Julie Campbell could hardly be more steeped in Australian tennis tradition — she was a successful junior, and daughter of a Wimbledon winner — and later in life, her passion for sport remains. It’s just the racquets that have got smaller.
Campbell, 62, who as Julie Robinson played juniors alongside future champions like John Fitzgerald, is at the vanguard of a sport quickly taking hold in Australia after becoming the fastest growing sport in the United States.
Julie Campbell and Mark Taylor play pickleball in Melbourne. The shrunken version of tennis, which also includes elements of badminton and ping pong, is the fastest growing sport in the US and rapidly on the rise in Australia. Credit:Joe Armao
Welcome to pickleball. And remember that name, though how could you forget it? Its origins are obscure (it’s named after a spare boat crew in rowing, called a pickle boat) and the history of the name taps into the nature of the sport: it is about thrown-together bits of badminton, tennis, squash and table tennis.
Echoing the US explosion, in Australia the game has surged from virtually nothing five years ago to a boom sport, growing 20 per cent a year, according to the Pickleball Australia Association.
“There are people coming who’ve never played sport in their lives,” says Campbell, who plays competitively with her husband Paul, a retired Victorian policeman.
“People get to retirement and think, ‘I need to be active, I need to try something new’, and this is easy for them to do. You can pick it up, get some skills, socialise, and they progress pretty quickly.”
But it is not just a sport for ageing bones.
In the US, it is a fully fledged professional sport with about 5 million players and a profile growing so fast that tennis superstars including Nick Kyrgios and Naomi Osaka, and NFL great Tom Brady have invested in pickleball leagues. Tennis Australia is planning to offer the sport at clubs around Australia, though the competition between pickleball and tennis has produced some tension in the US as the sports compete for players and facilities.
Campbell’s mother, Lorraine Coghlan, in action in 1958, the year after she won the mixed doubles title at Wimbledon.
“It’s certainly not an issue here at the moment,” Taylor says. “The couple of tennis clubs that we are involved with have become involved because it’s a way of keeping some of their members by providing a different activity. And when they’ve got free court time, it’s another revenue stream.”
To emphasise that spirit of co-operation, pickleball just made its debut on hallowed tennis turf at Kooyong, with a demonstration court set up behind the famous centre court during the Kooyong Classic, a warm-up event for the Australian Open. Scores of spectators lined up to give it a try.
Julie Campbell was among the players showing off their skills, and it brought back memories of her own playing days— and her remarkable tennis heritage.
In 1958, her mother, Lorraine Coghlan, a 21-year-old from Warrnambool, won the Wimbledon mixed doubles alongside Bob Howe. When Campbell was a baby, she made the front pages when a doubles match involving her mother and Margaret Court had to be halted because she was crying in the stands.
Campbell could have made a career of it herself, but opted not to pursue it after making her mark in juniors in the 1970s. Decades later, she is back at Kooyong on a smaller but still satisfying court.
“There are a lot of players like myself, where if you’ve done competition all your life and competition is ingrained in you … pickleball gives you that real competitive chance to play, but also it’s very social,” she says.
Campbell is one of an estimated 12,000 people now playing nationally, about 1500 of them in Victoria. The state association is only two years old, but has grown from zero to 420 members since September 2020, with most of that growth in the past year. In Victoria, the Bellarine Peninsula and the bayside suburbs are the big growth areas. Nationally, the Gold Coast is the home of pickleball, with nearly 2000 registered members.
This year promises to be a year of rapid growth as the sport attracts increasing media coverage and has enough competitive players to sustain regular tournaments. The Victorian Open will be held at the Somerville Recreation Centre in March, and the Australian Pickleball Championships will be played in Sydney in October.
David Wassell, who handles promotion and sponsorship for Pickleball Victoria and also imports pickleball equipment, says the burgeoning sport is now starting to host major events regularly.
“Two-and-a-half years ago, there were no tournaments,” he says.
“Now there’s probably a tournament of some sort almost every month this year going on somewhere in Australia.
“It’s word of mouth more than anything. And it’s a bit addictive.”
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