The Debate: Tennis vs. Pickleball – A Court-Side Feud
The Great Debate: Tennis Enthusiast Doubts Pickleball’s Spectator Appeal
At Long Le’s house, the sound of sports on TV hums in the background as consistently as the refrigerator. Basketball, football, tennis—you name it, he’s watching it. But when it comes to televised pickleball, Long is not interested.
“Pickleball is so boring to watch,” he says. “The plays are all the same: they dink, they doink.” The Wasatch Hills tennis coach approves of anything that involves a racket and gets people moving, but he insists that not all sports are made for spectators. “The ball moves so slowly and the kitchen makes it hard for players to move too much. I don’t find that fun to watch.”
Long’s view is shared by many in the sports marketing industry, as analysts debate the sport’s viability as a media product. While the popularity of playing pickleball isn’t in question, whether people will sit down and watch it is. Market researchers wonder if pickleball players like Ben Johns and Catherine Parenteau will have the same star power as tennis players like Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic.
Long, a tennis enthusiast, has his doubts. While he enjoys playing pickleball with friends, he says it doesn’t hold the same appeal as tennis because it demands much less physically. “Golf isn’t physically demanding and people still like to watch it,” he admits. “But there’s not some heightened, more athletic version of golf that people would constantly be comparing it to.”
Whether Long can ever be convinced to watch the National Pickleball Championships or not, he says he’s unlikely to make the switch from tennis player to pickleball player any time soon. His love affair with tennis began 20 years ago as a sophomore on the West Jordan High School tennis team and has only grown since.
His wide-eyed enthusiasm for the game plays out every day on the court, where he instructs adults and kids and conducts competition-based workouts for players at every level. Long’s passion for tennis is evident in his interactions with players, where he jokes and cheers them on with the same fervor as if he were watching his favorite NFL team kick the winning field goal.
Now that’s love for the game.
