While Malaysia, Vietnam, India, and even the Philippines are being mentioned as among the candidates to be Asia’s pickleball epicentre, one country is quietly seeing the sport becoming more and more popular.
That country is Singapore.
Slowly but surely, pickleball is picking up steam in The Lion City, and Singaporean pickleball coach Wil Heng knows this more than anyone. Heng, in an interview with CNA, noted how finding a pickleball court has got harder now as compared to when he first got introduced to the sport in 2022. According to Heng, more players are simply playing pickleball these days, so much so that waiting lists for courts have got longer—to the point that Heng and his friends can barely rent a court.
“If there is one court to play, the ratio will be maybe 50 people fighting for (it),” said Heng, who has adjusted accordingly by choosing off-peak hours instead.
There seems to be enough data to back up Heng’s observation. According to a Sport Singapore (SportSG) spokesperson, there were fewer than 20 pickleball bookings each month at ActiveSG sport halls. Now, in just the first six months of 2025 alone, ActiveSG facilities saw nearly 8,000 bookings per month.
But there’s more. The People’s Association reported a 40 per cent increase in pickleball participation at an annual championship this year as compared to 2024, while the Singapore Pickleball Association (SPA) saw a fivefold increase in participants in the annual Pesta Sukan—424 in 2022 to 2,106 this year.
These numbers are indicative of pickleball’s incredible surge in popularity in Singapore, and it has somewhat surprised SPA president Lim Ee Kiong, who told CNA that he believed pickleball would take off in The Lion City because its barrier to entry was “very low.” However, he conceded that he thought pickleball’s growth “would probably be a little bit more manageable, and not so exponential.”
Pickleball’s Bumpy Ride So Far in Singapore
Unfortunately, it appears this exponential growth might also be causing problems for pickleball players in Singapore.
Aside from difficulties booking a pickleball court, Singapore’s picklers are sometimes also barred from using badminton courts in community centres to play pickleball. Other times, they need to book two courts to play pickleball. The rules, pickleball enthusiast Charlie Teo told CNA, vary from one community centre to the next, and this has resulted in him having occasional run-ins with staff.
“Some managers are pro-pickleball; no problem. Some people are not; then you have a lot of problems,” he said.
An alternative option is to book private courts instead. But it is also pricier. Courts at the Play! Pickle Academy, for instance, go between SGD $20 and SGD $35 per hour, while courts at Performance Pickleball are priced from SGD $32 to SGD $40 per hour. In contrast, Singapore citizens and permanent residents can rent a court in ActiveSG for SGD $3.50 to SGD $7.40 per hour. Badminton courts at community centres, on the other hand, cost between SGD $4 and SGD $16 per hour.
Another alternative for Singapore’s growing pickleball crowd is to play outside in public, multipurpose courts. Unfortunately, this option brings with it its own pressing issues. The first is the issue of use, as pickleball players often have to compete for playing rights with players of other sports, notably badminton and sepak takraw. In most cases, outdoor public courts are first-come-first-served, and this makes it all but impossible for pickleball groups to have fixed playing schedules.
The other notable issue with pickleball players playing in outdoor public courts is noise—and exacerbating the situation is the proximity of most public courts to residential estates like condominiums. This issue is actually well-documented, with several media outlets in Singapore running stories on people complaining about pickleball noise. In one instance, in fact, one condominium resident threw a palm-sized rock at pickleball players playing in a nearby public court.
In response, local authorities either limited access to public courts entirely or have adjusted playing hours. Some have instituted rules asking players to tone things down, effectively curbing the fun, cheerful spirit of pickleball in the process.
Needless to say, these issues have put pickleball players in Singapore in a pickle. They are passionate about the sport and want to play it. But circumstances are making it hard for them to do so. Yet they are still playing anyway—an indication that this passion for pickleball is burning as brightly as ever.
Why Pickleball’s Growth in Singapore Is Tied to Addressing Attendant Issues
Even so, it’s fair to wonder what pickleball’s future would be like if the aforementioned issues are not addressed adequately. Would that passion for pickleball die down gradually? Would the momentum the sport has picked up be stalled?
Then again, there’s reason for optimism. The SPA is lobbying for more court space, reaching out to town councils, condominium management, and other stakeholders for help. The group’s president, in particular, is calling for authorities to build more multipurpose halls but in public parks instead of near residential areas. This way, he said, noise will be contained outside living spaces. Actual players told CNA they want underutilised spaces like warehouses and old tennis courts to be repurposed into sporting facilities to give players more space to do their thing.
From the looks of it, these suggestions aren’t falling on deaf ears. The Singapore Land Authority already announced it will be spearheading the construction of a facility with at least eight pickleball courts in a state property at 179 Piccadilly in Seletar. A new pickleball court will also be built in Chua Chu Kang near an existing sports facility in the first quarter of next year.
So, it’s looking like there’s hope for pickleball to continue its exponential rise in Singapore, after all.
(This feature is based on the CNA article “Singapore’s pickleball boom brings growing pains” by Erin Liam and Matthew Mohan.)
