The U.S. Open Pickleball Championships is an annual pickleball tournament that has been held since 2016 at the East Naples Community Park in Naples, Florida. [1] Its sixth and most recent event in 2022 featured 35,000 attendees and 3,000 players competing over the course of seven days. [2] The competition consists of five pro-level championships: men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles. [1] Other non-professional tournaments at the event are categorized by age and/or skill level [3] with participants chosen based on a lottery system. [4] It is considered the largest event for the sport of pickleball. [5]
The U.S. Open Pickleball Championships were founded by Terri Graham and Chris Evon through their sports development firm, Spirit Promotions. [6] The first event was held in 2016 with around 800 participants and 2,000 spectators. [2] Since the tournament's inception, portions of it have been televised by CBS Sports Network, [6] typically on tape delay. The men's and women's doubles championships have been broadcast live by the network for both the 2021 and 2022 editions. [1] The event's current sponsors include Minto and Margaritaville. [5]
The US Open Tennis Championships, commonly called the US Open, is a hardcourt tennis tournament held annually in Queens, New York. Since 1987, the US Open has been chronologically the fourth and final Grand Slam tournament of the year. The other three, in chronological order, are the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. The US Open starts on the last Monday of August and continues for two weeks, with the middle weekend coinciding with the US Labor Day holiday. The tournament is one of the oldest tennis championships in the world, originally known as the U.S. National Championships, for which men's singles and men's doubles were first played in August 1881. It is the only Grand Slam that was not affected by cancellation due to World War I and World War II, nor interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. All the players participating should be at least fourteen (14) years old.
The Championships, commonly known as Wimbledon, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is widely regarded as the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London, since 1877 and is played on outdoor grass courts, with retractable roofs over the two main courts since 2019.
The Australian Open is a tennis tournament held annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The tournament is the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events held each year, preceding the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. The Australian Open starts in the middle of January and continues for two weeks coinciding with the Australia Day holiday. It features men's and women's singles; men's, women's and mixed doubles; junior's championships; and wheelchair, legends and exhibition events. Until 1987, it was played on grass courts, but since then three types of hardcourt surfaces have been used: green-coloured Rebound Ace up to 2007 and blue Plexicushion from 2008 to 2019. Since 2020, it has been played on blue GreenSet.
The French Open, also known as Roland-Garros, is a major tennis tournament held over two weeks at the Stade Roland Garros in Paris, France, beginning in late May each year. The tournament and venue are named after the French aviator Roland Garros. The French Open is the premier clay court championship in the world and the only Grand Slam tournament currently held on this surface. It is chronologically the second of the four annual Grand Slam tournaments, occurring after the Australian Open and before Wimbledon and the US Open. Until 1975, the French Open was the only major tournament not played on grass. Between the seven rounds needed for a championship, the clay surface characteristics, and the best-of-five-set men's singles matches, the French Open is widely regarded as the most physically demanding tournament in tennis.
Serena Jameka Williams is an American former professional tennis player. Widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, she was ranked world No.1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for 319 weeks, including a joint-record 186 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-end No.1 five times. She won 23 Grand Slam women's singles titles, the most in the Open Era, and the second-most of all time. She is the only player to accomplish a Career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles.
The Grand Slam in tennis is the achievement of winning all four major championships in one discipline in a calendar year. In doubles, a Grand Slam may be achieved as a team or as an individual with different partners. Winning all four major championships consecutively but not within the same calendar year is referred to as a "non-calendar-year Grand Slam", while winning the four majors at any point during the course of a career is known as a "Career Grand Slam".
John Patrick McEnroe Jr. is an American former professional tennis player known for his shot-making and volleying skills, his rivalries with Björn Borg and Jimmy Connors, and his confrontational on-court behavior, which frequently landed him in trouble with umpires and tennis authorities.
Pickleball is a racket or paddle sport in which two players (singles) or four players (doubles) use a paddle to hit a perforated, hollow plastic ball over a 34-inch-high (0.86 m) net until one side is unable to return the ball or commits a rule infraction. Pickleball is played indoors and outdoors. It was invented in 1965 as a children's backyard game in the United States, on Bainbridge Island in Washington state. In 2022, pickleball was named the official state sport of Washington.
Sports in the United States are an important part of the nation's culture. Historically, the national sport has been baseball. However, in more recent decades, American football has been the most popular sport in terms of broadcast viewership audience. Basketball has grown into the mainstream American sports scene since the 1980s, with ice hockey and soccer doing the same around the turn of the 21st century.
In the United States, sports are televised on various broadcast networks, national and specialty sports cable channels, and regional sports networks. U.S. sports rights are estimated to be worth a total of $22.42 billion in 2019, about 44 percent of the total worldwide sports media market. U.S. networks are willing to pay a significant amount of money for television sports contracts because it attracts large amounts of viewership; live sport broadcasts accounted for 44 of the 50 list of most watched television broadcasts in the United States in 2016.
US Squash is the national governing body for the sport of squash in the United States. Previously called The United States Squash Racquets Association, it is headquartered in New York City and is a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee. US Squash owns and licenses the U.S. Open, the North American Open, and all other U.S. championships.
Alice Luthy Tym, née Alice Luthy, is a former American college and amateur tennis player who was ranked No. 13 in the world in the mid-1960s. She later became a college tennis coach, tennis writer and university instructor. She as inducted into the Tennessee Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013.
Jack Sock is an American pickleball player and former professional tennis player. He won four career singles titles and 17 doubles titles on the ATP Tour, and had career-high tennis rankings of world No. 8 in singles and world No. 2 in doubles.
Daniel de la Rosa is a Mexican racquetball and pickleball player. De La Rosa is the current International Racquetball Federation (IRF) World Champion in Men's doubles, winning the title in 2022 in his home city of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. He's won 12 times on the International Racquetball Tour (IRT), including the 2021 US Open. De La Rosa is the first Mexican player to win the US Open, and he was the second Mexican player to win an IRT Tier 1 event.
Noah Rubin is an American professional tennis player. He is a former Wimbledon junior singles champion, and a former USTA junior national champion in both singles and doubles. After turning pro in 2015, he won four ATP Challenger titles.
Benjamin Ellingham Johns is an American professional pickleball player. He is ranked No. 1 in the world for mixed doubles, No. 2 for Singles, and No. 1 in the world for Men's Doubles by the Pro Pickleball Association. (PPA)
The All India Pickleball Association (AIPA) is the governing body of Pickleball in India. It functions as a nonprofit organization, providing support to other national and local pickleball organizations, and it organized the Amateur Pickleball Federation, India as its executive body to conduct pickleball tournaments in India. Established by Mr. Sunil Valavalkar in 2008, in 2015 the AIPA became a founding member of the International Federation of Pickleball (IFP) where Valavalkar serves as Vice President.
The International Federation of Pickleball (IFP) was created to act as the world governing body for the sport of pickleball. The IFP was founded in 2010 by the USA Pickleball Association (USAPA), now USA Pickleball (USAP). The IFP is a nonprofit organization that focuses its resources on providing support to national and local pickleball organizations.
Simone Jardim is a Brazilian-American professional pickleball player. Jardim was ranked the number one woman player in the world from 2016 to 2020. She won the US Open women's singles four consecutive times and is a two-time triple crown winner of the US Open Pickleball championships, winning in singles, women's doubles and mixed doubles in 2017 and 2018. As of 2021, Jardim holds the record for most women's Pro Pickleball Association titles with 32. Jardim is a former All-American collegiate tennis player and was the head tennis coach at Michigan State University from 2009 to 2016.
Rick Witsken is a former American tennis player and pickleball player, tennis coach, and entrepreneur. He is the founder of Team Witsken and co-founder of the National Pickleball League (NPL).