Please email your comments and suggestions to
infoseattlemetropickleball.com
Meadowbrook Pickleball and Tennis Courts
Resurfacing
Introduction
This document presents the Seattle Metro Pickleball Association's
recommendations for establishing equitable tennis and pickleball
court lines on the Meadowbrook pickleball and tennis courts in Seattle.
Recommendations
1. Create 20 Pickleball Courts
The space is large enough to accommodate 20 regulation-size pickleball courts.
Limiting the number of pickleball courts to 12 would be a poor allocation of resources.
On the picture below, slide the blue dot towards the left to compare the recommended 20-court layout
to the Seattle Parks Department's proposed 12-court layout.
2. Include A Waiting Area Inside Each Fenced Enclosure
Pickleball players need a space to congregate and socialize while waiting for a game.
The Meadowbrook courts are comprised of two sets of tennis courts, each in their own fenced enclosure.
We recommend allocating space for a waiting area in each enclosure.
3. Adopt Independent Lines
Overlapping lines create confusion.
We recommend adopting a pickleball court layout that doesn't have any pickleball lines overlapping with tennis lines.
4. Adopt Contrasting Line Colors
We recommend any of the following color schemes:
Tennis lines: white
Pickleball lines: orange
Court area: blue
OR
Tennis lines: white
Pickleball lines: red
Court area: green
Both options use traditional colors for the tennis court and tennis lines.
They also provide good contrast across all colors.
The first option provides the best contrast between the (blue) court color and the (yellow) tennis and pickleball balls.
A court construction specialist should recommend the exact color shades to provide suitable contrast for play.
On the image below, slide the blue dot from right to left to compare the two recommended color schemes.
5. Adopt Blended Line Intersections
We recommend the adoption of blended line intersections for the most egalitarian treatment of all sports.
If painting blended line intersections is not feasible, we recommend the adoption of crossover line intersections.
Since many more pickleball players than tennis players will be using these courts,
and since tennis players do have the option of playing at over one hundred courts in Seattle alone
lined exclusively for tennis, we recommend that the pickleball lines be painted on top.
6. Adopt an Age Friendly Surface
We recommend the use of a cushioned surface to help protect the knees of older players.
The city's current court resurfacing budget might not allow for a cushioned surface.
If that is the case, we ask that Seattle Park and Recreation allow the pickleball and tennis player community
to raise the appropriate funds to add a cushioned layer common to modern court construction.
When you introduce pickleball in a new area, it is reasonable to try out options on a small scale. Space optimization is not the
main concern early on. For example, a pickleball pilot project might feature a few courts in different configurations.
One early option might be to add pickleball lines to a single tennis court that can also be used as a single pickleball court,
as is the case at the Observatory Courts
in Queen Anne.
Another option is to put two pickleball courts per tennis court as was done at the Walt Hundley courts in West Seattle.
A successful pilot program will demonstrate that pickleball is a sport with a strong social component.
Unlike tennis, pickleball players like to play where they know they will find many other players.
Full-fledged program
At the conclusion of a pilot program, resulting in city support for pickleball as any other sport,
it is important to recognize that creating many pickleball courts in a single location is essential
to the development of a pickleball community.
In a full-fledged pickleball program, it makes little sense to paint lines for a single pickleball court on a single tennis court
when you can easily fit two or four pickleball courts in that space. Many tennis complexes fit six to eight
pickleball courts on a double tennis court, ten to twelve pickleball courts on a triple tennis court,
and twelve to sixteen pickleball courts on a quadruple tennis court.
The value of space optimization
You wouldn't paint lines for two tennis courts when there is room for three courts.
Why paint lines for two pickleball courts when there is room for three or four?
Seattle and Seattle Parks face a strong and increasing demand for pickleball courts.
Optimizing the existing hard surface courts makes the best possible use of the available space.
Best practices to optimize use of available space
Space-use optimization when adding pickleball lines to existing tennis courts is more of an art than a science.
The general ideas underlying it are to:
Put in as many courts as possible within the existing court configuration.
Design for the total play areas not just the court area and leave room behind the baselines and outside of the sidelines.
Be flexible with the space on the side of the courts when designing courts for recreational play.
The basic facts and principles underlying effective space optimization are well-documented by 60-plus years of court development.
"The recommended minimum playing surface area measures 30 feet wide and 60 feet long."
When using standard measurements, four pickleball courts fit perfectly on a typical tennis court.
The tennis play area is sometimes not a rectangle.
Courts are sometimes designed as rectangle with the corners cut off at a angle, with no standard way of cutting the corners.
For recreational play, tennis courts are sometimes squeezed together.
Although each court is supposed to have 10 feet of extra space on each side,
two tennis courts laid side-by-side sometimes have only 10 to 12 feet between them instead of 20.
Similarly, pickleball courts laid side-by-side might be squeezed together and have less than 10 feet between them.
Note that this squeezing applies to the width of the play area but not its length.
Safety and playability for pickleball dictate a minimum of 8 feet of space behind pickleball baselines.
"Courts shall be laid out with the long axis north and south;
however, geographic considerations may modify this orientation
in order to minimize the adverse effect of serving into the sun."
Similar adverse effects of the sun position holds for pickleball, even though it sometimes may seem practical to orient pickleball
courts east to west to fit into a less-than-optimal space.
To experience play on a pickleball court oriented east-to-west, visit the pickleball courts at the
International School
in Bellevue, WA, on a sunny evening.
When a court is protected from the rising and setting sun by a hill, a tall building,
or tall and dense vegetation, using an east to west orientation might be suitable.
Include waiting areas
Why a waiting area?
When people decide to go play tennis, they commonly arrange a twosome or foursome to convene at a specific time and location to play.
While some pickleball players use the same process to organize games,
pickleball play is often much more convivial and fluid. During open play, pickleball players may come and go over several hours.
Many more pickleball players might congregate than there are available spots to play. Each game lasts 15 to 20 minutes. When a game ends, the players involved
rotate out, and some of the players who were waiting rotate in. If there are 10 courts going at the same time, a new game starts every few minutes.
One waiting area or two?
The larger the number of people with whom you interact,
the more likely you will find people with whom you enjoy playing.
Therefore, it is preferable to have one larger waiting area
that can accommodate everyone rather than two smaller waiting areas than will only hold half as many people.
The ideal solution: One waiting area, walking around
The ideal is to have a way to get from a single waiting area to any court without having to walk through other courts.
The drawing below illustrates this concept. The black and red lines represent how people move between the waiting area and their court
without having to walk across any other courts.
A practical solution: two fenced enclosures, each one with a waiting area
When courts are divided by separate fenced enclosures, there is ideally a single waiting area outside the court enclosures.
When impractical to have a single area outside the fenced enclosures, each fenced enclosure should have its own waiting area inside the enclosure.
How many people will be waiting?
In our experience, at the peak play times, there will be up to one-and-a-half times as many people waiting as
there are people playing pickleball. That means with twenty pickleball courts, there will be 80 people playing and up to
120 people waiting to play.
More ▽
Once there are more people waiting than playing, people spend more time on the sidelines than playing.
This is pretty much the maximum number of players that outdoor courts will accommodate gracefully, but allowances need to be made for age, stamina,
and how long people have already played earlier in the day. For instance, older or less-fit players might be very happy to
have rest periods between games, while younger or more physically fit players might prefer to keep playing for hours at a time.
Some people like spending half a day at the courts and might not mind a longer wait between games. When there is a large crowd of people waiting to play,
people who prefer a quick turnaround between games might still hang out, hoping that the crowd will thin.
When there are one-and-a-half times as many people waiting as playing, people are more inclined to find another place to play, or forgo playing altogether.
Avoid court-line overlap
What we mean by "overlapping" lines
This document distinguishes crossing lines from overlapping lines.
The following two squares have crossing lines.
Crossing lines are unavoidable on multi-sport courts.
The following two squares have overlapping lines.
Unsurprisingly, it's both possible and beneficial to design multi-sport courts that minimize the number of overlapping lines.
Why overlapping lines matter
When there are two overlapping court lines, one line is viewed as being on top of the other.
Here the yellow line is on top.
Here the red line is on top.
Imagine you have to play a game that requires that you to stand in the red square and not step out of bounds.
You can pick any of the following four courts. Which one is your favorite? Which one is your least favorite?
The one with the red square on the bottom?
The one with the red square on top?
The one where neither square is on top?
The one where the squares do not overlap?
The case against overlapping lines
Overlapping lines create confusion because they require that players quickly determine which lines are relevant and which are not.
The more complex the overlap design is— involving partial lines, extended lines, and irrelevant lines, —
the more confusing it is. Imagine playing a sport on that confusing array of lines.
Take a look at existing multi-sport athletic fields as an example.
These three Magnuson Park multi-sport fields are designed to have almost no line overlap.
The Garfield High School multi-sport field is designed to have almost no line overlap.
All of these fields were designed to have very few overlapping lines across various sports to
limit the line confusion across all sports and
put all sports on an equal footing.
Shared pickleball and tennis courts with overlapping lines creates confusion.
Flatly, the sport that ends up with its lines on top gets privileged treatment over the other.
The privileged sports' players can focus on their line color and ignore the other colors.
Whichever sports ends up with its lines on the bottom gets shortchanged.
Its players have to sort out which lines of the "other" color are relevant and which ones are not, on the fly, in the midst of a fast game.
Designs for multi-sport courts can and should avoid privileging a particular sport.
The following video shows two tennis courts with lines painted for six pickleball courts.
The drone images clearly show all of them from above at the 00:15-second mark.
Notice that pickleball courts on the top and bottom of the screen share a sideline with a tennis court.
The pickleball courts in the middle do not share any lines with any tennis court.
For players on the top or bottom pickleball courts, most of the pickleball court lines are black,
except for a sideline which is partially white. Pickleball players must ignore most of the white lines, except for that one side line.
A fast-paced game requires the players to remember which lines are relevant and which ones are not.
In the same video, at the 1:00-minute mark, there is a pickleball player serving a ball.
That person and their partner then make their way to what they think is the pickleball non-volley line. However, they mistakenly stop
at a white tennis line that is located about two feet from the non-volley line. That particular white line should be ignored for pickleball.
This becomes a perfect example of the confusion created by the blended court design where some of the white lines
are included in the play, and others are to be ignored.
Had the layout design moved the top and bottom pickleball courts a foot towards the middle courts,
there would no longer be any line overlap with the tennis courts. Such a minor design change would greatly help
pickleball players who could then ignore all white lines because their courts would be made exclusively
of black lines. And it's hard to see how this simple change would inconvenience tennis players.
Not incidentally, the the pickleball rules clearly state that
all court lines should be of the same color, a rule that should steer us away from shared tennis court lines.
The case for overlapping lines
When pickleball lines are first added to tennis courts, tennis players are often concerned that the pickleball lines
will interfere with tennis play. They ask to see as few pickleball lines as possible.
This means that they ask for tennis lines overlapping pickleball lines.
Too often this means that tennis players have court lines all in one color, while pickleball players have to
contend with pickleball court lines partially made of tennis lines.
Tennis players have the luxury to ignore all pickleball lines.
Pickleball players, however, must figure out which tennis lines are in play and which are not.
Moreover, different pickleball courts in the same location, or even two sides of the same pickleball court
can end up having different line color patterns.
All the confusion of lines is unnecessary. Were the courts laid out so that tennis and pickleball lines never overlap, then all players can
completely ignore the other sport's lines.
To promote tennis amongst younger children, the
United States Tennis Association
has developed the
"10 and Under Tennis" tennis format
which uses smaller courts, smaller rackets and slower balls.
In doing so, they allowed for lines for the smaller courts to be painted on existing regular tennis courts
using "blended" lines.
All three tennis rule books specify that blended lines should be
"within the same colour family as the background playing surface."
"Currently, courts with permanent blended lines and standard line markings
are authorized for professional play by the ITF for both Men's and Women's $15,000 and $25,000 events."
and
"However, ITF Women's $60,000, $80,000 and $100,000, as well as ATP Challengers,
are not allowed to have blended lines. Courts with permanent blended lines may be used as practice courts only at these events."
"All lines should be [...] of the same color, clearly contrasting with the color of the playing surface."
Line color selection
How to select pickleball and tennis court line colors
Are you going to host professional tennis matches?
↓
↓ Yes
↓ No
Check with the sanctioning professional tennis organizations
↓
Are you going to host tennis matches sanctioned by a tennis organization?
↓
↓ Yes
↓ No
Check with the sanctioning organization. Most likely,
you will not be able to create a true multi-sport court:
You will have to use white tennis lines and blended pickleball lines.
Avoid overlapping lines.
↓
Use tennis and pickleball line colors that are clearly contrasting with the color of the playing surface.
For instance:
paint the court surface green
paint the tennis lines white
paint the pickleball lines red or yellow
Avoid overlapping lines.
How to select pickleball and tennis court line colors in Seattle
Tennis courts that will not see USTA-sanctioned play do not need to strictly follow USTA color guidelines and
can use player-friendly contrasting colors for pickleball lines.
Are you going to host professional tennis matches?
↓
↓ Yes
↓ No
Check with the sanctioning professional tennis organizations
↓
Are you going to host tennis matches sanctioned by a tennis organization?
At the Amy Yee Tennis Center and Lower Woodland Park
Check with the sanctioning organization. Most likely,
you will not be able to create a true multi-sport court:
You will have to use white tennis lines and blended pickleball lines.
Avoid overlapping lines.
↓
Everywhere but at the Amy Yee Tennis Center and Lower Woodland Park
Use tennis and pickleball line colors that are clearly contrasting with the color of the playing surface.
For instance:
paint the court surface green
paint the tennis lines white
paint the pickleball lines red or yellow
Avoid overlapping lines.
Is there really no other solution?
If a facility is unlikely to be hosting sanctioned professional tennis tournaments, there is room to be creative.
You could for instance consider adopting a coloring scheme similar to what was done
at the Bobby Riggs Tennis Center around 2015 as shown
in this video
at the 2:58 mark.
Below is an alternate option that emphasizes the tennis courts while using pickleball lines of a single color.
Optimize line intersections
Line intersection options
Good: Accommodating
This is the option often used when adding pickleball lines to tennis courts that need to be able to host
sanctioned tennis matches. The sanctioning's tennis organization's rulebook lays out exact specifications.
This option communicates that tennis is the primary sport and yet accommodates pickleball players.
Better: Crossover
This option favors one sport over the other.
This is a perfectly good option if the red lines will be used a lot more often than the yellow ones.
This is what is done on Seattle multi-sport athletic fields.
Best: Blended
When fair treatment of everyone is important, blending the line intersections is the perfect option.
"Age Friendly Seattle supports parks and other green spaces [...]
that can be used and enjoyed by people of all ages and abilities."
and
"Age Friendly Seattle supports learning, fitness,
social, cultural, and spiritual activities for older adults as well as intergenerational
activities that are accessible, affordable, safe, and fun."
and
"Goal 5.4: Create opportunities for intergenerational activities [...] and other
programs."
Age-friendly pickleball courts
Anyone who plays a court sport might find their knees don't do well when playing extensively on very hard surfaces, and this is exacerbated by age for some players.
Fortunately, the sports court industry has developed a method to apply a layer of cushioned rubber between the
cement or asphalt base and the top layer of paint.
Since pickleball is one of very few intergenerational physical activities
that can be used and enjoyed by people of all ages and abilities,
it makes sense to incorporate a cushioned surface when resurfacing courts.
Current State of Affairs
What's going on?
The Seattle Parks and Recreation Department plans to resurface the Meadowbrook Tennis Courts
located on the Meadowbrook Playfield, next to the Nathan Hale High School, not far from the Meadowbrook Community Center.
What does Meadowbrook look like right now?
Two sets of three side-by-side tennis courts. Each set is enclosed in a fenced area.
Seattle Parks' current plan
The current plan calls for lines for 12 pickleball courts
All Seattle double and triple tennis courts that have been made to accommodate pickleball lines until now (August 2020) have
followed the same pattern with one pickleball court on each side of each tennis net. The Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) Department
has not provided an official proposed layout, although it is likely to look like the drawing that follows.
More ▽
Keep in mind that the plan is for "lines for 12 pickleball courts,"
which is not quite the same as "12 pickleball courts." Pickleball players will likely have to continue to bring temporary pickleball nets.
Each year, Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) resurfaces a few outdoor tennis, basketball and pickleball courts.
The yearly budget is usually $100,000, although it seems to have been reduced to $75,000 for 2020 and
could be reduced further due to upcoming reductions to the City's budget related to Covid-19 losses in revenue.
The Meadowbrook resurfacing project will be funded by that budget.
Anything other than resurfacing, such as creating a waiting area outside of the
courts or providing semipermanent nets, is outside the scope of this SPR project.
Pros and Cons ▽
Pros
Even with 12 courts, there is plenty of space on the sides for pickleball players to congregate while waiting for a turn to play.
Cons
Limiting the number of pickleball courts to 12 is a poor allocation of resources, as the Meadowbrook court space is large enough to
accommodate 20 regulation-size pickleball courts. A 20-court solution can accommodate in the same space
67% more pickleball players than Seattle Park and Recreation's 12-court solution.
Limiting the number of pickleball courts to 12 artificially limits the size of the pickleball community that can form at this location.
The Meadowbrook tennis courts are large enough to accommodate 20 regulation size pickleball play areas.
On the picture below, slide the blue dot towards the left to compare this 20-court layout
to the Seattle Park and Recreation Department's current plan for 12 pickleball courts.
More ▽
The total play area is about 155 feet by 240 feet.
The official
pickleball rule book,
rule 2.A.3 says:
"The recommended minimum playing surface area measures 30 feet wide and 60 feet long."
Using USA Pickleball guidelines, the Meadowbrook court play area is large enough to accommodate 20 pickleball courts.
Waiting area
If there were no need for a
"waiting area" inside the fence, this would be a pretty good layout.
In the case of the Meadowbrook courts, there is not enough room for a waiting area outside the courts.
On the west side, the courts border a community garden that would be compromised by a waiting crowd.
On the east side, the courts border a baseball field.
The south side is wooded, elevated and not accessible.
Only the north side could conceivably be used as a waiting area, but that area would be too far from the
southernmost courts.
More ▽
A waiting area is a place where people who are waiting for a turn to play can congregate.
At the busiest time there can be more people waiting for a turn to play than people actually playing.
A waiting area is also a place where players might securely leave their pickleball bag while they are playing.
Pros and Cons ▽
Pros
No space wasted on a waiting area inside the courts.
Not suitable if a waiting area is needed inside the courts
Many lines
20 courts, waiting area included
20 courts with space for a waiting area on the right
Courts
The space between pickleball court sidelines varies from 9 feet to 9.75 feet.
Having variable spacing between the pickleball courts avoids having overlapping pickleball and tennis lines.
Toggle the "Display Rulers" switch beneath the drawing to see the most relevant measurements.
Waiting area
This layout provides for a waiting area inside the fence.
Players who are waiting for a turn to play typically congregate on one side of the court
to socialize and coordinate order of play. Therefore, having a single larger waiting area on one side of the enclosure
is preferable to having a smaller area on each side.
More ▽
A waiting area is a place where people who are waiting for a turn to play can congregate.
At the busiest time there can be more people waiting for a turn to play than people actually playing.
A waiting area is also a place where players might securely leave their pickleball bag while they are playing.
On the picture below, slide the blue dot towards the left to compare this design to the previous one.
Pros and Cons ▽
Pros
Maximizes the number of pickleball courts.
A 20-court solution accommodates 66% more pickleball players than
Seattle Park and Recreation's current 12-court plan
Includes waiting area inside the fence for people to congregate while waiting for a chance to play.
Reduces space between adjacent pickleball courts slightly compared to the previous
solution
Many lines
20 courts, fewer lines, more confusion
Here is a 20-court layout with way fewer lines
This layout might look more pleasant to the eye when viewed from above because there are fewer lines
than in the previous layouts.
However, during a game the court might have lines of one color and some lines of the other color.
When focusing on the action, it's not always easy to remember which lines are relevant and which ones are not.
At issue is not just that a court is made of two different color lines.
A player will have on their court some lines of a specific color that are part of the court markings, and some other lines of that same color that are not part of the court markings. Confusing, eh?
Also, relevant lines will vary from court to court and from one side of a pickleball court to the other side of the same pickleball court.
On the image below, slide the blue dot towards the left to compare a pickleball-on-top design to
a tennis-on-top design. The line segments highlighted in green will switch color as you slide the blue dot.
More ▽
When the blue dot is on the right, the pickleball courts are entirely made of blue lines,
while the tennis courts are made of a mix of blue and red lines.
This means that pickleball players can focus on the blue lines and ignore the red lines.
Tennis players have to figure out which of the blue lines are relevant and which are not.
When the blue dot is on the left, the situation is reversed.
The tennis courts are entirely made of red lines, while the pickleball courts are made of a mix of blue and red lines.
This means that tennis players can focus on the red lines and ignore the blue lines.
Pickleball players have to figure out which of the red lines are relevant and which are not.
Toggle the "Highlight Line Overlaps" switch beneath the drawing to turn the highlights on and off.
The lines are slightly thicker in this drawing to help you better see the difference between red and blue lines.
Pros and Cons ▽
Pros
No space wasted on a waiting area inside the courts
Fewer lines than in a no-overlap design
Cons
Not suitable if a waiting area is needed on the courts
The Seattle Park and Recreation Department gets some of its revenue by
renting outdoor tennis courts to schools and to private individuals.
Seattle Park and Recreation needs to keep this rental revenue stream.
All tennis courts that were lined for pickleball during Seattle Park and Recreation's 2017
Pickleball Pilot Project
have lines for two pickleball courts with one pickleball court on each side of the tennis net.
When people want to rent one pickleball court, the Seattle Park and Recreation Department
rents them a tennis court with two pickleball courts.
Preserving the income stream
Most of the court layouts considered in this document do not have two pickleball courts on each tennis court.
How can the Seattle Park and Recreation Department accommodate renting pickleball courts
without having to redesign its current rental operation and without losing revenue?
The solution is simple: Designate a pair of pickleball courts to correspond to each tennis court.
Some pickleball courts won't be able to get rented, but that should not be an issue.
A practical example
Let's review the Meadowbrook layout currently planned by the Seattle Park and Recreation Department.
Tennis courts are labeled 1 to 6.
Pairs of pickleball courts are labeled A through F.
With this layout Seattle Park and Recreation is planning to offer the following six rental items.
Tennis court 1 or pickleball courts A
Tennis court 2 or pickleball courts B
Tennis court 3 or pickleball courts C
Tennis court 4 or pickleball courts D
Tennis court 5 or pickleball courts E
Tennis court 6 or pickleball courts F
Let's now consider the court layout recommended in this document,
to make sure that the Seattle Park and Recreation Department's revenue stream continues unabated
and makes sense for pickleball court rental.
Tennis courts are again labeled 1 to 6.
Pairs of pickleball courts are labeled A through J.
Seattle Park and Recreation could easily offer the following six rental items.
Tennis court 1 or pickleball courts A
Tennis court 2 or pickleball courts C
Tennis court 3 or pickleball courts E
Tennis court 4 or pickleball courts F
Tennis court 5 or pickleball courts H
Tennis court 6 or pickleball courts J
Pickleball courts labeled B, D, G and I would not be available for rental.
Since both layouts allow Seattle Park and Recreation to rent the same number of courts, from a revenue generation perspective
this recommended layout compares favorably to the Seattle Park and Recreation Department's currently planned layout.
The recommended layout actually offers a better opportunity for revenue when
one considers the opportunity to rent all the pickleball courts at once for special events such as pickleball tournaments.
In that case, Seattle Park and Recreation would be able to charge rental fees for 20 pickleball courts with the recommended layout instead of 12 courts with the original layout.
Summary
This document presents the recommendations
of the Seattle Metro Pickleball Association
for establishing equitable tennis and pickleball court lines on the Meadowbrook pickleball and tennis courts in Seattle.
When people decide to go play tennis, they commonly arrange a twosome or foursome to convene at a specific time and location to play.
