Making a better racket

PAP! Pop! Pip! – A lot of people are rude about pickleball, and the incessant noise of the paddle striking the plastic ball is a big part of it. I agree, it is particularly annoying when you’re trying to eat or work or play tennis on a neighbouring court.

However, it’s still fun, and I’ve accepted the position of Advisor to the Negri Sembi­lan Pickleball Association.

I often play at the Royal Sungei Ujong Club (RSUC), and having already visited a centre in Seremban 2 and another on the historic Bukit Putus (where the sounds of muskets was once heard), a bunch of us tried three centres in Nilai.

All were fantastic, but the last one, with an attached archery range, was located next door to Aunty Aini’s Garden Cafe (recently catapulted to fame again thanks to Uncle Roger rehabilitating a 2019 “wee-jio” of Gordon Ramsay visiting the restaurant) – so obviously, daging salai masak lomak cili api was the just reward of three cumulative hours of pickleball.

Aunty Aini promised she would try playing the game, and I’m hopeful that the mushrooming of courts almost everywhere will continue to encourage a healthy lifestyle among demographics who didn’t have a regular sport before this.

The other new racquet sport that has courts appearing all over the place is of course padel (which I first played with Malaysian diplomats in Rome before the first court opened here). Many tennis and squash players (including our former nine-year world number one squash queen Datuk Nicol David) have enthusiastically picked it up.

While pickleball has silly rules about not volleying in the “kitchen” (the boxed area at the net), padel has more rules to remember when the ball can hit the glass or cage (not like squash). And I’m convinced people just make up whether the ball hits the floor or glass first when it’s dubious.

Not all racquet players are as embracing.

Some tennis players are particularly possessive since – as alluded to above – pickleball courts are literally taking over tennis courts, and they deride the game to be not as a proper sport because it requires less athleticism.

Padel seems to have a more developed culture of competition – with there being so many regional tournaments – but still tennis players enjoy mocking padel players as being overly obsessed and too easily distracted, since the courts are often in places with loud music and food and beve­rage options.

And indeed, despite the rising popularity of the new sports, tennis remains deeply popular especially in the clubs, with intra- and inter-club tournaments attracting record numbers. I was pleased to help my team retain the trophy in my name at the RSUC, and hope to make it a double at the Royal Port Dickson Yacht Club soon.

In the meantime, the Negri Sembilan Lawn Tennis Association continues to nurture young talent and host competitions at the lovely courts at Rahang.

This year, the Negri Sembilan Squash Association has already hosted the two big tournaments attracting highly-ranked inter­national players – the PSNS President’s Trophy and the Tuanku Muhriz Trophy – but there are still more junior tournaments to be held at our courts in Seremban 2.

Indeed, whatever enjoyment I personally derive from playing pales in comparison to the joy of seeing our juniors develop so that they may bring glory to the state and maybe one day, bring home the Olympic gold for the nation.

Occasionally, we invite some of the juniors to join the Seri Menanti Irregulars – my father’s team whose home base is the Royal Seri Menanti Golf & Country Club. We stayed true to our name by failing to play in October (too much chaos as 4Q hit especially with the Asean Summit this time), but our return at the beginning of November saw us soundly defeat the visiting team from the Royal Lake Club. To be fair, not many of the latter had ever played doubles before – one of the things Negri Sembilan is fast specialising in, thanks to our early investment of the facility both in Seri Menanti and Seremban 2.

There is of course another racquet sport of great importance to Malaysians of all previous generations, and the year has been punctuated by inspiring success by our shuttlers at international tournaments. My own performance at the Ideas Bad­min­ton Tournament this year was terrible, but I have now been spurred to practise with the acquisition of a new racquet.

All of this is to say, of course, that making time for sports amidst a busy schedule is very worthwhile, and that it is possible to see a sport grow organically, and for successful players to be nurtured – without get­ting caught up in the politics of it all.

Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin is President of the Negri Sembilan Squash Association. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.