The Peculiar Loneliness of Pickleball Singles

Middle-age metabolism.

If there is a more ferocious and vindictive beast that can be encountered in the autumn of life, I pray I never encounter it.

The cruel markers of bodily decline in the infancy of old age accumulate like interest on a bad 2008 loan, drowning the borrower in corporal compounding interest: sore backs without cause, mottled vision and poor hearing, the augmenting allure of a midday nap. One day, we travelers of middle age awaken to discover all the nagging advice about stretching, sun block, and eating right was grounded in something resembling sound medical advice.

Early last summer I chanced upon a novel approach for slaying these monsters of middle age. At her annual company meeting, my wife’s business decided on swag that included two pickleball racquets. They ordered more than they could give away, which is why, a few days later, I found myself on a pickleball court for the first time, standing across the net from my best friend.

We watched a few YouTube videos about the rules and terminology. I was a pretty good junior tennis player, and my friend played college golf. In short, we are both proficient in sports that require hand-eye coordination.

Our first pickleball session was taxing. I kept forgetting how to score and played like it was mini tennis. My friend ran more than he had in a long time and found himself winded. Despite our difficulties, we both sensed something magical about the sensation of hitting the ball. It doesn’t matter what onomatopoeic word one uses—a “pop,” a “clack,” or a “plonk.” We were quickly addicted.

It turns out, we weren’t the only addicts.    

Pickleball is a sporting phenomenon that is unparalleled in my lifetime. Parks and tennis clubs are converting tennis courts into pickleball courts at a pace that is impossible to miss, incurring the eternal ire of tennis purists who consider pickleball to be the province of retired tennis players and deserted geriatrics looking to kickstart dilapidated social lives.

Still, pickleball’s meteoric popularity is impossible to deny, purportedly growing at a whopping 311% over the past three years. There has been a 650% rise in the number of outdoor pickleball courts over seven years.

Beyond the soaring popularity—and resulting shortage—of open courts, we began to notice something else: singles play was practically nonexistent. Nearly every court was packed with foursomes, happily rallying in doubles games that felt more like social gatherings than workouts.

Sometimes the gatherings exceeded the number of players who could play. Extra players stood off the court, waiting to play the next game. They brought folding chairs, Bluetooth speakers, ice chests. Everyone seemed lost in a jovial stew of soft athleticism. When they played, we heard laughter and buoyant joshing, yelps at a well-placed shot or squeals of frustration at a miss.

No one seemed tired or out of breath. No one grimaced with fatigue or wiped sweat from their brow.

Don’t get me wrong. We had a grand time. But for us, it was less about laughter and more about fending off physical decline. We needed to burn calories. We needed to shed middle age rotundity. We were thankful to find a detour around the torture of the gym or the monomania of endless running. The ubiquitous messaging at last year’s U.S. Open featured the expression “The World’s Healthiest Sport.” 

What we discovered—rather painfully—is that not everyone respected our approach. We began sensing a subtle menace, bordering on hostility, in the gazes of our fellow players. While the courts buzzed with camaraderie, singles players like me stood apart—literally and figuratively. The loneliness of pickleball singles, I would discover, is a peculiar thing.

Often, we were approached by people who assumed we were playing singles because we couldn’t find another team. Countless times we were asked, “Do you guys want to get a game going?”

When we politely declined—“No, we’re good playing singles for now”—the reaction was often confusion laced with a not-so-subtle form of revulsion. They shrugged, vaguely annoyed and a little confused. We were seen as novelties, akin to a unicyclist trying to win the Tour de France or a modern tennis player using a wooden racquet.

We overheard comments from players on neighboring courts:

“Those guys just stick to themselves.”

“Go play tennis if that’s what you want.”   

“I think they just like practicing.” 

“I don’t know what their deal is.”

Our deal? We’re fat and trying to get some exercise. We quickly began to feel like we were on the receiving end of one of the great quotes from King Lear, that we were “not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face.”   

When the courts were busy and people were waiting, it didn’t matter that other doubles teams had played far longer or that we were mid-game. We singles players were targeted for removal.

Instead of waiting behind the fence or on another court, people would often step onto the outer edges of ours, arms crossed, faces tight with annoyance. If we dared to play more than a game or two, a small, non-adoring group gathered at the periphery, registering displeasure, inching closer to our space.

The worst episode came without warning. We arrived early, as one does in a place where temperatures routinely break the century mark. Courts were empty. Over time, they filled. We were used to the glances by now. Then, in an escalation neither of us expected, an elderly woman approached and said, “Paddles up at 7.” The message was unmistakable: We will not tolerate singles when the rest of us want to play doubles.

The quiet cruelty was unsettling. These people looked like ordinary, polite Americans—certainly older, middle to upper class. Many were clearly retirees. They might have been an accountant, an oil exec, or my son’s elementary schoolteacher.

But here’s the thing: they were not being polite. And their behavior was anything but normal. I didn’t expect Mean Girl energy to pulse from public pickleball courts. Nor did I ever expect to walk away from a pickleball court feeling like a middle-class mob was cheering my hasty exit.

I will not write what I wanted to say to our evictor, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure it out.       

My aim is not to chronicle a new subculture of niche ostracism plaguing chubby middle-aged men who just want to get some exercise by participating in the latest American sports craze. My friend and I are not claiming to be the pickleball equivalents of Elphaba from Wicked or Mary Shelly’s misunderstood monster in Frankenstein. And, yes, ostracism is nothing new. The word comes from the Greek ostrakizein meaning, “to banish.” In antiquity it was a common practice used to empower citizens to exile fellow citizens who threatened the stability of the state.

If the public pickleball courts are a microcosm of a Greek democratic polity, then there is no doubt we were aggressively ostracized. 

Still, we were mistreated in a way and in a venue we never anticipated. We never fashioned ourselves to be interlopers, interrupters, or annoying Socratic gadflies armed with a paddle. We paid our taxes for the use of these courts. I grew up playing competitive tennis, and while doubles never won the same acclaim as singles, it was never considered the province of the athletic underclass.

My friend and I often return to these troubling episodes from last summer, trying to make some sense of them. I’m not ashamed to admit they baffle us. We are both affable high school teachers with combined experience of over half a century. The students tend to like us, and to be honest, we tend to like them. We aren’t cynical, jaded, or disgruntled (most of the time).

But if we are being honest, what we witnessed on the pickleball court mirrors—in many ways—what we have begun to see in our classrooms in the past decade or so: the absolute unapologetic belief that things should be easy and light and fun.

We are a nation forever seduced by the promise of ease—bodies trimmed with injections, essays ghostwritten by code, divorces always no fault. We love Instagram reels with life hacks and have no patience when Wi-Fi is down. The most rewarding yet mysterious and taxing element of the human condition—the cultivation of love and friendship—is at real risk of being supplanted by AI companions like Kindroid, Nomi, Replika and Character.ai. A dispiriting 70% of teens now admit they use AI companions somewhat frequently.  

We have noticed that teachers who stand in the way of these pernicious trends are labeled “old school.”

It’s no surprise that anything new—and wildly popular—in modern America is expected to be breezy, amusing, and purely recreational. And just as my friend and I surely annoy our students and younger colleagues with our old school ways, we wonder, perhaps, if we annoy fellow pickleball players for much the same reason.

In the wake of COVID, and even earlier if we are being honest, American students became accustomed, even entitled, to a constant menu of academic short cuts. Retaking tests. Getting points for assignments they do not complete. Relentless cheating by high school and college students using ChatGPT. And worst of all, states lowering what score is needed to be considered “proficient” in a subject.

It's just a theory. Maybe we just need to lighten up, go with the flow, stop worrying about the calories and the lagging metabolism and focus on the fun instead. There is actually a decent amount of scientific evidence to suggest that banning alcohol, carbs, and nicotine from our lives doesn’t lengthen our lifespans as much as establishing strong social connections do. Maybe the laughter on the court next to me is more beneficial than the running I do on my own court.    

We haven’t played much lately. While I’m nursing a bum shoulder, my friend has taken to long morning walks. We hope to return to the pickleball court in the future. Maybe we will surrender to the doubles craze and stand together on the same side of the court. Maybe we will summon some middle-age fortitude and tell our tormentors to leave us alone. But what we won’t do is bask in the glory of ease.

No matter where we stand on a pickleball court.         

Jeremy S. Adams is an award-winning civics teacher and writer from Bakersfield, California and the author of Lessons in Liberty: Thirty Rules for Living From Ten Extraordinary Americans