Things To Do In Ogden: Pickleball

My brother came into town recently.  During one of our conversations he says "Hey, have you checked out the pickball courts in Ogden?"  At first I thought he was joking. Why would he know more about my town than I do?   But, he persisted in seriousness and began to describe what seemed like a cartoonish lampoon of several other sports combined into one. 

 
The so-called sport of Pickleball, he said, is played on a special court similar to tennis but smaller in scale.  Instead of a tennis ball, the players use a regulation wiffle ball.   And, instead of tennis rackets, the players use paddles that appear as oversized ping pong paddles.  His description just seemed silly to me.  

As it turns out, the game is really fun!  The rules are similar to tennis and the effort exerted is similar to tennis.  The main difference is that you are much closer to your opponents and the energy that you would normally exert sending a ball speeding scores of feet to the other side of the net is instead compressed into a couple dozen feet.  The wiffle ball doesn't behave like a tennis ball at all and it takes some getting used to.  We spent a couple hours playing and it wore me out.  The game is very fast paced.

The courts are located next to the Pro Shop at the Mt. Ogden Golf Course.  Mornings and evenings are a popular time to play.  I recommend that everyone take a swing at it if they havn't already.