Turning a tennis court into pickleball courts, properly

Since 2020, the most common sentence on my voicemail has been some version of "we have two tennis courts nobody uses and forty people who want to play pickleball." The conversion is not complicated, but it is not a paint job either, and the owners who treat it as one are the ones who call back in two years. Here is what it actually involves, in the order the decisions get made.

First decision: two courts or four

A tennis pad is 120 by 60 feet. USA Pickleball's court is 20 by 44, and the playing area it recommends around that is 30 by 60 at a minimum, 34 by 64 for tournaments. Four pickleball courts fit on the tennis pad at the 30 by 60 minimum, two on each side of where the tennis net was, with their nets running across the pad. Two courts fit with generous room, one each side of the tennis net line, which can stay. Four serves twice the players; two plays better, is quieter, and keeps a tennis option alive. Most parks choose four. Most clubs choose two. The site walk is where we draw both on the actual court.

Second decision: dedicated, or blended

Dedicated means the tennis lines go, the tennis net comes out, each pickleball court gets its own permanent net on posts in concrete, and the courts are fenced or railed from each other. Blended means the tennis lines stay, the pickleball lines go on in a second color, and the nets are portable. Blended is cheap and keeps the tennis; dedicated is what the players want and what a busy park needs. I wrote about how blended lines are done so they do not confuse anyone.

The surface comes first

This is where the paint-job thinking goes wrong. A conversion is a resurfacing with a different set of lines on top. If the tennis court is cracked, the cracks have to be bridged before anything, because a pickleball kitchen line painted across a working crack is a kitchen line with a crack through it by spring. If the court has birdbaths, they are leveled; a puddle in a kitchen is a court nobody books. Then the acrylic resurfacer, then two color coats. An owner who skips this and has the lines painted on the old surface gets a court that looks converted and plays like the old one, and resurfaces it anyway in two years with the lines redone.

Nets and footings

For four dedicated courts, eight net posts go into concrete footings, which have to be dug, poured and cured before the surface goes on. Pickleball nets are 36 inches at the sidelines and 34 at the center, two inches lower than a tennis net at the center, and the posts are 22 feet apart. For two courts with the tennis net kept, the pickleball posts go in sleeves beside it, or the nets are portable. The footings are the reason a four-court conversion takes two weeks rather than one.

Color

Two colors: one inside the pickleball lines, a different one outside, so the kitchen line reads from the baseline and the courts read as courts rather than as a tennis court with extra lines. On a four-court layout the surround color also marks where one court ends and the next begins. Lighter colors on the surround run cooler, which matters on a pad that now has four games on it and no shade.

Fence, rails, gates

The tennis fence stays. Between the pairs of courts, a 4-foot rail or fence keeps balls on their own court; a bank of four with nothing between them is a bank of four interruptions. Gates where the players actually walk in, not where the tennis gate happened to be. Benches outside the rails for the people waiting, and there will be people waiting.

Noise

A pickleball paddle is louder and higher than a tennis racket, and the sound carries further than people expect. Before the conversion, look at where the nearest houses are and what is between. Acoustic panels hung on the fence facing them take a useful amount off; so does siting the courts at the far end of the pad. I wrote a separate article on pickleball noise, and it is worth reading before the neighbors write to the council.

What it costs

A blended-line job on a sound court is the cheapest option by far: a wash, the layout, the lines. A full four-court conversion is a resurfacing plus eight footings, nets, rails and a second color, and it is still a fraction of building four new courts, because the base, the fence and the drainage already exist. The service page has the steps.

How long

A week for blended lines or a two-court conversion with the tennis net kept. Two weeks for four dedicated courts, most of it waiting for footings and coats to cure. The season is May to mid October, and conversions book early; a club that decides in March plays pickleball in June.