When Was Pickleball Invented? The Full History (and Why It's Called That)
By Gary, founder of RacketRise. Covering padel and pickleball across the UK.
Last Updated: August 2026
Quick Summary
- Pickleball was invented in summer 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington, by Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell and Barney McCallum — three dads improvising a game for bored kids
- The name almost certainly comes from rowing, not the dog — Joan Pritchard's "pickle boat" (a crew of leftover oarsmen) fits how the game was cobbled together from other sports; the family dog Pickles came later and was named after the game
- It took nearly 60 years to go global — first purpose-built court 1967, first tournament 1976, first rulebook 1984, US boom from 2020, and the UK now has 55,000+ players
- Find somewhere to play — use the RacketRise Court Finder to find pickleball venues and sessions across the UK
Every sport has an origin story. Pickleball's is better than most: no federation, no committee, no marketing plan — just a summer afternoon, a disused badminton court, and three fathers who couldn't find enough rackets. Here's what actually happened, what's myth, and how a Pacific Northwest backyard game ended up on your local leisure centre timetable.
Quick Answer: Pickleball was invented in the summer of 1965 at Joel Pritchard's summer home on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Pritchard and his friend Bill Bell, looking for something to entertain their families, improvised a game on an old badminton court with table-tennis paddles and a perforated plastic ball. Neighbour Barney McCallum helped turn it into a real sport with wooden paddles and written rules. The name most credibly comes from the rowing term "pickle boat" — a crew assembled from leftovers — coined by Joan Pritchard. The famous dog, Pickles, was named after the game, not the other way round.
Summer 1965: How the First Game Happened
The setting was Joel Pritchard's family summer place on Bainbridge Island, a short ferry ride from Seattle. Pritchard — then a Washington state legislator — came back from a round of golf with his friend Bill Bell to find their families sitting around with nothing to do.
The property had an old badminton court. What it didn't have was a full set of badminton rackets. So they started with what was to hand: table-tennis paddles and a perforated plastic ball. The first rallies were played with the net at badminton height, but the plastic ball bounced well on the asphalt, and over the following days the net came down to roughly waist height and the game settled into something new — played off the bounce as much as out of the air.
That improvised weekend produced most of pickleball's DNA in one go: a badminton-sized court, a low net, solid paddles, a slow perforated ball, and a game that whole families could play together. The kids-and-parents origin isn't a charming footnote — it's the reason the sport's rules still deliberately blunt the advantages of the strongest player on the court.
The Three Inventors
Joel Pritchard is the name most attached to the sport. He was a sitting Washington state legislator in 1965 and went on to serve in the US Congress and as Washington's lieutenant governor. His summer home hosted the first games, and his family supplied both the court and — eventually — the name.
Bill Bell, a businessman and Pritchard's golfing friend that afternoon, was the co-instigator of the first improvised game.
Barney McCallum, a neighbour on the island, joined shortly after and did much of the unglamorous work of turning a lark into a sport. He made the first proper wooden paddles (cut on a bandsaw in his basement — the ancestor of every carbon-faced paddle sold today), and with Pritchard and Bell worked out rules that kept the game playable for mixed ages, including the ancestor of today's kitchen non-volley zone.
None of the three set out to build a sport. McCallum later put the design philosophy simply: they made rules that kept the game fun for families, and threw out anything that didn't.
Why Is It Called Pickleball? The Dog Myth, Settled
Two origin stories have circulated for decades:
Story one — the dog. The Pritchards had a dog called Pickles who chased the ball, so the game became "Pickles' ball". It's the version most people have heard, and plenty of clubs still tell it.
Story two — the pickle boat. Joan Pritchard, Joel's wife, knew rowing, where the "pickle boat" is a crew thrown together from oarsmen left over after the proper boats are filled. A game bodged together from badminton, table tennis and a plastic ball struck her as exactly that, and she said so.
The family's own accounts settle it: the dog came after the game. Pickles joined the household a couple of years into pickleball's existence and was named after the sport — the timeline runs the opposite way to the myth. The pickle-boat story is the one the inventors' families stand behind, and it fits the game's character perfectly: pickleball genuinely is a pickle boat of a sport, crewed by the leftover parts of three others.
Why does the dog version survive? Because it's a better pub answer. But if you want to win the argument at your club night, the dates are on your side.
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Timeline: From Backyard to 36 Million Players
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1965 | First improvised games at the Pritchard home, Bainbridge Island, WA |
| 1967 | First purpose-built pickleball court, in a neighbour's backyard |
| 1972 | A company is incorporated to protect and grow the young sport |
| 1976 | First known tournament, held in Tukwila, Washington |
| 1984 | The US amateur association forms and publishes the first official rulebook |
| 1990s | Pickleball reaches all 50 US states, largely via retirement communities |
| 2020 | The US boom begins — lockdown-friendly, outdoor, all ages; the governing body renames itself USA Pickleball |
| 2020–2024 | US participation grows 223% to over 36 million players |
| 2020s | The UK wave: Pickleball England gains Sport England recognition as the national governing body; UK players pass 55,000 |
Two things stand out in that table. First, how slow the early growth was — the sport spent half a century as a regional pastime before conditions (an ageing-but-active population, a pandemic that favoured outdoor small-court sports, and social media) lit the fuse. Second, how little the game itself changed. The court, the low net, the perforated ball and the family-friendly rulebook of the late 1960s are essentially what you'll play on this weekend — the equipment revolution came to the paddles, not the rules.
How Pickleball Reached the UK
Pickleball's UK growth ran through a piece of 1965 luck: the inventors built their game on a badminton court, and a pickleball court is exactly the same size as a badminton court (13.4m × 6.1m). Britain has thousands of badminton halls, which means the UK's pickleball infrastructure mostly already existed — one set of painted lines and a lower net converts any leisure-centre hall in an afternoon. That's why the sport spread here through council leisure operators rather than purpose-built venues, and why most UK pickleball happens indoors.
Pickleball England — now recognised by Sport England as the sport's national governing body — estimates 55,000+ active UK players, has reported membership growth of 79% in a single year, and has set a target of one million UK players by 2030. The English Open has grown into one of the biggest tournaments outside the US. For the full state of the sport, see our UK pickleball statistics round-up and the 2026 state-of-the-sport report.
What the Origin Story Explains About the Modern Game
The 1965 backyard explains almost every "why" a new player asks:
- Why is the serve underarm? Because the game was built so children could play against adults. An overarm serve would have ended that in one summer. (Serve technique guide.)
- Why is there a kitchen? The non-volley zone exists to stop tall adults camping at the net and smashing everything — the same family-balancing instinct, written into court paint. (Kitchen rules explained.)
- Why a plastic ball with holes? It's the ball that happened to be lying around in 1965 — and it turned out to be a design masterstroke, slowing the game enough for long rallies and mixed-age play. (Indoor vs outdoor balls.)
- Why "paddle" and not "racket"? The first bats were cut from plywood, following table tennis and platform tennis — no strings, so no racket. (The full rackets-vs-paddles story.)
Sixty years on, the sport's growth engine is still the thing the three inventors stumbled into: a game where a 12-year-old, a 40-year-old and a 70-year-old can share a court and all genuinely compete. If that sounds appealing, start with What Is Pickleball? — or skip straight to finding a court near you.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was pickleball invented?
Pickleball was invented in the summer of 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington, near Seattle. Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell and Barney McCallum improvised the first game on an old badminton court at Pritchard's summer home, using table-tennis paddles and a perforated plastic ball because they couldn't find a full set of badminton rackets.
Who invented pickleball?
Three friends: Joel Pritchard (a Washington state politician who later became a US congressman), businessman Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum, who made the first proper wooden paddles and helped write the early rules that turned an improvised game into a repeatable sport.
Why is it called pickleball?
The most credible account comes from Joan Pritchard, Joel's wife: the mashed-together sport reminded her of the "pickle boat" in rowing — a crew thrown together from leftover oarsmen. The dog story has the timeline backwards.
Was pickleball named after a dog?
No — that's the sport's most persistent myth. The Pritchard family dog, Pickles, arrived a couple of years after the first games were played and was named after the sport, not the other way round.
When did pickleball come to the UK?
Pickleball only took off in the UK in the 2020s, spreading through leisure centres because a pickleball court is the same size as a badminton court. Pickleball England, recognised by Sport England as the national governing body, estimates 55,000+ active UK players and targets one million by 2030.
Which is older, pickleball or padel?
Pickleball, by four years — 1965 in Washington State versus padel's 1969 invention in Acapulco, Mexico, by Enrique Corcuera. Both reached the UK mainstream within the last few years.
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