If you are looking to play pickleball with your friends without joining a league or someone else’s open play, you have quite a few options. Here are/the steps you can organize pickleball play with your friends:
Step 1: Find some friends
If you want to organize your own pickleball play, you will need players to join your game. This can be your actual friends, people you play with, or random strangers. Obviously having three (or more) friends who are willing to show up is going to be the easiest way to organize a friendly open play.
But you can also consider:
- During your next league sessions or open play, ask for the contact information of people you enjoy playing with.
- Keep a list of players who will regularly show up to open play.
- Use online forums to ask for players who would be interested in open play pickleball.
Step 2: Find a pickleball court
To play pickleball, you will need to find a court. With the growing population of the sport, there are so many towns and cities across the world with at least one pickleball facility, if not more.
Here are some great options for finding a pickleball court near you:
- Public courts: These are normally first-come, first-served, so plan to show up to reserve your court.
- Private courts: Many private facilities will allow rentals, usually in two-hour increments. While this won’t be free like public courts, you will be assured to stay on your court or your entire rental time.
- Private homes with courts: Companies like Swimply will allow private homeowners to rent out their swimming pools and pickleball courts. This is a great option if you want to organize a private pickleball game with friends.
Find pickleball courts near you.
Step 3: Schedule your play & rotation
Previously, scheduling your open play pickleball was the most complicated part of this process. You would have to remember which friends are at what level, call them, remember who was going to show up, and organize a schedule and rotation. During the game, you would also have to keep re-assigning rotations and keeping score (sometimes, by paper).
With the PlayMore app, you can:
- Look up friends in the app.
- Invite the friends who fit your particular game (age ranges, rating level, etc.).
- View who has accepted and who has declined.
- Organize your games, including scheduling and rotations.
- Types of pickleball play in the PlayMore app include:
- Round robin.
- King of the court (coming soon).
- Challenge courts (coming soon).
- 4 on/4 off (coming soon).
- And more!
- Keep score.
- The app will tell you how to move players up and down for the next game, depending upon your type of pickleball play chosen.
Download the PlayMore app and start planning pickleball with your friends.