This "Strategic Framework" is part of Seattle Parks' 2021-2022 Outdoor Pickleball Study.

The short- and mid-term approaches consider existing tennis courts as public resources built and managed with public funds, and as such belonging to all residents. It is the Parks Department's duty to allocate this resource wisely, while considering both past use and current demand.

What is planned

The following table shows which specific sites are slated for short- and mid-term improvements.

In addition, the study recommends adding lights to the courts located at Green Lake Park East and Magnolia Playfield.

What Actually Happened

Three of the proposed sites were striped for pickleball in 2022. Those sites were already slated for such work when the study was published. They are highlighted in green in the table above.

As of June 2025, not a single one of the other recommended improvements had taken place. This includes over 40 sets of pickleball court lines that were never drawn on existing tennis courts, as well as a few old tennis sites that were supposed to be converted to pickleball but never were. All those proposed but unrealized changes are highlighted in red in the table above.

As for adding court lights on existing courts as recommended by its own study, Seattle Parks has made no progress on that front either.

Why would USTA consider pickleball to be a critical issue? Most likely because both private and public tennis facilities all over the country are lowering their tennis court inventory by:

1. adding pickleball lines to existing tennis courts, and
2. converting existing tennis courts to dedicated pickleball courts

It is telling that while USTA claims to have the support of "court builders and park professionals" for its guidance, it is unable to claim the support of any pickleball organization.

While this document talks "about having equitable offerings for both tennis and pickleball", its guidance is unequivocally steering Parks departments towards keeping tennis courts for tennis players. And if tennis courts have to be shared with pickleball players, it recommends that they be tennis courts first and foremost.

As for the specific options recommended, here is how they apply to Seattle.

• Building brand new pickleball-only courts is of course the ideal solution. While this is well and good in theory, Seattle Parks, like most urban Parks departments, does not have the financial resources necessary to create enough brand new dedicated pickleball courts to meet the existing or projected demand in a meaningful timeframe.
• Creating courts on non-traditional spaces was thoroughly examined by Seattle Parks around 2018, and no suitable locations were found.
• Seattle Parks followed the USTA guidelines of using "tone on tone" line color for adding pickleball lines on existing tennis courts when it first started adding pickleball court lines in 2017. The pickleball lines were very difficult to see under many conditions. Seattle Parks subsequently moved to a slightly more contrasting color scheme that still is far from optimal. Recently, Seattle Parks has started a "pilot" program where it uses high contrast pickleball lines on very specific tennis courts.

• USTA Statement of Guidance - Update, February 2023
• Pickleball lines that we can see, Retrieved June 25, 2025.

In January 2023, USTA recognized pickleball as a a critical issue. By March 2023, it is already reviewing a "multipronged approach" to "combat the effects of pickleball". Some of the root causes listed here are (1) the fact that some tennis courts are being used for pickleball, and (2) the fact that tennis coaches are getting certified to teach pickleball as evidenced by the Professional Tennis Registry (PTR) that now includes "5,000 certified pickleball pofessionals."

As of early June 2023, Seattle Parks still fully intended to follow up on its 2022 recommendation of adding pickleball court lines to some of its existing tennis-only courts, including Solstice and Meadowbrook.

In March 2023, the USTA board of Directors considered a "multipronged approach" to "combat" the "effects of pickleball". In June 2023, they talk about arming, protecting, and defending. USTA is preparing to wage a covert war against pickleball.

The USTA talks about defending "tennis-related investments". Whose investments are those? The Seattle Parks' tennis courts were funded by public money. They are a community resource belonging to all Seattle residents.

The USTA plans to wage war on two fronts:

1. Position itself as an ally to Parks Departments (and other tennis facilities) and convince them to protect tennis courts.
2. Arm tennis advocates to protect against pickleball.

Influencing public Parks Departments is crucial since

"[..] parks have traditionally been the epicenter of tennis in the United States. In fact, 70 percent of all tennis is played at public facilities, either free or for very little cost"

according to the National Recreation and Parks Association.

The USTA realizes that pickleball not only affects the availability of public and private tennis courts but it is also a threat to USTA's own existence: About 90% of USTA's revenue comes from the US Open tennis tournament. Tennis players and stakeholders embracing pickleball threatens that revenue stream.

The USTA sees itself competing with pickleball for new players. It recognizes that young pickleball players are unlikely to transition from pickleball to tennis. It therefore wants to ensure that young players start by playing tennis rather than pickleball.

While this might be a fine objective for the USTA, is it suitable for Parks Departments across the nation to adopt it as well? Should they partner with associations whose goals might be at odds with those of their residents?

In Seattle, most public outdoor pickleball courts are shared with tennis players and fall under the purview of Seattle Parks' Amy Yee Tennis Center. Those pickleball courts shared with tennis players are therefore subjected to the USTA's assessment.

What is the likelihood that the USTA, a TENNIS association evaluating a TENNIS program, is going to make recommendations that are going to fairly treat pickleball players using dual-used tennis courts?

What is the likelihood that the USTA, a tennis association that views tennis courts as needing to be defended and protected from pickleball players, is going to make recommendations that are going to fairly treat pickleball players?

The ten lighted Lower Woodland tennis courts see very little use during the evenings between October and March. The six Green Lake pickleball courts see heavy use every evening, but since they don't have any lights, play cannot proceed past sunset.

To illustrate this point, the video below shows the busy Green Lake Pickleball courts right before sunset at 4:30pm on January 14, 2024, followed by the near empty Lower Woodland tennis courts a minute later.

No creditable pickleball group has ever proposed that half of the Lower Woodland Park courts should be lined for pickleball. Yet that disinformation was used to gather signatures opposing a made up proposal.

Pickleball players have been asking for access to two of the existing ten lighted Lower Woodland pickleball courts during the evenings from October to March, but that would in no way take court time away from tennis players: Tennis is only rarely played on, at most, two or three of the ten lighted courts on winter evenings.

In June, the USTA set the goals to protect court spaces in Parks and Recs, defend tennis-related investments, and arm advocates to protect against pickleball. This petition certainly looks like the USTA is setting its machinery in motion to achieve those goals.

Seattle Parks plans for the "immediate" conversion of a few shared or underutilized tennis courts into dedicated pickleball courts. It identifies six candidate locations and is confident that it can deliver on three of them before the end of the year.

Unfortunately, Seattle Parks will end up not converting any of those six courts during that summer or the following one. As of June 2025, a third summer is upon us and no progress has yet been made.

What happened? How did SPR go from "immediate tennis court conversion" to no conversion at all? Could it be that the USTA "saved" those courts from being converted?

In 2023, Pickleball saw a 51.8% annual increase in participation according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA). Yet, Seattle Parks created no new pickleball courts.

In 2024, Pickleball saw a 45.8% annual increase in participation according to the SFIA. Once again, Seattle Parks created no new pickleball courts.

There is every reason to believe that pickleball participation continues to increase at a rapid pace in 2025, yet Seattle Parks seems to be poised to create no new pickleball courts during the course of the year.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is running for re-election, facing seven challengers in the August 5, 2025, primary, with the top two advancing to the November 4 general election. Your voice can and should be heard.

While Seattle Parks may have plans to create dedicated pickleball courts, Rachel Schulkin stresses that Seattle Parks is planning to add pickleball lines to more existing tennis courts so they can be used for both tennis and pickleball. She explains that just like Seattle’s athletic fields are shared by soccer, frisbee, football, and lacrosse, Seattle's sport courts should be shared too, so everyone has a chance to play.

Imagine what would happen if each sport's national governing body required that amateur games be played on fields dedicated to their own sport. Sports with smaller followings or seasonal dips could see their fields sit empty while others scramble for space. Emerging and fast-growing sports like ultimate frisbee would struggle to find a foothold as they would be denied access to existing fields.

Solstice Park is located in West Seattle and has six tennis courts with lights. According to Seattle Parks' own data, these courts have modest tennis usage.

West Seattle tennis players have access to 11 lighted courts in three West Seattle locations, 2 of which are shared with pickleball players. West Seattle pickleball players have access to four lighted pickleball courts, all of which are shared with tennis players.

Adding pickleball lines to three of the six Solstice Park tennis courts would provide a new location for pickleball evening play. It would also more than double the number of lighted pickleball courts that are shared with tennis players.

A Single Orchestrated Campaign

Starting August 14 and then over several days, about sixty tennis players email Seattle Parks to let them know their thoughts on sharing "their" courts with pickleball players. Since most of those emails are sent to all or most of the recipients listed on the fake Seattle Parks flyer posted on the courts, they are likely all part of a single orchestrated campaign.

It seems very unlikely that they would be a direct response to Seattle Parks' August 3^rd announcement of its plan to add pickleball lines to three of the six Solstice pickleball courts or to the August 10^th news article posted on the subject by the West Seattle blog.

Pickleball Players Yet Again Excluded From the Process

This orchestrated campaign is a potent weapon in the arms of the tennis players, because pickleball players are largely unaware of its existence and fail to counter it by getting their own voices heard.

Who Is Behind the Campaign?

Is the United States Tennis Association (USTA) linked to this campaign? So far, we have no proof one way or the other. But this campaign certainly aligns with the USTA's stated goal to "arm [tennis] advocates to protect against pickleball."

Seattle Parks was in possession of a preliminary version of the USTA's Seattle Park Agency Tennis Assessment and was aware of USTA's recommendations as of August 30 or before.

While we don't officially know who the person being looped in is, it is likely he is the same Dan Eder who was at the time the mayor's policy director and happens to be a solid tennis player.
This raises a few questions. Was Dan Eder asked to review the USTA recommendations in his capacity as the mayor's policy director? If so, did he approve these recommendations even though they call for removing lines for 38 planned and existing pickleball courts and even though the mayor had publicly said a few weeks earlier that Seattle needs more pickleball courts?
If Seattle Parks' superintendent looped Dan Eder into the USTA assessment as a private citizen, it would be interesting to know how many pickleball players the superintendent looped in as well. So far, we don't know of any.

Timeline

USTA Scores

USTA made it abundantly clear in their recommendations to SPR that they did not want to have pickleball court lines painted on any of the six Solstice Park tennis courts, or at any tennis location with three or more courts.

This decision by SPR is music to USTA's ears.

Ivory Tower Decisions

Pickleball players and their local organization were never consulted.

Pickleball players never got a chance to point out that trading 6 lighted shared courts for 6 unlighted dedicated courts was not necessarily an even trade when the demand for lighted pickleball courts is so much higher than the supply.

Constituent Engagement Shmengagement

This announcement was sent to 64 people advocating for tennis. It was not sent to a single a pickleball advocate, not even to the Seattle Metro Pickleball Association. Pickleball players found out about this through the local press.

Unkept Promises

Seattle Parks announced that it was going to quickly create six unlighted dedicated pickleball courts at nearby Lincoln Park. That project was soon abandoned.

USTA Recommends Removing Lines for 38 Planned and Existing Pickleball Courts

The implications of these recommendations for Seattle pickleball players are staggering.

Clearly, adding lines for six pickleball courts on three of the six Solstice Park tennis courts as SPR had planned to do would violate these recommendations.

And if Seattle Parks were to follow those recommendations, they would also erase pickleball court lines from the Bitter Lake (8), East Green Lake (8), Magnolia Playfield (8), and Rainier Beach sites (8), as those courts get resurfaced over the years.

Meanwhile 50% of the Sites are Underutilized

Here is another shocker: USTA wants to get rid of pickleball lines on tennis courts, but at the same time points out that "50% of sites might be underutilized".

Seattle Parks has about 92 tennis courts dedicated to tennis and an additional 44 tennis courts col-lined for pickleball.

In 2023, 17 tennis-only courts were resurfaced, as well as 2 tennis courts that have pickleball lines.
In 2024, all the tennis courts that were resurfaced were tennis-only courts. No tennis court with pickleball lines were resurfaced.
As for 2025, the court resurfacing plan of record as of June once again includes no court with pickleball court lines.

Why is Seattle Parks inviting the USTA to help guide the prioritization and selection of which tennis and pickleball courts should be resurfaced? Is it any surprise that such guidance is leading to recommendations that blatantly favor tennis players over pickleball players? Why hasn't Seattle Parks invited the Seattle Metro Pickleball Association to the planning table? How is this equitable?

Could it be that having USTA consult with your city's Park department introduces bias in favor of tennis?

USTA's Fingerprints Are All Over This Decision

We already know that the United States Tennis Association (USTA) was deeply concerned about the loss of tennis real estate as expressed in their March 2, 2023, Board meeting.

This decision by Seattle Parks to stop turning (underused) tennis courts into tennis courts shared with pickleball is exactly what USTA wanted all along.

We also know that USTA wanted:

• to combat the effects of pickleball , and
• to position itself as a trusted advisor to parks departments to protect against pickleball which it did when it conducted a "Park Agency Tennis Assessment" of Seattle Parks' Tennis Program during the summer of 2023.

Is it pure coincidence that this decision, made after a whole summer-long lobbying effort by USTA, is just what USTA was hoping for?

The Pickleball-Side of the Story

Who among the "roomful of SPR staff" briefing the superintendent was there to report the pickleball side of the story? Most likely, no one. Seattle Parks has a history of making major decisions affecting pickleball players without having any pickleball players present when the decision is made. Somehow tennis players' representation is always assured.

How Much Friction?

When occasionally friction occurs, some people complain. When no friction occurs, nobody notices. Where there are people there will always be friction. To justify this decision as being due to friction between tennis and pickleball players, Seattle Parks should have made an effort to find out what proportion of all interactions result in friction, but they didn't.

Friction by Design

Seattle Parks' court design policies and court usage rules were created to maximize tennis court rental revenue. They were not created to minimize friction nor to maximize the use of the courts by as many people as possible.

It is by design that tennis and pickleball players have to play side-by-side, even though it upsets the more serious tennis players, and it makes poor use of the available real estate as far as pickleball courts are concerned. Seattle Parks could have decided to design dedicated hours for each sport. Or, it could have decided to give pickleball priority on the shared courts since there are usually many tennis-only courts nearby any Seattle shared court, but there are rarely any alternate pickleball courts within reasonable distance.

It is by design that the tennis players are allowed to reserve or claim one of the tennis courts that have pickleball lines on them, even if there are plenty of empty tennis-only courts nearby.

It is by design that Seattle Parks' public indoor pickleball court-usage rules require equitable sharing of the courts through open play, while its public outdoor pickleball court rules hinder equitable sharing of the courts through open play.

Separate But Unequal

Until now, Seattle Parks' only answer to pickleball's growth had been to add pickleball lines to mostly underused tennis courts. This decision to stop adding pickleball court lines to additional tennis courts means that there will be extremely few if any new public places to play pickleball in Seattle in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile the number of pickleball players keeps growing at a vertiginous rate.

According to the Washington State Recreation and Conservation office there were already about as many pickleball players as tennis players in Seattle/King County in 2022. Since then, the number of local pickleball players is bound to have largely surpassed the number of tennis players. Yet, Seattle Parks by all measures keeps blatantly favoring tennis over pickleball.

Hiding Policy Changes for the Greater Good

Shouldn't public policy changes be made public?

If so, through which public channel was this radical policy change announced? None to our knowledge.

You too, Consultants?

You may have noticed that two of the email recipients are part of Broadview Planning, a "consulting firm specializing in community planning and public engagement services that promote health, sustainability, and equity" who believes that "there is always a better way to connect with stakeholders".

Are the consultants hired by the Seattle Parks Department neutral parties or are they also biased in favor of tennis?

Six months after recommending (1) that Seattle Parks stop adding pickleball court lines on existing pickleball courts, (2) that Seattle Parks remove pickleball court lines painted at any location that has 3 or more tennis courts, and (3) that Seattle Parks refrain from converting any underutilized tennis courts into dedicated pickleball courts, the USTA keeps up the pressure to make sure at least some of its recommendations are being implemented.

The Seattle Parks superintendent has every right to speak at the USTA annual meeting. The Seattle pickleball players have every right to question whether the superintendent can treat them fairly while also having a cozy relationship with the one organization that considers pickleball a "critical issue" and has developed strategies to "combat" it.

Nationwide Impact

Obviously, USTA did not save 600 tennis courts in Seattle alone. This was a nationwide effort.

At the National Recreation and Parks Association annual conference in October 2024, the USTA reported that it has completed eleven Park Agency Tennis Assessments, and had a few more in progress. It lists the following cities under "recently completed assessments:"

• Dallas, TX
• Columbus, GA
• Chattanooga, TN
• Moore, OK

Seattle Impact

Count among those 600 impacted or saved courts:

• Seattle's three Solstice Park tennis courts that were slated to be shared with pickleball, but no longer are.
• A few other Seattle tennis courts that could have been graced with pickleball lines to keep up with demand but are now reserved exclusively for tennis as Seattle Parks abandoned its short-term goal of adding pickleball lines to existing tennis courts .
• The few neglected tennis courts that Seattle Parks had considered converting to pickleball in the mid-term.

• Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Directors of the United States Tennis Association Incorporated, April 10 and 11, 2024.
• 2024 National Recreation and Parks Association Annual Conference picture posted by USTA's Todd Carlson on LinkedIn

Is this just a way to cement the tennis community's hold on what the USTA deemed to be their "top scoring" sites?

Is this SPR signaling to the tennis community that it will continue to offer them undue privilege?

Is this a meaningless act or is it absolutely necessary because SPR needs a way to justify their refusal to allow pickleball players to access two of the ten Lower Woodland tennis courts during winter evenings? They have justified blocking pickleball players from this valuable public resource by stating that the USTA will not sanction tournaments at Lower Woodland Park if these courts are also lined for pickleball. This assertion turns out to be false.

We know that before this conference the United States Tennis Association (USTA) had

• Deemed pickleball to be a critical issue,
• Declared that it wanted to combat the effects of pickleball,
• Identified strategic priorities to both protect and grow [tennis] court space in Parks and Recs,
• Wanted to become "a trusted partner for facilities and communities."

Could the USTA, under the guise of educating participants on the "Best Practices for Implementing Racquet and Paddle Sports", actually be pushing its anti-pickleball agenda?

The December 2024 issue of Parks and Recreation Magazine, summarizing the session reports that the session's group of featured panelists, which included Seattle Parks superintendent A.P. Diaz, "spoke strongly in support of the USTA Park Agency Tennis Assessment Tool which aims to produce personalized recommendations and actionable deliverables for park agencies to improve the delivery of tennis in their community."

We know that USTA used its Park Agency Tennis Assessment to recommend removing lines from 38 existing and planned Seattle public pickleball outdoor courts. Seattle Parks Superintendent AP Diaz taking an active role in this session should be disturbing to Seattle pickleball players who are counting on Seattle Parks to fairly allocate public resources to both tennis and pickleball.