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History of pickleball
Last reviewed September 2026 · history is stable; reviewed again only on new primary evidence
Pickleball was invented in the summer of 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington, by Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum. They started on Pritchard’s backyard badminton court with table tennis paddles and a perforated plastic ball, lowered the net when they found the ball bounced, and wrote rules a whole family could play. The first rulebook came in 1984, all 50 states had courts by 1990, and 24.3 million Americans played in 2025.
When was pickleball invented?
Summer 1965. Both Joel Pritchard and Barney McCallum usually placed the first game in July or August of that year, and that is the date USA Pickleball and the founders’ own company settled on.
The exact day is not known, and it is fair to say so. The three men never wrote it down at the time, and their memories drifted: Pritchard once said 1963, and his wife Joan, who named the game, wrote that it was 1966. The 1965 date rests on the founders’ later, consistent testimony, not on a calendar entry. The first piece of paper in the record arrives three years later, when Pritchard and friends filed articles of incorporation for Pickle Ball Inc. on February 13, 1968. Everything before that date is memory.
Who invented pickleball?
Three men are credited: Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum. Pritchard was a Washington state representative in 1965 who later served six terms in the US House and two as the state’s lieutenant governor. Bell was his friend and houseguest that summer, a businessman and decorated veteran. McCallum lived six doors down the beach and could build things.
The game started as a dare. Pritchard and Bell came back from golf to find Pritchard’s 13-year-old son Frank complaining that there was nothing to do. Pritchard said that as a kid he used to make up games, and Frank told him to go make one up. Pritchard was 40 and loved a challenge. He and Bell went out to the court and played the first game that afternoon.
McCallum came in the following weekend, when the table tennis paddles kept breaking. He cut sturdier paddles from plywood in his basement, and from there he became the one who worked out the equipment and much of the rules. He kept promoting the game for the rest of his life. Frank Pritchard put it plainly after McCallum’s death in 2019: people call his father the father of pickleball, but Barney was the parent who raised it.
Someone at the court asks who invented pickleball, and three different names come back.
It depends on which part of the game you mean. Joel Pritchard and Bill Bell played the first game, so they invented it in the plain sense. Barney McCallum built the paddles and shaped the rules that made it a sport rather than an afternoon, and Joel Pritchard’s own son says he deserves most of the credit for growing it. Joan Pritchard gave it its name. All three men are named as the inventors by USA Pickleball, by the Pickleball Hall of Fame, and by the founders’ own accounts, and that is the answer to give.
Where was pickleball invented?
On Bainbridge Island, a ferry ride west of Seattle, at the Pritchard family’s summer place at Pleasant Beach. Behind the house was a badminton court that Joel’s parents had paved with asphalt years earlier because of the Seattle rain.
That court is the reason a pickleball court is the size it is. A doubles badminton court measures 44 feet by 20 feet. The men played on the lines they already had, and the rulebook still specifies a 20 by 44 foot court today. The ball came from a plastic bat-and-ball set Frank had been given for his birthday. The paddles were table tennis paddles from the shed.
The first court built on purpose for pickleball followed in 1967. The accounts disagree on whose yard it was: USA Pickleball’s timeline puts it at the Pritchards’ own home in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood, while most other tellings place it in the backyard of a friend and neighbor, Bob O’Brian. Nobody disputes the year.
Pickleball history timeline
The company is the one place where the popular timeline and the paper record part ways. USA Pickleball’s timeline, and every page that copies it, says Pickle-Ball Inc. was formed in 1972. The articles of incorporation on file with the State of Washington are dated February 13, 1968. Both are true in their own way: the company existed on paper from 1968 and did not file its first annual report, or do much business, until August 1972, which is the year the founders themselves gave as the start.
Misunderstanding: “Joel Pritchard was a congressman when he invented pickleball.”
He was a state representative, in his seventh year in the Washington legislature. He did not reach the US House until 1973. USA Pickleball’s own timeline calls him a congressman in the 1965 entry, and most history pages copy the line.
Why the rules look the way they do
Most of pickleball’s odd features are decisions from that first summer, and each one still has a rule number.
The low net. They started with the badminton net at 60 inches and volleyed the ball back and forth in the air. Then they noticed the plastic ball bounced well off asphalt. Pritchard wanted to hit the ball hard (“Nobody plays golf to putt,” he said in his oral history), so they dropped the net to 36 inches. It is still 36 inches at the sidelines.
The kitchen. The 7-foot no-volley zone on each side of the net is credited to McCallum. Its purpose was to stop tall adults from standing at the net and smashing everything, so children and grandparents could stay in the game. A Bainbridge Island account quoted by HistoryLink calls it the reason the sport appeals to every age. The kitchen rules that confuse players today are that one idea, written out.
The underhand serve. A madrona tree crowded one end of the Pritchard court, so the founders let the server keep one foot inside the line and required the serve to be hit underhand. One of those two survived. The underhand serve lives on as the volley serve rules: upward arc, paddle below the wrist, contact below the waist. The one-foot allowance did not. Today neither foot may touch the court when the serve is hit.
Under the official rule
- Rule 3.A.1 The court is 20 feet wide and 44 feet long for singles and doubles, the size of the badminton court the game was invented on.
- Rule 3.B.6 and 3.B.7 The net is 36 inches high at the sidelines and 34 inches at the center.
- Rule 3.A.4.c The non-volley zone is the 7 foot by 20 foot area on each side of the net, lines included.
- Rule 7.C.1 to 7.C.3 A volley serve is hit with an upward arc, the paddle head below the wrist, and the ball below the waist.
- Rule 7.A.2 Neither of the server’s feet may touch the court when the serve is hit.
Paraphrased from the 2026 USA Pickleball Official Rulebook, always the final authority.
When did pickleball get popular?
Slowly for 55 years, then all at once. The game spread through Pritchard’s political friends first (Senator Slade Gorton built courts at two of his homes), then through school gym classes and retirement communities. By 1990 it was played in all 50 states. The Villages in Florida built its first permanent courts in 1989.
The numbers only turned steep after 2020. The Sports & Fitness Industry Association counted 3.5 million US players in 2019 and 4.2 million in 2020. Participation nearly doubled in 2022, to 9 million, and reached 24.3 million in 2025, with SFIA naming pickleball the fastest-growing sport in the country for five straight years. The full year-by-year table, and why other counts disagree, is on the pickleball statistics page.
Washington made it official on March 28, 2022, when Governor Jay Inslee signed Senate Bill 5615 naming pickleball the state sport. He signed it on the Pritchard family court on Bainbridge Island, on the same asphalt where the first game was played. The bill passed the Senate 46 to 1.
Where this comes from
Every date on this page comes from a named source, checked on September 11, 2026. Rule numbers are from the 2026 rulebook; the rest is history, and the page says where each piece rests on documents and where it rests on memory.
- The official year-by-year record, 1965 to 2025: USA Pickleball’s history and mission timeline. It carries the founders’ deaths, the 1976 tournament, the March 1984 rulebook, the 2009 Nationals, and the 2020 rename. It is also the source of the “congressman” and “1972” lines that other pages repeat.
- The first afternoon, from Frank Pritchard: USA Pickleball’s “How Pickleball Got Its Name”, October 1, 2020. The paved badminton court, the birthday ball, and McCallum six doors down.
- The incorporation papers, the uncertain date, and the money: HistoryLink.org essay “Joel Pritchard and several friends incorporate Pickle Ball Inc.” by Jim Kershner, November 11, 2016, which cites the Washington State Archives corporation records and Pritchard’s oral history. Kershner’s companion biography of Pritchard gives the political dates.
- The state sport, the tree, and the kitchen: HistoryLink.org essay “Pickleball becomes Washington’s official state sport” by Nick Rouss, March 28, 2022.
- The rule numbers: the 2026 USA Pickleball Official Rulebook, Sections 3 and 7.
- Participation figures: SFIA Topline Participation Reports, as tabulated on our statistics page.
- The park closures in the FAQ: Axios Denver, April 3, 2023, and ABC News, November 20, 2025.
Related questions
How old is pickleball?
Pickleball turned 61 in the summer of 2026. It was first played in July or August 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington, by the founders’ own recollection. The earliest paper record is the February 13, 1968 incorporation of Pickle Ball Inc., so the game is at least 58 years old on documents alone.
What was the original purpose of pickleball?
A game the whole family could play together. Joel Pritchard’s son Frank, 13, complained there was nothing to do, so his father made up a game on the spot. The founders shaped the rules so adults had no height advantage over children, which is why the net is low and volleying near it is banned.
Did the inventors of pickleball make any money?
Very little. A 1974 financial disclosure listed Pickle-Ball Inc. with net assets under $1,500, and Joel Pritchard later said the company was profitable “but we’ve never taken a dime out of it.” The partners had each put in $500 to sell boxed sets for $29.95.
Which city banned pickleball?
No US city has banned the sport itself. Denver removed pickleball from Congress Park in April 2023 after noise readings exceeded its 55-decibel limit at 14 of 18 nearby homes, and Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, halted play at Forest Hill Park in October 2025 and voted to draft a permanent ban. Both are single-park closures over noise.
Was pickleball named after a dog?
No. The Pritchards’ dog Pickles arrived in 1968, three years after the game was named. Joan Pritchard named it after the “pickle boat” in crew racing, the boat of leftover rowers. The full record, including where the dog story came from, is on the naming page.
When did pickleball become an official sport?
The first official rulebook was published in March 1984, when the United States Amateur Pickleball Association formed. Washington made pickleball its official state sport on March 28, 2022, and Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill on the Pritchard family court where the game was invented.