Nelson Krum named pickleball ambassador to Marianas

Paradise Pickleball Club co-founder and pickleball ambassador to Saipan Nelson Krum, third from right, poses with rest of the participants of the first-ever tournament the club held last Oct. 30 at the Capitol Hill tennis courts. (MARK RABAGO)

Paradise Pickleball Club founder Nelson Krum has been appointed the sport’s ambassador to the CNMI and Guam by the USA Pickleball Association.

Krum, who co-founded the club and introduced the sport to the Commonwealth in August last year, said he’s honored about the appointment and would love introducing pickleball to the Northern Marianas to become his legacy.

“I’d love introducing a new sport in the CNMI as my legacy. To become an ambassador, you first have to become a USA Pickleball Association member and from the members they pick ambassadors in different regions of the country. Saipan falls into the western region governed out of California and I was appointed USAPA ambassador for the CNMI and the second ambassador in Guam,” he said.

Krum admitted that pickleball borrows elements from tennis, ping-pong, and badminton.

“First of all let’s talk about the difference in court sizes. We use a tennis court and we’re able to stripe four pickleball courts on a [single] tennis court. So the pickleball court is the same size as a badminton court. Scoring is best two out of three games to 11 win by 2 and only the serving team can score a point. The nets are the same size as the tennis courts. They’re the same height—34 inches on the middle and 36 inches on the sides,” he said.

Pickleball’s paddles also are somewhat similar to the paddles used in table tennis.

Asked why the sport was called pickleball, Donna Krum gave a short trip to memory lane.

“The history of pickleball started in 1965 when a couple of tennis dads in Bainbridge Island in Washington state were building tennis courts on their backyard to keep their bored kids preoccupied. While they’re playing, their dog ‘Pickles’ kept stealing the ball and that’s how the game got its name. That’s also why we always have dogs in our games to remember how it started,” she said.

The club held its first-ever tournament at the Capitol Hill tennis courts last Oct. 30 with Donn Dunlop and Leith Poole topping a field of 16 players after accumulating a perfect 105 points each in a round-robin format.

In a little over a year of existence, Paradise Pickleball Club has grown from five regulars to 20. It also now has three courts at the Church of Latter-day Saints along Middle Road and four courts on Capitol Hill.

Plans are also afoot to roll the game out to the CNMI’s disabled community with a court being striped at the Center for Living Independently on Capitol Hill.

With over 3 million players, pickleball is arguably the fastest growing sport in the U.S. and its popularity has spread all over the world as pickleball is currently played in 57 countries—18 more countries and pickleball can qualify as an Olympic sport.