Cheddar News correspondent Shannon LaNier hits the courts to try his hand at America's fastest-growing sport, pickleball. 

Cheddar News correspondent Shannon LaNier hits the courts to try his hand at America's fastest-growing sport, pickleball.&nbsp;

Wake Up With Cheddar

Why Pickleball Is Different Than Tennis 

Welcome back everyone. So it seems everywhere you go, people are talking about pickleball. Is it tennis? Is it badmin? I don't know our very own channel and here investigates it. Yes. What is the all about Shannon? Good morning. It's a different paddle. I see. Oh my gosh, this is, yeah, I know. Pick a ball is the latest craze. Everyone is talking about it. They're trying to figure out how do we do it? Where do we do it? Well, don't worry, we got you covered this morning. Look where I am. How beautiful is this? We are in the heart of New York City at Central park. Now behind me, this is Woman Rink. You usually know this as a place where everybody comes ice skating. Right? Well, look at this. It has been transformed into City Pickle and City Pickle is just gigantic court. This is actually the largest pickleball court in the northeast. So I want to bring in the co-founders of this amazing place, Mary and Erica to tell us a little bit more about how this all came to be. Thank you so much for joining us, ladies waking up early for us. But first you gotta start off by telling us what is pickleball because people are still trying to figure it out. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, a lot of New Yorkers haven't, haven't had a chance to play pickleball yet, so we hope they'll come and join us. But pickleball is like, if tennis ping pong and badminton had a baby that makes sense. And this is the paddle that they use right and show us the ball, the ball, it's a whiffle ball. So it's very light and it bounces very differently than a tennis ball. So that's something that people get used to very quickly when they play. But it's a little bit different and it's the growing craze right now. Over 10,000 pickle ball courts have been opened up recently and they say it's the fastest growing sport in America. So why do you think it's being so far used? And why so many people love playing it because it's so much fun. Shannon, it's easy to play. It's for everybody. Whether you are an elite athlete or this is the first time you've picked up a paddle, you're going to have a great time within 10 minutes. Yeah. My kids love playing. They're like, they just picked up so easy because the tennis ball goes everywhere and this, the ball, it's a ball. It's a little bit easier to control. So, talk to us about this concept city Pickle. How did you guys come up with this? Well, Mary and I both independently learned how to play pickle ball outside of New York during COVID and loved it so much. We came back to New York wanting to continue to play and found out that it was pretty difficult to do that here. And so we founded City Pickle to solve for that and to bring the joy and community of pickle ball to New Yorks and Mary. I mean, what better place today in the heart of New York City? How did this come to be? Right. The zoo is right over there in front of us. You have the city right behind us right here on. What is this, the southeast corner of the park? You know, minutes from multiple subways, it's so easy to get. And so what's some advice you would give to people if they were looking to get into the sport just to come down, get on our website city dash pickle dot com or download our app and we have something for everybody. Shannon, if you have never played before, we have beginner clinics, you can take a lesson, you can rent a court, you know, whatever sort of suits your needs. We have that programming for you and you got to talk to me about your background real quick because you said you played tennis, you played pick a ball. But were you entrepreneurs before you came up with this whole business concept? No, this is our first business um, we've actually been friends for over a decade and we are tennis partners. Um, and this is something that we started just out of a desire to bring this to, to New Yorkers. My background is in public health. So this is a pretty different chapter for me, but it matches with a desire for wellness, uh, and, and just activity. So from the corporate world to the pickle ball court, we're gonna learn how to play, pick a ball a little bit more closely. We're gonna get on the court. Right. They're gonna teach me some moves, some skills because I'm sure I'm playing it wrong and we're gonna get out there and have some fun. So that's back out here at live in about 30 minutes. You don't want to miss that. I'll see you guys soon.