a moving ball. They’re comfortable pivoting around a court, and they have sound techniques to hit a forehand, backhand or attack the ball in the air for a volley winner.

So, how could two young tennis players lose to men 50 years older? It comes down to strategy.

“For tennis, a lot of times, it’s really just outlasting the player or trying to find ways to attack and come up to the net. There’s a physicality towards that in terms of a particular power and strength of your shots,” Araya, the coach, explained.

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But experienced pickleballers say the sport is not miniature tennis, and selling out for power isn’t a viable strategy. Just ask Gloria Gardner, 67, who has been playing pickleball in her Bracebridge, Ont., community in Muskoka, north of Toronto, since 2014, and is one of the organizers of the large and growing Muskoka Lakes Pickleball club. She has witnessed plenty of tennis players migrate to the smaller court with predictable results.

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“It’s kind of amusing to me for a tennis player to come on to the pickleball court for the first time, because that is exactly what they want to do, stand at the baseline and pound the ball back and forth,” she said. “And it takes a lot to convince them to move up.”

Indeed, pickleball encourages play close to the net with players standing at the edge of the area known as the non-volley zone — or more commonly called the kitchen. Here, quick reactions are required. Soft shots, called dinks, are used to control play before attacking an opponent’s mistake.

“It’s good to have that power (in pickleball), but control in the game is very important, too,” Araya said. “It’s kind of like that in-between that you need to have. Obviously, it’s good to have that power, but (you need) control and finesse as well.”

Racket wars

For Brian Laski, 47, the idea of pickleball was intriguing.

Laski has played tennis his entire life. He loved the game and, as a young adult, he was a professional umpire for the ATP tour, and worked at prestigious tournaments such as the U.S. Open, Wimbledon, even the 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens.

Now, as an orthodontist, he draws on skills learned through his experiences in tennis at his practice.

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“My staff will always say, ‘Wow, that patient seemed very upset, and they were yelling, and you were so calm,’” Laski said. “And I said, ‘Well, it’s nothing compared to a player yelling at you on a tennis court when there’s a million dollars on the line.’”

About two years ago, Laski turned to pickleball because he wanted a new challenge. He said he enjoys learning a new sport and plays regularly at a fitness club. Sometimes at home, he sets up a portable net in his driveway — roughly the same dimensions as a pickleball court — and plays with his three daughters.

“They complain, ‘Oh, we don’t want to play pickleball,’” he said. “But we get out there, and it quickly becomes fierce competition.”

While his daughters eventually relent, the same cannot be said for some of his tennis buddies.

“(They) refuse to pick up a pickleball paddle,” said Laski, who recently competed as an amateur in the US Open Pickleball Championships in Naples, FL. “They’ll look at me and shake their head in dismay.”

Like McEnroe vs. Borg before it, the tennis vs. pickleball rivalry is real.

Tennis purists may have myriad reasons why they refuse to pick up a paddle. Some may claim that playing pickleball will hamper their game on the tennis court, although the pickleball players interviewed reported the contrary: pickleball made their tennis game better — especially at the net.

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“People vastly underestimate what their brains are capable of,” said Gardner, who plays both sports, “because I go back and forth between the two of them all the time.”

Other tennis players may simply not respect the relative ease of pickleball, preferring to stick with the more physically rigorous and challenging sport. Some people want to devote their recreational time to only one sport and prefer tennis, and others might simply find the high-pitched sound of pickleball annoying. The sport’s soundtrack — a distinct thwack as the hard carbon fibre paddle collides with the hollow perforated ball — has been the subject of noise complaints in communities across the country.

Friction has also arisen when it comes to sharing court space.

As pickleball has grown, so too has the demand for places to play. In urban centres, trendy pickleball facilities are popping up regularly. Meanwhile, abandoned department stores, empty arenas, and underused gymnasiums have been given new life as pickleball courts. A historic church in Chambly, Quebec, was recently converted into a pickleball court, aptly named Amen Pickleball.

But, in some instances, pickleball courts have come at a cost for tennis.

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In 2023, a group of tennis players on Mayne Island, B.C., made headlines when their petition to prevent pickleball players from using their courts was dismissed by the province’s Supreme Court. As part of the ruling, it was stated that the decision to allow pickleballers time on the courts “does not warrant judicial intervention.”

Still, Canadian cities have needed to respond to the demand by creating space to play. Last year, the City of Toronto embarked on a project designed to improve public courts. After community consultation, some public tennis courts were refurbished while others were removed and replaced by pickleball courts.

Anyone who plays competitive tennis knows there’s a very big mental side of the game… I just didn’t find that in pickleball. It’s very social

David Summers

In the small Muskoka community of Milford Bay, Gardner said two outdoor tennis courts were barely used, but “the resistance that suddenly popped up when we asked for pickleball to share the space was really quite incredible.” Ultimately, a compromise was reached to include painted lines for both tennis and pickleball on one of the courts.

Some clubs, such as the Green Belt Tennis Club in St. John’s, where Summers plays, have also accommodated pickleball. The facility added six pickleball courts by painting lines on top of two tennis courts. They can still be used for both, but pickleball occupies the space most of the time. The move helps drive revenue for the club, Summers said, while also drawing in participants, who could “decide to try tennis down the road.”

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However, the growing pains that existed between the two sports appear to be easing every year. Notably, former tennis stars, such as Andre Agassi, an eight-time Grand Slam champion, and Canadian Eugenie Bouchard, a 2014 Wimbledon finalist, have played pickleball professionally and helped the sport gain more acceptance.

Much like Laski, Summers, has also received razzing over his participation in pickleball — but the chirps have been less frequent of late, as more tennis players join in.

“As you age, typically, it’s harder to play tennis; it’s a bigger court to cover, especially in singles,” Summers said. “It’s a really nice transition, even if they are very much a tennis purist. And a lot of it, I think, is just a fun alternative sometimes, to take your mind off (tennis).”

Health benefits and risks

The United States Tennis Association has touted tennis as the world’s healthiest sport.

The claim is backed by evidence. The Copenhagen City Heart Study, published in 2018, followed individuals over 25 years and examined improvements in life expectancy based on participation in various sports and leisure activities. Of the sports included, tennis ranked best in terms of potential life-expectancy improvements, with results suggesting playing it could add as many as 9.7 years to an individual’s life.

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Here, in Canada, a recent article published through the Montreal Heart Institute looked at various studies that explored the best sports for longevity. The article detailed that participating in all sports is associated with a significant decrease in the risk of premature death, but some data points to racket sports, such as tennis, producing a greater reduction in the risk of total and cardiovascular mortality.

Dr. Martin Juneau, a cardiologist and the director of prevention watch at the Montreal Heart Institute, who authored the article, said any physical activity is beneficial because most Canadians don’t do the daily recommended level of exercise, the equivalent of 30 minutes of walking per day. But racket sports do seem to be a little better at improving health.

Tennis stimulates the brain, improves balance and, most importantly, combines aerobic and muscular training, known as a mixed sport.

“A lot of experts think that mixed sports are probably the best sports,” Juneau said. “Not to say that walking is not good, it’s very good. But if you can practice mixed sports, it’s even better.”

Pickleball was not among the racquet sports mentioned in the article, but Juneau said he would probably put it in the same category as tennis, “but it’s too early to tell.”

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The health benefits of racket sports are well-documented, but they also come with injury risk.

According to Dr. Kevin Willits, an orthopaedic surgeon at Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic in London, Ont., tennis players’ injuries “tend to be a little bit more chronic in the upper extremity and more acute in the lower extremity.”

Tennis elbow or shoulder irritation are more likely to occur because of overuse. Acute injuries, such as ankle sprains, knee injuries or the occasional ACL injury, can happen suddenly while playing.

When it comes to pickleball, Willits said, he’s seen predominantly acute lower extremity injuries. A common one is Achilles tendon injuries, which can occur due to the stop-and-start nature of pickleball. Pickleball can also aggravate a chronic injury. For example, people with mild arthritic changes in knees, hips or ankles may feel more symptomatic as a result of participation.

In terms of the volume, Willits has seen an increase in pickleball-related injuries, which he attributes to its popularity and its demographic, which skews to an older population, and includes participants who may not have been as active in recent years.

“The nature of that also brings people off the sidelines who don’t do much other than pickleball, and all of a sudden they go to pickleball, and then they have an injury,” he said.

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At Fowler Kennedy, they’ve expanded their acute injury clinic so people who suffer an injury from pickleball can go there instead of the emergency room or urgent care. Despite the instances of injuries, Willits said he’s supportive of people adopting an active lifestyle through pickleball, though he cautions that it’s best to play within your personal comfort level of intensity.

“We think that’s actually a very positive thing for lifestyle and for overall complete body health. But there is a price to be paid, sometimes with a rise in these injuries that come from new participation in sports that do have some risk associated with them,” he said.

Future of the sports

Jordan Horrobin, a 29-year-old, first started playing pickleball with his dad, who is in his early 60s. At first, Horrobin, who has always gravitated toward racket sports, thought pickleball was predominantly a sport for people his father’s age, but he grew to enjoy it as much as playing tennis.

“There are aspects to (pickleball) that can still be really fun for people at any age and stage,” he said.

Horrobin views pickleball as a long-term investment in himself. At some point — presumably in 30 years — he won’t be as physically mobile and wants less strenuous sports, like golf or pickleball, to fall back on. “My 60s version of myself might thank me,” he said.

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And while he admits he still has trouble convincing some of his peers to join in pickleball training, he’s OK with that.

“I don’t go out of my way to try to share the gospel of pickleball with my friends,” he continued. “I’m happy to play tennis with them. And when we’re in our 60s, I’ll just kick their a– at pickleball because I’ll have already played it.”

Horrobin’s long-term bet may pay off. Pickleball’s popularity has shown no signs of abating, and the sport appears here to stay, nestled comfortably in the fast-growing racket sports family.

Tennis is the stalwart of that clan. It may be more physically demanding and challenging to learn and, for that reason, many may view it as superior. But pickleball has its place as a democratic and accessible alternative that, like it or not, has captivated many.

Some may prefer one over the other — but racket wars? Let that be a thing of the past, lovers of both sports say. It’s time for a peace deal, and for tennis and pickleball to live in harmony.

“I’m not sure why they have to be in competition,” said Sheffman. “I think they’re very different sports. Yes, they both involve rackets and balls, but they’re very different, and they’re both incredibly enjoyable to me. And I don’t see why I have to choose.”

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