$142,452 for balls for pickleballers?
 

Seriously? Pickleballers don’t supply their own pickleballs?

Hmmm 🤔. Why aren’t golf balls supplied to golfers?

You should see the amount they spend on softballs. We get 2 brand new balls for every game.

Golf courses are waaaaaaay more expensive to maintain than PB courts.
Why don't swimmers have to supply their own chlorine? :shocked:

Why aren’t golf balls supplied to golfers?
1 - Some golfers are particular about which brand of balls they use.
2 - Many golfers would probably leave the course with them.
3 - Golf balls are more expensive and they get "lost"

Pballs
1 - Not brand specific
2 - We leave the balls at the courts
3 - They don't get "lost" (but, some eventually crack)

IMO for the millions villages spends on golf course maintenance and over 700 holes to play I wouldn’t be calling out activities I know nothing about? But, that me…. :ho::ho:

You should see what they spend on coffee.

They do provide balls (and clubs) for the putting courses…

Exactly stop complaining about what you don’t get. Enjoy life with the time you have left. And you don’t get 2 new softballs ������ every game. You get one stop it.

Working within operations and maintenance of other companies it’s staggering what things can cost now to maintain and I am not paying for it. Sounds simple on paper but what is the price?

Because you don't share you golf balls with other players

Obviously, like me, you don't play pickleball.

Maybe because golf ball are not hit at other people. Supplying pickle balls ensures no one gets hurt from harder balls that some might naively bring to the court.

If you think Pickle Ball's are expensive, you should see what they spend on themselves. :22yikes:

AS I recall , horse shoes , bean bags, bocce balls ,pickleball paddles etc. are all furnished at the facilities , pickle balls are probably thr mpst used, lost, stolen etc. Golf balls would be impossible to supply , considering the those lost and in the water at every golf couurse. Plus all golfers has plenty of their own favorite brand.

I think its because pickleball is an amenity as is Bocci ball, shuffleboard, tennis, pool tables, the simming pools. The pickleball is also being used by many people and are only replaced when worn out or broken.

Not a pickleball player but live close enough to a rec center to know the courts get used a lot.

$143,000 for either 563 doz/month or 5,400 doz/year (the calculator says those are not the same). Yearly total of either 81,072 or 64,800 pickleballs with a price between $1.75 and $2.20 each.

The best price I could find on the internet, even buying in bulk, was $2.50 which makes this look like a pretty good deal.

Using 81,072 pickleballs for a year means replacing 222 balls every day which sounds like a lot.

46 rec centers with pickleball courts and six courts each make 276 courts. 222 balls per day means replacing less than one ball per day for each pickleball court.

I have no idea what the expected life of a pickleball is but given how much use the courts seem to get, I'm a little surprised there aren't even more lost, stolen, stepped on, or worn out in a day.

+1 for all the factual answers about pickleball being an amenity and the difference between golf and pickleball. Plus, $145K annually comes out to 87 cents per year per person across The Villages. You can't even get a soda or a cup of coffee for $0.87. The amount of computing power used to maintain this thread cost more than $0.87. Time to move along.

As somebody once said, “if you are going to dance, somebody has to pay the fiddler”. Lots of different activities in TV and lots of “fiddlers” to pay.

Because the pools are salt water. 🤣

Why the comment? You have lived here for quite a while, you already knew this. A little pot stirring perhaps?

The same could be said for tennis balls for tennis players.

If that was completely true (or even mostly true) you wouldn't need to spend over a hundred thousand dollars on replacements this year. Fact is, those balls aren't always left at the courts, and many people take them home.

This is nonsense. Dura Pballs, which TV has been supplying as long as I've been here, are probably the hardest ball on the market.

And if you don't think golf balls are hit at other people, we have obviously never played golf together. :loco:

As every one knows, or should know, tennis players bring their own tennis balls. They often play with older balls that do not bounce well. Until someone coughs up a can.
Pickle balls must be the dirtiest objects in TV. Never washed and played with for months, with sweat and snot all over them.
You can wipe off your own golf ball every hole.

thanks for doing that math for me.

At least some part of the value of every home in TV is favorably impacted by the availability of pickleball as an amenity. Probably even more than 87 cents.

Tennis balls are provided in equipment shack if you like playing with old flat tennis balls that lost air months and years ago. So, that’s why avid golfers don’t want play with old golf balls and advanced tennis players don’t play with flat balls…..:wave:

The present pickleballs they are buying don’t last very long before they get soft or crack. Ruff surface applied courts surface increase wear factor. The Vulcan pro balls are little softer should last longer and retain bounce. Duralast 40s are about as expensive and are harder plastic which can in-cure defects like out of round, gets soft it heat and brittle cracks in winter which makes them unplayable in short time. So in theory they might be saving money in long run and getting better product… we should appreciate village recreation effort trying to supply better product.

Obviously, I can't speak for the conduct of every player in this giant place.
But, I play probably 150 times per year and none of the those in the groups I play with take the balls for themselves.

The balls do eventually wear-out, however. Meaning, they crack and have to be tossed. With the huge volume of players here annually, that would account for most of the loss. People don't need to steal them....because there are always balls at the courts to play with.

Golf balls are not INTENTIONALLY hit at other people, unlike Pickleballs, which most certainly are...

Yep. Never understood why they used Dura balls, which are inferior to many other brands. Dura is hard to see due to yellow color vs neon green and they are not durable. Franklin or Vulcan is the way to go.

Yep, its a beautiful thing to think about when we pay our amenity fees.

couldn't agree more. Like tossing a hand grenade in the room. I'd love to see how a dollar is divided amongst all the sports activities

Some supply their own uric acid.

Golfers play with their own balls. They don’t share. Pickleballers share balls in a foursome. So who supplies the balls? What if one or two people don’t have any? What if some guy leaves before the others and takes his with him? Plus, pickleballs are easily scratched. Some people don’t like scratched balls.

Take a look at the budget for amenities portion of the Sumter Landing CDD. This does not list each of the activities but some high-level numbers are:

Total amenities budget: $146.7M
Community Watch: $8.4M (5.4%)
Golf: $4M. (2.7%)
Pool Maintenance: $3.5M (2.4%)
Recreation Supplies: $0.4M (0.27%)

Pickleballs are probably part of the Recreation Supplies which might also include Bocce balls, corn hole bags, table shuffleboard sand, pool noodles, water weights, etc. At $142K the pickleballs account for 1/3 the Recreation supplies or 0.097% of the overall amenities budget.

There's tennis balls in the shed at our courts. But people usually prefer to bring their own.

thank you for that prescient information. Proves how off the mark the original point was.

Our club uses green pickleballs, so we bring our own. Don't blame us.

Pickleballs
 

Do you mow the fairways, greens, fix sand traps? Do you re-cover billiards tables regularly? Do you provide your own Mahjong set every time you play?
Just asking…amenities are there for all of us. If you choose not to join an activity, that’s on you.

This amount is peanuts/rounding error compared to the cost of:

* golf course maintenance and repair
* hiring all employees at golf course starter shacks and ambassadors
* maintenance of ALL pools
* cost of nightly entertainment for a month

Rec department tried about 6 years ago with engage balls (which I’m sure they got good deal with bulk order?) which was better than duralast 40s, but old guard Pickleball community complained and they switched back to dura last with month or two. Different younger crowd now maybe they will accept better balls? Still got lot of old crowd influencers that may muck up the change?