Why the Pickleball boom on the North Shore requires court action
People who had never played sports before were able to “pick it up within an hour”.
Huw Bradshaw
September 01, 2025
Tennis, squash, step aside, a new challenger is in town to vie for the title of the North Shore’s favourite racquet sport: pickleball.
Example: Suns Pickleball — a Ku-ring-gai/Hornsby based club — has signed up more than 400 members since opening last year.
Such is the level of excitement around the sport, Ku-ring-gai Council has produced its own Pickleball Action Plan, backed unanimously by councillors at the most recent council meeting on August 19.
The goal is to provide more facilities for pickleball play by hiring out existing tennis courts, each of which can accommodate multiple games of pickleball.
Suns Pickleball secretary, Chris Lam, told the Lorikeet people who had never played sports before were able to “pick it up within an hour”, and that club members ranged in age from 10 to 82.
What the hell is pickleball?
Similar to tennis, pickleball is a sport where two or four players bat a ball over a net. What makes it distinct from tennis is the smaller court size, flat paddles in lieu of stringed racquets, and use of a harder, plastic ball.
Pickleball has its own rules and uses a non-volley zone in a court’s centre.
Short on courts
Lam said the high demand for pickleball in the area was not yet being met by the number of facilities, but that the club was working with Ku-ring-gai Council to source more courts.
Councillor Indu Balachandran told the Lorikeet that “there’s only so much new space our councils can develop, so we have to look at repurposing”.
She said pickleball and basketball had been identified as the two sports most in need of greater access to council-owned facilities.
Image credit: Aleksander Saks via Unsplash