Can a Badminton Court be used for a Sanctioned Pickleball Tournament?
Official Dimensions of Badminton Court
“What? I thought you said a badminton court and a Pickleball Court were the same size.” Yes they are. The outside dimensions of a badminton court are 20 feet X 44 feet and so are a Pickleball Court (see diagram above). However, the front (short) serve line for badminton is only 6.5 feet from the net. That same line becomes the NV-Line for Pickleball.
That means the NV-Line is six inches closer to the net than it should be for a legal Pickleball court.
It has been considered moving the non-volley line from 7' to 6.5'. At the present time there is no intention of making this change. For the players with a longer reach it gives them that much more of an advantage at that line. With good players the dynamics of the game changes considerably when the line is moved to 6.5'. With that said any sanctioned tournament needs to play on courts with the 7' line. Most are doing this by putting down masking tape at this 7' line for Pickleball play.
I am not sure about you, but with the number of lines you find on a badminton court, life is already difficult, and now we have to add a new line 6 inches back from the short serve line, for 6 inches because it might give an advantage to a player with long arms.
It seems that a very short comment under Section 2.A. allowing a shortened NV-Line to be used for indoor play would be a simple solution to accomodate the rapid growth of indoor Pickleball.
I understand that the majority of the play in the US is still outdoors on either dedicated Pickleball courts or tennis courts painted with proper Pickleball lines so they have no pressing need to change.
Excuse me, I guess I'll go take my
truck for a walk and stretch my arms.
Response from Pickleball Canada: "We are sanctioning this tournament and authorizing use of the badminton server line as our NV-line."
ReplyDeletePickleball International says: I thank Pickleball Canada for accomodating the current badminton lines as current NV-line. We who play indoors have grown accustomed to the NV-line at a certain place, and to drastically change the lines would be....drastic!
ReplyDelete