Why is it called pickleball?

Pickleball is named after the "pickle boat" — the crew-racing term for a boat crewed by whoever was left over from other teams. Joan Pritchard, wife of one of the game's inventors, gave it the name because the new sport was assembled from leftover bits of other games: badminton's court, table tennis's paddles, a perforated plastic ball.

The competing story — that it was named after a family dog called Pickles — is charming, widely repeated, and wrong. USA Pickleball's own account of the naming establishes that Pickles the dog was born in 1968, three years after the game was invented and named in 1965. The dog came second and was, it seems, named after the game.

How the game was invented

The summer of 1965, on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. Joel Pritchard, a Washington State congressman, and Bill Bell came back from golf to find their families with nothing to do. They had a badminton court and no full set of badminton equipment, so they improvised with ping-pong paddles and a perforated plastic ball. Barney McCallum was brought in the following weekend, and the three of them are credited as the founders.

The detail that matters for how the game plays today is that they lowered the badminton net, eventually to 36 inches. A badminton net sits far higher, and dropping it turned an overhead game into a ground game — which is why pickleball looks nothing like badminton despite borrowing its court. We compare the two directly in pickleball vs badminton.

The pickle boat, explained

In collegiate crew, a "pickle boat" is a boat crewed by rowers left over from the other boats — an assembled-from-spare-parts crew racing for fun rather than for selection. Joan Pritchard, who had rowed, thought the name fit a game that threw pieces of badminton, table tennis and other sports into one mix. It is a genuinely apt name, and a rather better one than the dog story gives it credit for.

So where did the dog come from?

From Joel Pritchard, apparently telling a reporter the dog version as a joke on the assumption it would never catch on. It caught on. The story is repeated in newspaper features and by players at courts everywhere, which is a reminder of how quickly a good anecdote outruns a dull fact.

The Pritchard family did have a dog named Pickles. He arrived in 1968, three years after the game already had its name. The most likely reading is the reverse of the legend: the dog was named after the game.

Why the name confuses newcomers

Because it sounds like a children's game, and that costs the sport credibility with people who have never played. It is worth saying plainly: pickleball is a real sport with a national governing body, standardized equipment, a rulebook and professional players. The name is a 1965 in-joke about a boat, not a description of the game's seriousness.

If you have never played and the name is what is putting you off, the fastest cure is a session. Our how to play pickleball guide gets you to your first rally, and the rules take about ten minutes to learn.

Other names you will hear

People new to the sport search for it under a lot of names, and none of them are official:

• "Pickle ball" (two words). Common in search and on signage. Same sport.
• "Pickleball racket" or "racquet." The correct term is paddle — it is solid, with no strings.
• "Wiffle ball tennis." Not the same thing, though the balls are related in spirit. See pickleball vs wiffle ball.
• "Paddle ball" and "padel." Two different sports that get mixed up with pickleball constantly — we cover paddle ball and padel separately.

What happened after 1965

The name stuck because the game did, and the early timeline is short enough to be worth knowing. The first court built specifically for pickleball — rather than a borrowed or temporary badminton court — went in at Joel and Joan Pritchard's home in Magnolia Bluff, Seattle, in 1967, two years after that first improvised afternoon.

By 1972 the founders had formed a corporation, Pickle-Ball Inc., to protect the new sport. The first known tournament anywhere in the world was held in the spring of 1976, at the South Center Athletic Club in Tukwila, Washington — still within an hour's drive of where the game was invented. And in 1984 the United States Amateur Pickleball Association was organized to grow the sport nationally, publishing the first rulebook in March of that year.

That rulebook is the ancestor of the rules everybody plays by today, including the non-volley-zone restriction and the two-bounce rule that make the modern game what it is — see the rules for beginners and the kitchen rule. Nineteen years passed between a bored family afternoon and a national governing body. The plastic ball and the lowered badminton net survived all of it.

The short version

Named in 1965 by Joan Pritchard after the pickle boat, because the game was made of leftovers from other sports. The dog arrived in 1968. Anyone who tells you otherwise is repeating a joke that Joel Pritchard did not expect to survive the week.