Serious question about pro pickleball vs pro tennis

[atatu]

Let's say someone set up a challenge like this, the best pickleball player in the world against someone like Monfils or Novak. Play 21 points of tennis, then play 21 points of pickleball. What would the score be ? I'm going to say Monfils or Novak wins 20/21 of the tennis points, but how many points would they win in pickleball ?

 

[tennytive]

The best pickleball players are for the most part ex tennis players, so I think they might score more points than you suggest. On the flip side, it would be interesting to see if either pro tennis player could return Morgan Evans pickleball serve. I know Agassi and Roddick are past their tennis primes, but they played at a 3.5 banger level in some exhibition match against relative nobodies recently, so I'm not sure Novak or Monfils, great athletes that they are, would fare that well against a McGuffin or Johns. Give Monfils and Novak a month of PB practice against pro level PB players and I might be inclined to agree with you.

 

[Mongolmike]

Depends. As has been suggested, did the pro pickler have previous tennis experience vs a pro tennis player who never pickled? That doesn't seem like a fair comparison.

You'd need to pair similar levels of experience across the alternate discipline. Pro pickle with no tennis background vs pro tennis with no pickle in his pocket. Or pros with 2 hours of practice.

If this is the case, you know you don't need to be a pro level tennis player to crush a newbie tennis player. Your average 3.0 pusher should blank a newbie with 2 hours of lesson.

On the other side, a pro tennis player, with thier level of athleticism, give 2 hours of pickle practice....they should still lose badly, but I think they would get some points.

It's been said before, the biggest appeal of PB is the short learning curve. 10 minutes of practice and a decent athlete can play with most any group of rec PB player. 10 hours of tennis lessons and a decent athlete is still gonna get crushed by an average 3.0

 

[atatu]

The best pickleball players are for the most part ex tennis players, so I think they might score more points than you suggest. On the flip side, it would be interesting to see if either pro tennis player could return Morgan Evans pickleball serve. I know Agassi and Roddick are past their tennis primes, but they played at a 3.5 banger level in some exhibition match against relative nobodies recently, so I'm not sure Novak or Monfils, great athletes that they are, would fare that well against a McGuffin or Johns. Give Monfils and Novak a month of PB practice against pro level PB players and I might be inclined to agree with you.

It's true the best pb players are former tennis players, but for example Ben Johns quit tennis at 17, do you really think a good junior player who didn't even play D1 could get more than one point against Novak ? Also you know the story about Monfils beating the best paddle tennis player in the world right ? I seriously doubt Roddick plays PB at the 3.5 level, I have only played twice and was competitive with 4.5 guys.

 

[FlamingCheeto]

"pro pickballer" is an oxymoron as any 5.0 or above tennis player could compete at the highest levels of pickleball super easy barely an inconvenience, but the best pickleball pros in the world would get double bageled by any atp top 100