SF tennis and pickleball players clash in quest for courts
The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department held a community meeting last week to discuss the proposal of converting some of Stern Grove’s tennis courts into dedicated pickleball courts.
As hundreds packed the standing room-only meeting and pickleball enthusiasts came out in droves, it became the latest chapter in the ongoing discussion about the need for more space for pickleball play in the city. While pickleball enthusiasts say they don’t have enough dedicated court space in the city, tennis players attest that the courts at Stern Grove are needed for tennis, which is also growing in popularity.
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Martha Ehrenfeld, co-chair of the SF Tennis Coalition, said she attended the meeting and defended the coalition’s opposition to converting the courts to dedicated pickleball courts. She said she’s a pickleball player herself — she’s even a certified coach — but San Francisco is a dense city and the two sports have to coexist and share the city’s limited resources. The coalition is supportive of dual-lined courts, good for both tennis and pickleball, which Stern Grove had before the facility underwent massive flooding in 2021.
“A tennis court isn’t the only option to creating a pickleball court. We would love to have the pickleball community think outside the box,” Ehrenfeld said. “We believe that pickleball can find some other flat places to build pickleball places without taking away from tennis.”
San Francisco Pickleball Community member Ward Naughton said his group is concerned about the need for courts being framed as a “pickleball versus tennis thing.”
“The main thing is we don’t want conflict. … It’s how to figure out how to utilize space for the greatest number of San Francisco residents,” said Naughton.
He said he hopes the city can convert underutilized tennis courts into pickleball courts as the wait time for pickleball courts has been rising, especially on the weekends. He said that additional courts at Stern Grove would be helpful and that the city desperately needs more courts on the north side of the city, too.
Reservations for both sports can be snapped up within minutes. Tamara Aparton, a spokesperson for San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department, said approximately 97% of the city’s tennis courts are reserved within five minutes of opening the online reservation system. Even with high demand for reservations, most pickleball courts have “group hours” rather than reservations.
“It’s safe to say that demand is outweighing supply for both tennis and pickleball, both of which exploded in popularity since the start of the pandemic,” Aparton said in an email. “We are constantly looking for more ways to increase play.”
While hybrid courts seem like an easy answer, this solution could pose a problem for players of both…
Read More: SF tennis and pickleball players clash in quest for courts 2022-11-08 17:52:07