Why Is It Called Pickleball?

The sport with the silliest name in America has two competing origin stories, and the one you’ve heard is probably the wrong one.

The real one: the pickle boat

Summer, 1965, Bainbridge Island, Washington. Congressman Joel Pritchard comes home to a bored family, spots an old badminton court, and improvises: paddles from the shed, a wiffle ball, net lowered to tennis height. He and friends Barney McCallum and Bill Bell spend the weekend inventing rules on the fly.

The next summer, Joan Pritchard named the game. A competitive rower, she remembered “pickle boat” — the last boat in a race, crewed by leftover oarsmen from other boats’ crews. This game was likewise assembled from leftovers: badminton court, wiffle ball, shed paddles. A game of leftovers deserved the leftover boat’s name: pickleball.

The dog story

The family later got a dog and named him Pickles. The dog chased the woffle ball… wiffle ball into the bushes and the family named the game after the dog.

Which sounds perfect — and which everyone tells at parties. Except Pickles arrived years after the game had already been named. The dog was named after the game, not the other way around. Joan Pritchard said so herself, more than once. The dog story is just better marketing.

The tennis one

A third, quieter claim: the game was named after “pickle” as in the baseball term for a mishmash pickle-play. The Pritchards said the pickle-boat version, so the pickle-boat version is the one.

Why it matters (it doesn’t, but still)

Every pickleball player tells the dog story. Now you get to say “actually, the boat” — and being right at the net is half the sport.