There are a lot of rules in pickleball. Stay out of the kitchen when you volley. Serve underhand. Call the score before serving. But there is one rule every pickleball player eventually learns: “One more game” never means one more game. “One more game” means: One more unless we lose. Or: One more unless we win. Or: One more unless somebody else shows up and we can rotate partners. And occasionally: One more until somebody's spouse calls and asks where the hell they are. Nobody knows exactly how many games are contained within one more game. We only know the answer is almost never one. Pickleball stuff for pickleball people.

Spend enough time around pickleball players and eventually you'll realize we're speaking a language that makes absolutely no sense to everyone else. We dink. We play in the kitchen, but we're not allowed to volley there. We hit third-shot drops, even though nobody dropped anything. An Erne isn't a guy on the next court. An ATP has nothing to do with your retirement account. We stack, poach, lob, drive, and occasionally get pickled. And somehow, after playing for a while, all of this sounds perfectly normal. The real test comes when you're talking to a non-pickleball person and hear yourself say something like: “I tried to dink crosscourt, but he sped it up, so I reset it into the kitchen.” And they just stare at you. That's when you know you've become one of us. 😁 Pickleball stuff for pickleball people.

Pickleball has some strange terminology, but “the kitchen” might be the strangest. Officially, it’s the non-volley zone—the seven-foot area on each side of the net where you can't volley the ball while standing in it. But nobody wants to yell: “Get out of the non-volley zone!” So we call it the kitchen. Where did the name come from? There are several stories, but the most common explanation connects it to shuffleboard, where the “kitchen” is an area you definitely don't want to end up in. As pickleball developed, the nickname apparently came along for the ride. Whatever its origin, the name stuck. And now millions of otherwise normal adults spend several hours a week discussing things like: - Getting to the kitchen. - Staying out of the kitchen. - Controlling the kitchen. - Getting caught in the kitchen. None of which has anything to do with cooking. Pickleball is a strange game. That's probably why we like it. 😁 Pickleball stuff for pickleball people.