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According to its evangelists, pickleball is America’s fastest growing sport (it depends on how you measure). According to Architectural Digest, it’s the perfect amenity for new luxury real estate development (it might be). According to your grandmother, it’s blowing up at her retirement home (it definitely is). The last few years are probably the first time you’ve ever heard of the sport, if you have at all, and you may be wondering what is going on. 

Fear not, an avalanche of recent pickleball press can answer all of your questions. This year, The New York Times declared the sport “ready for prime time.” NPR bemoaned the mere 10,000 places to play across the country. Town and Country called it the “preferred sport of the one percent.” The New Yorker asked, “Can pickleball save America?”

Most of the recent articles on pickleball follow a predictable rubric, beginning by explaining how the game works: Players use composite or wooden paddles to whack a plastic ball back and forth over a short net until it bounces twice or out of bounds—like a game of ping-pong where you can stand on the table. Then, as if it follows naturally from the game’s simplicity, they trace the game’s meteoric rise in popularity, from invention in the ‘60s by a quirked-up Republican congressman to its rapid ascent to the mainstream over the last few years.

The only thing moving faster than this venture capital-backed gold rush are pickleball’s haters, of which there are many. No one wants to be told to like something, after all. To detractors like us, it’s a senior citizen’s idea of something youthful and hip—the Pete Buttigieg of sports, if you will. 

Once an improvised summertime driveway activity, pickleball has since transformed to a multi-million dollar revenue stream, with three different professional leagues vying for U.S. supremacy, two competing international leagues, three separate organizations claiming to be the sport’s official Hall of Fame (they combined forces recently), and countless manufacturers of merchandise, gear, media coverage, even pickleball-themed entertainment complexes. Today, you’re more likely to see pickleball in a promo video starring Bill Gates or on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than on the street in front of your neighbor’s house. With earned media across print and TV—and even a prominent feature in the reality show Vanderpump Rules— there is the overwhelming sense of something being marketed.

“That’s how kale took off in America: a good publicist. That’s all that's required sometimes,” says podcaster, brand consultant, and pickleball skeptic Chris Black. “As soon as corporations get involved, it gets talked about as a culture when it's not.”

Beyond the PR astroturfing, there are more concrete reasons to dislike pickleball. The most immediate, for anyone nearby, is its signature annoying sound: There’s no better symbol of this brash takeover than the pickleball’s thwack. (“Pickleball Noise Is Fueling Drama From Coast to Coast,” reports the L.A. Times). And because it is played at closer quarters and at lower intensity than other racket sports, there tends to be a lot of talking. In fact, to participate, it’s imperative to learn the sport’s unique terminology—"dinks" (a type of shot), the “kitchen” (a no-volley zone), “OPA” (a phrase to shout mid-point once volleying becomes legal). You may also hear the terms, “flapjack,” “dillball,” or “hand battles.” You simply must understand: this sport is fun and different—leave your stuffy tennis whites at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club.

Invariably, this media push presents pickleball against tennis: objectively less pretentious, easier to play, and more fun. Conversely, tennis is exceedingly difficult, looming with judgment and snobbery. Some strange alchemy of court-shrinkage and twee terminology has solved tennis’ issues, the story goes.

“The media bought it, and it’s overshadowing a very cool moment that tennis is having,” says Caitlin Thompson, co-founder of highbrow tennis magazine Racquet.

But even longstanding tennis media like Tennis Channel and Tennis Magazine have begun integrating pickleball content into their programming, choosing to broadcast the objectively duller sport. (Seriously, try watching some highlights.)

It’s not just tennis coverage being affected, but gameplay for casual players—many tennis courts have been chopped up, while others are colonized by guerilla pop-up nets and taped down lines. But while pickleball’s popularity is undeniable, it’s also overstated. According to the latest industry survey, the growth of new tennis players in the last two years is not only greater than the growth of all other racket sports combined, but new players outnumber the entire total of pickleballers nationwide. The idea that stuffy old tennis is dying while fresh democratic pickleball is taking over is simply untrue. If you need confirmation, just ask any tennis player who has woken up at the crack of dawn to suffer long lines for public court slots, or placed themselves on a one of many decade-long waiting lists for tennis club membership.

It’s not getting the same treatment as pickleball on Good Morning America, but tennis is cool right now. Red-hot fashion label Miu Miu is hosting court-side parties. New brands like Palmes are updating the on-court look, and Reigning Champ’s recently-released collaborations with Racquet Magazine and legacy tennis brand Prince build on a long history of fashion in the sport. A new crop of young pros are rising as legends are reaching the twilight of their career, and Netflix is set to release a Drive to Survive-style docuseries about the pro tour.

Court space and culture are not all that is lost in the battle between sports. There’s an inherent difference between pickleball’s instant gratification and the hard-won skills tennis requires. To author and recreational tennis player Marlowe Granados, the complexity of tennis lends itself to beauty. While playing tennis she says she focuses on “graceful movements"—something more difficult to achieve with the truncation of strokes and movement in pickleball, which Granados finds “brutish.” It’s also become a way to cultivate community. “Once I made it known I was playing, people reached out to me to arrange times who I wouldn’t have known were into tennis before,” Granados says. “Now, I feel I have a nice roster of friends who make it part of our weekly routine… it’s a lovely activity to do away from bars and going out.”

Black also finds a gap in sophistication between the games—“To me [pickleball’s] more of a hobby than a sport—it’s a fidget spinner that requires more work.”

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Different strokes for different folks—fidget spinners and flapjacks work for some people. But perhaps then pickleball is best classified alongside (admittedly very fun) trademarked games like Spikeball and Kan Jam rather than legacy sports. Cornhole might play on ESPN these days, but that doesn’t make it the new baseball.

Racket sports have seen similar fads before. Consider the rise and fall of racquetball, which boomed in the late ‘70s. Thompson, for one, projects this trajectory for pickleball. “I think a few people are going to get really rich and then it’ll get relegated to ‘remember when people talked about that extremely dorky thing.’”

Black agrees. “A lot of people will move on, but if there's money to be made, I guarantee there’s going to be corporations chasing this thing until they squeeze the last drop of blood out.”

If this is indeed how it plays out, there’s always tennis. Mastering the older sport might be a longer process, but the experience of continually deepening one’s relationship to such a timeless game might ultimately be more fulfilling and less expensive than flocking to each well-funded fad selling new gear and retrofitting old courts. Plus, who actually wants to learn fifteen puns on the word pickle to talk about your new hobby?

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