Picklers Jeremy Soh, Jeovanne Poernomo Share Love of the Sport to Singaporeans with Performance Pickleball

Love is a catalyst unlike no other. It makes you do things—grand, great things to show it, to share it.

Tennis players-turned-picklers Jeremy “Jem” Soh and Jeovanne “Jeo” Poernomo know this, and it’s not just because they’re a lovely couple. It’s also because their love for pickleball inspired them to open up Performance Pickleball, Singapore’s first and only indoor-sheltered pickleball facility.

This love started innocuously enough, with Jem and Jeo looking for ways to get their moms up and about and be active again. Pickleball proved to be a natural fit for this purpose—and so began the couple’s love affair with the sport. That love grew so big and so fast that it inspired Jem and Jeo to share the sport to as many people as possible.

“We were previously tennis players and professional tennis coaches, and we actually saw pickleball as a means to get our moms back into sport because our moms haven’t been active for a while,” Jem told Pickleball News Asia (PNA) in an exclusive interview. “We saw pickleball as a great avenue for them to start getting active again, start exercising. And after having had them play for a couple of months and having ourselves travel to play tournaments and competitions, we realised that we wanted to share this love and passion for pickleball with the rest of Singapore. That’s when we sparked the idea for Performance Pickleball.”

It turns out, Performance Pickleball is what the pickleball community in Singapore needed.

Performance Pickleball: The Pickleball Facility Singapore Deserves

The Lion City has a growing community of picklers, as is the case with its Southeast Asian neighbours and pretty much the entire Asian continent. Unfortunately, Singapore’s picklers have largely had to play in makeshift or adapted courts, with badminton courts repurposed into pickleball playing areas. Jem and Jeo took note of this predicament and decided it just wasn’t good enough for this burgeoning pickleball community. It deserves more. It deserves better. It deserves Performance Pickleball.

“So, it was really a means of trying to build something that didn’t exist in Singapore, which was an indoor sheltered facility,” Jem explain as to why he and Jeo established Performance Pickleball. “Everything in Singapore tends to be either makeshift courts or adapted badminton courts, but nothing truly dedicated to pickleball with this indoor sheltered setup.”

Performance Pickleball changed all that, bringing to Singapore a facility that offers world-class coaching for everyone—novices are most welcome, as are professionals and everyone in-between—who’s into pickleball. Performance Pickleball also boasts two professionally surfaced hardcourt that, according to Jem, uses the same surface as the Southeast Asia ATP and WTA Tour for tennis. Picklers can also sit, chill, and watch more pickleball in a cozy lounge, either after playing or while waiting for their turn.

And, of course, what’s a sports facility without a shop, right? Performance Pickleball has one, too, and it even comes with a demo program so that visitors can explore the brands available and, ultimately, “make a confident purchase when it comes to pickleball.”

Then again, why does it matter to have a pickleball facility with dedicated pickleball courts anyway?

For one, playing on a dedicated court enhances gameplay by eliminating the confusion that comes with adapted courts having one too many lines as compared to an actual, dedicated pickleball court. This alone is a game-changer, according to Jem, and convince players to take the sport more seriously.  

“Playing on a professional court that is dedicated to pickleball can really change the game, especially for many players who have yet to understand the nuances and the spacing on the court. You can get very confused seeing many lines on the court. That’s the case when you run up to the kitchen line and you’re like, oh my gosh, where do I stop?” Jem pointed out. “It’s very hard for someone to calibrate and understand why they should be playing on a professional dedicated court until they actually do. When you start playing on a court, then you realise that people who come suddenly get a little bit more serious. They start to take the game a lot more seriously because you have that environment that you’ve provided them with.”

Overcoming Singapore’s Lack of Space Problem to Grow a Growing Community

That professional-grade environment is a massive upgrade from the usual adapted badminton courts or makeshift playing areas many Singaporean picklers have been used to—in part because space in Singapore is hard to come by compared to, say, Malaysia and its vast expanse, which makes building dedicated pickleball courts easier and cheaper, according to Jem. Things are a lot different in the city-state, where the lack of space means land use is often scrutinised, complicating plans to build any type of sporting facility, pickleball or otherwise.

Jem and Jeo knew about these challenges. And yet they went ahead and built Performance Pickleball. Remember love? It just makes you do grand, great things.

Today, Performance Pickleball is the epicenter of pickleball growth in Singapore, having “shook the ground” so to speak and getting more people to take the sport more seriously. Jem and his fiancée expect that growth to keep up, with the SMU varsity coach noting how pickleball demand in Singapore “is still huge and growing” as more people are starting to learn a lot more about the sport.

This growing pickleball community only amplifies the role of dedicated facilities like Performance Pickleball as a kind of support system that can elevate the pickleball playing experience of Singapore’s picklers—and potentially make them fall in love with the sport even more.

“It’s just a matter of how it’s going to grow and whether we have the infrastructure to support this growth. If we continue to play on adaptive badminton courts, then eventually we’re going to run out of courts and we’re going to run out of supply because badminton players still play badminton, right?” Jem pointed out. “And it’s going to be tough to compete for court space and for court time. So, hopefully in a matter of years, we’ll see a couple more facilities coming up, a couple more people stepping up with initiatives to help grow the sport, not just as a community, but in terms of the physical space as well.”

Jem and Jeo have stepped up, all right, and they are hoping others like them—picklers madly in love with the sport—would do the same to help build an even bigger and better pickleball community in Singapore.

Know more about Performance Pickleball, schedule playing dates, submit inquiries, or book training sessions by checking out their official website on https://www.performancepickleball.org/, following them on Instagram on https://www.instagram.com/performancepickleball.sg/, or joining their WhatsApp channel here. Walk-ins are also welcome, but sessions depend on court availability.