Quote:
Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive
Pickleball and tennis are two fundamentally different games--about as different as, say, soccer and hockey. The goal of both may be the same--score by getting the puck or ball into your opponent's net--but the similarity pretty much ends there. The games require fundamentally different skill sets, just like pickleball and tennis.
My wife and I are avid tennis players. We still play, particularly on the har-tru courts at Lopez. We've managed to remain pretty much injury-free over the years, but we've both known tennis players, some much younger than us, who have tried to play pickleball and have suffered some serious arm, shoulder and back issues as a result. Hitting a tennis ball is pretty different than hitting that whiffleball in pickleball games.
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That is the same point that I was making. Pickleball is an easy game to learn, but it is an INJURY TRAP for seniors. Playing on a Har-Tru clay tennis surface is way easier on the ankles and knees than hard court (like all pickleball courts here), but it is expensive because of high maintenance costs. Pickleball can't be played on a clay surface because the PLASTIC ball would NOT bounce up. Pickleball can be played as they do up north in the winter on WOOD basketball courts. My suggestion to TV Land seniors is that they forget pickleball and play soft tennis, which is played on a pickleball-sized court. It is a better game than pickleball and has fewer arm injuries.
........Also, as a suggestion, The Villages could make clay tennis courts out of the yellow clay used for the softball field infields and let the tennis players maintain them. It would be worth trying.