Players high-fiving after a community session

Pillar 03: Fun

Fun.

Nobody improves at a sport they dread turning up to. Fun is not the soft pillar — it is the one that keeps you on court often enough for the other three to work.

See what's on this week The community

The building blocks

What we teach.

Rotating doubles, so you play with four or five different people in a night
Mixed-level rotations that put newer players on court with better ones on purpose
Club nights and socials — pickleball first, then everyone stands around talking about it
Mixers and themed nights that break up the same-four-people habit
How to run a friendly game: calling lines honestly, paddle taps, keeping the queue moving
The culture we insist on — nobody is made to feel new, nobody is made to feel slow

The progression

How we build it.

You are playing within ten minutes

No drills queue on a social night. Five minutes on serve, kitchen line and scoring, then you are in a real game.

Rotations, not cliques

Partners and courts rotate on a system. It is the single biggest reason new players come back.

Somebody is always looking after the room

There is a host on every session whose job is to make sure nobody is standing on the side wondering what to do.

It carries on off court

The WhatsApp group is where the pickup games actually get organised. Members get the link.

The programme

Games and formats we run.

Fun is a programme, not an accident. These are the games we use to keep a session moving, mix the levels up and send everyone home wanting the next one. Steal them for your own club night.

Six games worth running

Skinny singles

Accuracy and patience with nowhere to hide

Set-up: One half of the court only, diagonal or straight, one player each side.
Reps: First to 11, win by 2. Loser rotates off.
Coaching point: The court is narrow, so shot selection matters more than power. Great leveller between a strong and a weaker player.

Dink to eleven

Soft game under real scoring pressure

Set-up: Full doubles, but any ball hit above shoulder height loses the point.
Reps: Game to 11.
Coaching point: Watch how quickly people discover cross-court is the safe dink and down-the-line is the risky one.

Champ court

Rotation that keeps every court competitive

Set-up: Four courts, court one is the champ court. Winners move up, losers move down.
Reps: Games to 7, rotate on the horn every seven minutes.
Coaching point: Split the winning pair when they move up. It stops one dominant partnership sitting on court one all night.

Blind-draw doubles

Mixing levels and meeting people

Set-up: Everyone's name in a hat, redrawn every round.
Reps: Four rounds of 12 minutes, running score per player.
Coaching point: The best format for a new player's first night — they get three different partners who all say hello.

Target buckets

A skills game for the last ten minutes

Set-up: Buckets in the kitchen and at the baseline corners.
Reps: Five serves and five third-shot drops each. Highest score buys the coffees.
Coaching point: Competition makes people concentrate on technique in a way that a plain drill never will.

Around the world

A warm-up that gets everyone laughing

Set-up: Everyone lines up behind the baselines, hit and run to the back of the other line.
Reps: Lose a life on an error, three lives each.
Coaching point: Run it first thing. It gets bodies warm and breaks up the cliques before the real games start.

Run-sheet templates

Club social night — 90 minutes

A mixed-level open night

10–10 min: around the world warm-up, names and hellos.
210–20 min: dink to eleven, fixed pairs.
320–70 min: blind-draw doubles, four rounds, rotate every 12 minutes.
470–85 min: champ court for whoever wants it, target buckets for whoever doesn't.
585–90 min: notices, next week's session, everyone off court together.