NEW YORK — Does American tennis have a pickleball problem?
Even as the U.S. Open opened this week with more than a million fans expected for the sport’s biggest showcase, the game’s leaders are being forced to confront a devastating fact — the nation’s fastest-growing racket sport (or sport of any kind) is not tennis but pickleball, which has seen participation boom 223% in the past three years.
“Quite frankly, it’s obnoxious to hear that pickleball noise,” U.S. Tennis Association President Dr. Brian Hainline grumbled at a recent state-of-the-game news conference, bemoaning the distinctive pock, pock, pock of pickleball points.
Pickleball, an easy-to-play mix of tennis and ping pong using paddles and a wiffleball, has quickly soared from nearly nothing to 13.6 million U.S. players in just a few years, leading tennis purists to fear a day when it could surpass tennis’ 23.8 million players. And most troubling is that pickleball’s rise has often come at the expense of thousands of tennis courts encroached upon or even replaced by smaller pickleball courts.
“When you see an explosion of a sport and it starts potentially eroding into your…