around the post
By Jennifer Lucore & Alex Hamner
Refresher Course
Our sport is spelled “ pickleball .” Like volleyball , football and baseball . The popularity of misspellings of our sport continues , and after 57 years it ’ s time to get it right ! The time is now to let all new aficionados , including celebrities , media influencers , and pro athletes , know the proper name — pickleball ( one word , not hyphenated and not capitalized ).
We recently enjoyed this brief , to-the-point Twitter repost from The Dink Pickleball : “ PSA : pickleball is one word and is not capitalized . You wouldn ’ t say ‘ I love Basket Ball ,’ would ya ? Meeting adjourned .”
The confusion of spelling started back in the late 1960s when the media guessed or copy-and-pasted various spellings they found , and the misspelling continues .
Ever since pickleball began in 1965 , many use / used “ Pickle-Ball ” to describe the sport , because Pickle-Ball is the spelling of the company that Barney McCallum ( one of the sport ’ s founders ) and others started . It ’ s likely that
WRONG , WRONG , WRONG ! reporters and writers of the early articles , having no other references , simply used this spelling in their stories for the game itself . As time went on , writers and players took artistic liberty using variations . It wasn ’ t until USA Pickleball ( formerly called USAPA ) began to organize the sport that “ pickleball ” emerged as the proper spelling .
An excerpt from an article by Lynn and Linda Laymon for USA Pickleball says it best : “ Pickleball has grown enough to be considered part of the English language and therefore standardization is most important . As we have grown , so has the number of companies selling pickleball paraphernalia . Most of these use some form of the word pickleball and some have even copyrighted their names . The simple term ‘ pickleball ’ is generic and cannot be copyrighted .” •
Alex Hamner and Jennifer Lucore began playing and competing in pickleball in 2010 and have both been inducted into the Pickleball Hall of Fame . They are co-directors of training and development at Naples Pickleball Center , Pickleball Capital of the World . They are best known for winning Women ’ s Open Doubles at Nationals for four consecutive years ( 2011-2014 ). For more pickleball fun , visit Jennifer ’ s blog at
allpickleball . com .