Pickleball fever takes over Highland Park, bringing hundreds of amateurs and pros to tournament showcasing America’s fastest-growing sport

If the nonstop play at your local courts isn’t proof enough, further evidence of the unstoppable rise of pickleball can be found this week in Highland Park, where hundreds of amateur enthusiasts and dozens of professionals have converged for a tournament showcasing America’s fastest-growing sport.

The Association of Pickleball Professionals, or APP, has brought its tour to the Chicago area for the fourth time, and on Wednesday morning the amateur events were already in full swing, with a cacophony of plastic-on-plastic thwacks echoing through Danny Cunniff Park.

The pros will get started Thursday, trying to claim some of the $50,000 prize pool. One is Dekel Bar, 29, a former professional tennis player from Israel who switched sports four years ago after friends introduced him to the game and is now fourth in the APP rankings.

“The pickleball community is a lot more welcoming than the tennis community,” he said. “Playing professional tennis is pretty lonely. Playing professional pickleball is a lot better. The community is great; you get to meet a lot of new people. I think that’s why everyone is loving pickleball.”

The sport has been around since 1965 — its creator was a Seattle congressman named Joel Pritchard — and a few Chicago area health clubs and high school PE programs have hosted play since at least the mid-1980s.

But pickleball has exploded in recent years, and now has nearly 5 million players nationwide, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. Town after town in the Chicago area has built dedicated courts, though there still aren’t nearly enough to meet demand: Julie Torrence, 56, who lives in Chicago, is so leery of competition for court time she wouldn’t reveal the North Side spot where she plays.

“It’s been crazy,” she said. “I started playing last summer and you could go out and get on a court. Now it’s really hard. Even our secret courts are getting really crowded.”

The basics of the game are simple. The court is about third the size of a tennis court, and each player has a solid paddle instead of a stringed racket. The ball itself is perforated with holes like a whiffle ball.

High-level pickleball takes incredible reflexes, but the sport doesn’t produce the physical spectacle of professional tennis, with its 120 mph serves and miles of running. Top players tend to stand near the net, smacking the ball at each other in volleys that, to the undiscerning eye, often appear surprisingly gentle.

But Ken Herrmann, the Libertyville-based founder of the APP Tour, said looks can be deceiving.

“They’re so steady, so consistent,” he said. “The game has evolved, even in the last 18 months, with so many top tennis players leaving (that) tour and joining the pickleball tour. The paddle technology has improved so the ball’s traveling so much faster. There’s more spin, more heaviness to the ball. There are so many technically skilled athletes coming into the sport that they’re just not making unforced errors.”

The top-ranked male player is 19-year-old J.W. Johnson, another tennis turncoat who built his skills in the pickleball mecca of Florida. He has played for a just a few years, going full time a year ago, but has become so prominent that the New Yorker recently featured him in a profile of the sport (Herrmann called him “the Pete Sampras of pickleball”).

Johnson said he plays about two hours a day, then does fitness training for an hour or two. The rest of the time he’s traveling to almost-weekly tournaments, playing singles and doubles.

“A lot of people like watching doubles more than the singles, which for me is understandable,” he said. “I think doubles is much more entertaining to watch because a lot of the points are up at the net rather than one person back.”

As the pros got ready for their turn, the Highland Park courts, including many repurposed tennis courts, teemed with amateurs whaling away at pickleballs. The sunny vibe among the competitors matched the lovely weather: Kim Evans, 61, from Barrington, was all smiles after losing a doubles match to her friend Claudine Cuchran, 53, of Downers Grove.

“We met through pickleball,” Evans said. “You make all these new friends, which is awesome.”

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Ken Sponseller, 57, of Aurora, was less ebullient after getting bounced from the tournament with two losses. But the veteran pickleballer, who has been playing for more than five years, vowed to return with a sharper skill set.

“There are all those minute things to actually make yourself better,” he said. “It has to do with the geometry of the court, where you place yourself on the court, the shots you take, the angle of the shots — little things like that. You learn that the correct placement on the court, the correct shot to use, makes you a better player. That comes from experience and lots and lots of practice.”

While pickleball is a sport that allows most people to play right away and improve quickly, change could be coming to the elite ranks. Herrmann said top pros are earning six figures through tour prize money and clinics, and that is attracting more high-level athletes to the sport.

Julie Johnson, J.W.’s mother and the second-ranked senior women’s pro, said her son’s tennis friends have noticed the money and are inquiring about how they can get started in the sport. Soon, she said, the same physical marvels who dominate tennis might well take over pickleball.

“It’s not going to take long,” she said. “They’re coming.”

jkeilman@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @JohnKeilman