The Day Paddles Appeared
at the Starbucks Counter

The paddle by the till

At first I took it for a decorative racket. Look closer and it's a pickleball paddle: a collaboration between Starbucks and the paddle maker Wowlly. The black cover reads "Your Daily Dose of Main Character Energy". One cup a day of protagonist energy. Whether it's advertising the coffee or the paddle, I can no longer tell.

And this is no souvenir toy. The card describes a competition model built for double-handed backhands, and the paddle face carries a USA Pickleball approval sticker. Serious kit, sold to people who came in for a latte. That's how far the craze has come.

Free tennis courts, paid pickleball courts

Closer to home, the change is plain to see. At the housing development in Cyberjaya where I used to live, the shared facilities had several tennis courts that residents could use for free. Every one of them has become a covered, paid pickleball court. The roof is very welcome. Residents' wallets, sadly, did not get one.

Financially, it makes perfect sense. One tennis court has room for three or four pickleball courts. Where tennis gives you two to four players per court, the same space now holds twelve to sixteen. Put it on hourly bookings and a shared amenity becomes something that earns money every hour. For whoever manages the place, you could hardly ask for a clearer case of "making the most of your assets".

Tennis players, of course, are not thrilled. There have been complaints about extra lines on shared courts and about wear and tear. From where they stand, they are watching their courts being cut into four, so it's hard to blame them.

The rooftop amusement park returns

At the big mall in town, the free space on the roof has become four pickleball courts. In the first column, I compared the hotel in Gamuda Cove to the little amusement parks Japanese department stores used to run on their rooftops. I never expected the same thing to happen on an actual roof.

Elsewhere, a covered plaza where skateboarding kids used to roam now holds a neat row of blue courts.

For a mall, empty rooftop space is a headache. Fill it with courts and you collect rent, plus players who eat and shop before and after their games. Nets instead of a Ferris wheel: the rooftop amusement park, brought up to date.

The same thing is happening all over Greater KL. Empty warehouses and mall rooftops have turned into big pickleball complexes with 12 to 17 courts, some with lounges and even cold plunge tubs.

Why is it so popular?

The reason is simple, I think: it's fun from day one. The court is small, the ball is plastic with holes, and you don't have to run as much as in tennis. You don't need to master smashes and drops as in badminton; the rallies just happen. A Malaysian pro who came up through tennis has said much the same: the barrier to entry is low, and you can start by simply hitting the ball.

There's a tailwind, too. In April, Andre Agassi and a group of the world's top players came to Kuala Lumpur to promote the tour. When a tennis legend turns up holding a paddle, you can hardly blame the tennis courts for changing colour.

The shoeshine boy is already selling paddles

So how long will this last? There are some telling signs. In July, a Malaysian business paper reported that court supply had begun to outpace demand, and that operators were shifting their focus from building new courts to filling them and keeping regulars.

Malaysia has a cautionary precedent. Futsal courts once spread across the country, and then the boom faded. Worries that pickleball might go the same way have been around for a while.

Back to the shoeshine boy. A paddle at Starbucks proves the boom has reached ordinary people. It may also be a sign that the number of newcomers is close to peaking.

Which courts will last?

Even so, I don't think pickleball itself will disappear. A sport that people of any age can enjoy from day one doesn't fade easily. What will change is the number of courts.

In that sense, the conversions I've seen up close make a lot of sense. A housing estate's shared facilities, a mall rooftop, a plaza: all places where people already gather, simply putting spare space to use. Nobody bought new land or had to find customers from scratch. Even when the boom cools, the regulars, residents and shoppers, are right there.

The ones likely to struggle are the big facilities built to ride the boom in places with no foot traffic. Lining up courts is easy. Keeping them full is hard. In the end, what decides the game isn't the number of courts but the community that gathers around them. Which, as it happens, is the same conclusion as the first column.

Outside the boom

One last story, from my own family. Paddles at the Starbucks counter leave some people completely unmoved. My daughter, for one. She has no interest whatsoever in pickleball. Frappuccino in hand, she sinks into a book. A born bookworm.

That day, she was reading Pollyanna: the story of a girl who finds something to be glad about, whatever happens. I'm tempted to hand a copy to my former neighbours in Cyberjaya who lost their tennis courts. The courts have a roof now, so you can play when it rains. There you go: the glad game.

Booms always settle down. But coffee and a good book will probably still be going strong decades from now. Perhaps Starbucks' most dependable customers are people like her.