Is Tennis Too Hard for Us Now?

I love racket sports. I’ve played tennis since I was 12 years old. I’ve played pickleball for a while, and two years ago I took up padel in Las Vegas. All three are fun, although pickleball hurts my knees. I am competent up to a point in all of them. I will also kick your ass in ping pong, lose badly to you in racquetball and squash, and figure I can hold my own in beach tennis, badminton, POP tennis, and whatever else you've got.

But here’s the thing. I’m hearing way too many people saying pickleball and padel are taking America by storm because they’re easier than tennis. And more social. But mostly easier. You don’t have to learn to serve “overhand,” which can “take months.” The smaller court is easier to cover; you don’t have to generate power. It’s only doubles. Players can start playing right away and have fun.

Top-level tennis in the U.S. is, thankfully, still okay. There are 16 Americans ranked in the top 100 of the ATP and 14 in the WTA top 100. But at the recreational level, pickleball is kicking tennis’ ass. The USTA says U.S. tennis participation reached 27.3 million players in 2025, up 54% from its 2019 baseline of 17.7 million.

SFIA says 24.3 million Americans played pickleball in 2025, up from roughly 4.2 million in 2020, a 479% five-year jump.

Padel is so new in the U.S. that I couldn’t find comparable numbers. But I do know it’s coming. Vamos!

Three years ago, sportswriter Rick Reilly gave his take on pickleball in the Washington Post: “Any game that you can take up after breakfast and be pretty good at by lunch is not a sport…I’ve watched Federer run the equivalent of three New York City blocks on a single point. You could play pickleball for a month and not run that far.”

Ouch. One of the Post’s readers responded with: “True, pickleball isn’t as strenuous as tennis or racquetball or running marathons or doing the Tour de France. And it isn’t as hard to learn as other racket sports. And that’s THE WHOLE POINT.”

Hopefully not, but it’s one of the big ways pickleball is selling itself. USA Pickleball calls it “easy to learn but challenging to master.” AARP says pickleball’s appeal comes from a low barrier to entry and that a new player can go from learning the rules to having fun in about an hour. NYU Langone, summarizing a New York Times piece, describes pickleball as having a low barrier to entry, being easier to learn than tennis and requiring a smaller court.

Those aren’t insults directed at tennis. They are a convincing pitch. And it’s working.

I play mostly padel now, and I can confirm that it’s a blast, and way, way easier than tennis despite the walls. Especially if you already play tennis.

Tennis rabble-rouser Alexander Bublik made big headlines recently after telling reporters, “If you can’t play singles [tennis], you play doubles. If you can’t play doubles, you play padel.”

Carlos Alcaraz, during the Premier Padel pro event in Miami, joked that he and Jannik Sinner would beat Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia, the world’s top padel pair, if they played a padel match.

Toni Nadal, Rafael Nadal’s uncle and former coach, wrote in El País: “Our sport is too difficult to learn. Today’s world demands ease, immediacy, and fun. Tennis does not respond to either of the first two, and only offers the third after a great deal of time and effort.”

So is that the money shot? Does today’s world demand ease, immediacy, and fun? Are we blowing off the “great deal of time and effort part?”

Tennis has never been Pin the Tail on the Donkey. You have to pay a certain amount of dues. You always did. I started playing with a 20-pound wooden racket featuring a sweet spot the size of a Susan B. Anthony dollar. It sucked. Rackets are lighter now, with bigger sweet spots, but I imagine the level of suckage for beginners has not been significantly reduced.

So what has changed that makes tennis now “too difficult” for people to learn? I’m not sure. But other major sports don’t seem to be having the same issue.

Foosball is easier than soccer, which is as hard or harder to learn than tennis, and nobody’s saying, “I love foosball because you never have to move your feet. You just stand in one place and spin.” Aging international soccer stars like Thomas Mueller and Son Heung-min are still joining MLS, not the North American Pro Foosball League. Jack Sock and Eugenie Bouchard are crushing it on the pro pickleball circuit. Foosball is crushing it in bars and fraternity houses. Where it always has.

There’s no issue with golf, which is crazy hard. My mom and dad used to take me to Castle Park to play miniature golf when I was a kid. It’s a lot easier than golf. Like, so much easier. And a lot cheaper. And there’s cotton candy nearby, usually. But nobody’s mistaking mini golf for a threat to the PGA Tour. The New York Times is certainly not writing articles about it.

And to be clear, this is not a tennis is better article. It’s not a “pickleball and padel are less worthy because they’re easier” article.

This is a “what’s going on with us?” article. Are we choosing pickleball and padel because we don’t have the will, the determination, the discipline or the hand-eye coordination anymore to serve overhand? Have we lost the willingness to hit bucket after bucket of balls into the net or over the fence? To fight the sticker bushes to get those balls back? To cry in the backseat on the way home from tournaments while our dad critiques our latest first-round beatdown?

Maybe this is just the way things are going in the U.S.A. Life is more stressful than it’s ever been. Careers are complex; fixing your car is way more complex, raising kids, learning Spanish, mastering AI. It’s a lot. With all this going on, maybe we’re just looking for a little easy fun when it comes to our downtown. With all the stress we’re under, does anybody really have the time and energy to learn a topspin backhand?

Anybody else notice the similarity between the tennis/pickleball/padel progression and similar moves in everything else we’re doing? Is this article too long? Did you stop reading three paragraphs ago? Are we becoming a Cliff Notes Nation, trading in the sweat of our brow for the underhand serve? Mira:

• Dating apps instead of risking an awkward real-life conversation

• TikTok and Reels instead of movies

• Tweets instead of books

• E-bikes instead of bicycles

• Golf carts instead of walking and carrying your clubs

• Employing hacks instead of building habits

• ChatGPT prompts instead of library research

I’m not Goggins. I’m not Andrew Huberman. I’m just wondering if, as a country, we’re no longer willing to put in the work.

Coincidentally, I played pickleball last night at the local tennis complex. Twelve courts banging, ice buckets stocked with Gatorade Zero, raucous soundtrack, 50 to 60 players having a blast. My first two partners were pretty good. So I asked them if they played tennis. Partner #1: “No.” Partner #2: “I used to, in Atlanta. But not anymore. I’m all pickleball now.”

There were four kids a court over, doing it up. Good players smacking two-handed backhands. High school age. I asked them the same thing. All four with eye rolling, quick head shakes: “No, man.” I asked them why not. The first three shined me on, leaving the fourth to speak for all of them: “This is way easier, bro. Way easier.”