ESTIMATED READING TIME: 15 MINS.
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| Tyson's Pickleball Pics Courtesy Facebook & IG @TysonApostol |
This summer on The Challenge: USA, Tyson Apostol has been enjoying a reality TV renaissance in beasting several of the daily challenges to the point that he is the favorite (if not, one of the favorites) to win it all once we get into the serious business of approaching the start line of the final & the big money that awaits just a few weeks from now. For a guy from Utah who spent the early years of his adult life competing in endurance sports before making his national TV debut, Tyson had already proven his competitive worth before going on that boat ride to the first of his four Survivor seasons back in 2009. And it is as if he was made for The Challenge: him getting the attention of the fandom and the establishment including a 7-time champ has made it almost an inevitable prospect that he may be well on his way to joining the MTV show itself.
This has been quite the summer for Tyson, which in addition to what we've seen so far from him on the show has also seen him represent this latest spinoff in throwing out the first pitch on a Major League Baseball diamond. But outside this game, you'll likely find Tyson in a most unlikely place but one that's now become a popular hotspot in 2020's America: a recreational sport that was one that I got to play a bit in his high school days back then, and where he has embraced it to the point that now it has gotten the attention of this sports nation used to having the same old same old, and now is looking to diversify that diet in a simple little game known as pickleball.
The pandemic that caused chaos on the sports calendar saw both seasonal iterations of the Olympics be held within a year of one another just as it was until the 1990's: the Tokyo Summer Games were pushed back to last year, followed by an on-schedule Winter Games in Beijing. There for thirty-eight days in an eight month-span, a sporting public used to having the likes of soccer, the NFL, Formula 1 and others command most of the attention suddenly got addicted to something totally different. Sure, there was the usual staples of track & field, skiing, gymnastics, swimming, volleyball and figure skating... but those same sports fans also found themselves binge-watching the likes of archery, badminton, curling, sport-climbing, biathlon and dozens of others. It's the only place where the whole "Wide World of Sports" all converge beneath five connected rings, a burning flame, national flags and gold medals.
This niche world also plays a part in another summer TV sports tradition: every August, the four-lettered 800-pound gorilla in the sports world known as ESPN devotes a 24-hour period to showing sports that often get lost in the limelight of its wall-to-wall coverage of the four major leagues, college football & hoops, UFC and endless appearances by Stephen A. Smith... but whose schedules in its early years were filled with those sports. ESPN8's alias of "The Ocho" is an ode to the 2004 movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, which brought that favorite youth pastime into a whole new dimension as Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn entered a Vegas tournament to help save their local gym.
And there's one other entry in that list that warranted this site's attention: while they negotiated its recent blockbuster deal for Big Ten football starting next year as well as an extension to its deal for the UEFA Champions League, as CBS Sports' brass looked over that list of sports to fill a month of weekend afternoon TV airtime one sport popped up quite a bit... just as it has become the latest big thing. It's also something that this blogger got to experience himself when it was in the rotation of physical education activities back when I went to high school long ago.
The Seattle area has grown in stature in the sports world over the past several decades, thanks to being home to the Seahawks, the Mariners, the MLS Sounders, and the Huskies. Some 80 years after its first pro team, the Pacific League's Metropolitans, became the first to take the Stanley Cup south of the Canadian border, last year Seattle became home to hockey again in the NHL's 32nd team the Kraken... and of course, it has never forgotten the mess of the Sonics debacle. But Western Washington also lays claim to being the birthplace of a game that has become so big, it recently made its own.
It may be part of a family of sports that involve a racket or paddle in trying to hit a ball back and forth over a net, but pickleball has now emerged as the hottest game in American sports. While on a break in 1966 serving in Washington's state legislature and before becoming a Congressman and state lieutenant governor, Joel Pritchard and friends Barney McCallum & Bill Bell came back from a day on the golf links to his summer home to find that their families were bored and wanted something to do other than just sit around doing nothing.
At first they had wanted to play badminton, but when they couldn't find a shuttlecock around the house they instead told their kids to come up with something else. The idea was to experiment with different kinds of balls and rackets, while also lowering the badminton net to hip level. A fun ball called "Cosom" was used instead of a whiffle ball for durability and to make playing their game even better, as were larger paddies that they made in a shed. When coming up with the game's name, Pritchard took the idea from a pickle boat that he saw along the Puget Sound and later became the name of the family dog, Pickles... and Pickleball was born.
Local neighbors in Bainbridge Island, WA and those in the Pritchard, McCallum and Bell circles loved the game so much that, by the time the rep moved to the State Senate in 1968, they formed a company that bore the name of their greatest invention. Pickleball kits and wooden paddles were being made in droves to meet growing consumer demand, which saw it expand beyond the Pacific Northwest to all around the west coast by the time nearby Tukwila hosted the world's first pickleball tournament in summer 1976. It was followed four years later by the forming of its U.S. governing body and the release of its first official rulebook... and by 1990, the game had been played in all fifty states in the union.
However, it is a jumbled world when it comes to organized pickleball: the pro game is split into three different organizations -- the Association of Pickleball Professionals (aligned to national governing body USA Pickleball), breakaway operation Professional Pickleball Association, and team-based Major League Pickleball. There are two separate major championships: the National Championships in Palm Springs co-hosted by Oracle honcho Larry Ellison, and the annual U.S. Open in Naples, Florida. And globally, the International Federation of Pickleball and World Pickleball Federation both oversee the game around the world and organize world championships, and which also have eyes towards joining the Olympic program as it's currently being played in almost sixty countries and counting.
But it wasn't until just recently that pickleball had truly came of age: the pandemic that shut down most of the sports world didn't keep those used to being six feet away from one another from getting to try out this sport. When gyms and other public places closed their doors during those tough few months two years ago, the game's participation began to experience an enormous boom to the point where the Sports & Fitness Industry Association classified pickleball as the nation's fastest growing sport. Nearly five million players -- a 40% jump -- took up playing the game during this period, with estimates pegging the total number of players (who span from young to old) to possibly reach 40 million in the next ten years. Madison Avenue, TV networks and the like are also joining in on the pickleball craze, and though not as huge as in other sports prize money is increasing as a result.
Just this summer, an act of the Washington State Legislature made pickleball the state's official sport, being signed in ink by Governor Jay Inslee on the original Pritchard family court where it all began fifty-six years ago... and where more and more courts are popping up across the land. And on the weekend of August 13th, CBS gave the sport its broadest television exposure yet: it teamed with Tennis Channel to air the PPA's Sketchers Invitational Summer Championship at Riviera Country Club, host to the PGA Tour's Genesis Invitational during its west coast swing every winter, and now the game's Los Angeles hub. Other media outlets also made room in their packed sports agenda (baseball, NFL training camp and free agency) to cover pickleball, a sport our subject also took up during this time.
While at a pickleball event in Branson just after the Missouri resort town and others began to emerge from lockdown hibernation two years ago, Tyson told a local newspaper of his obsession of his new favorite game, "Pickleball was like the perfect match, because it's like fun and active, but you don't really feel like you're slogging because it's a game. I just kind of feel in love with it and started upgrading my gear and playing more and hiring coaches and having lots of fun."
Since he first picked up a pickleball racket for tournament play in 2019, Tyson would eventually become one of the emerging game's biggest celebrity backers all just in time for the current boom, joining a list that also includes Leonardo Dicaprio, Larry David and a growing list of Hollywood's best. He has been featured in Pickleball Magazine and other press, sport-specific companies have partnered with him, has given his fellow fans a chance to play a set with him, and has introduced his fellow reality TV alumni to the sport. And before he returned into our living rooms this summer, Tyson's Instagram page was chock full of pictures & video of him playing a game that has now swept the country.
If you search for Tyson on YouTube and find his channel, you won't find episode recaps or chatter on his TV shows -- those belong to the various podcasts he hosts that cover Survivor, Challenge USA and pickleball on The Ringer platform. And on that YouTube channel, the passion he has for this game is also out there for us to see... expanding upon a role of being the game's biggest influencer who endorses an app that allows users to find where they can play the game, and also selling merchandise. Included in his YouTube videos is a set with top 5 singles player Zane Navratil of Wisconsin, who's pioneered new serves that's now been adopted by other pros since he first took up the game also in the mid-2010's.
Tyson has already stated that a fifth Survivor trip is not longer in the offering after finishing out of the merge point on Winners at War. And though we may see him again on The Challenge on the big cable channel (retweeted comments by his fans on his Twitter account is valid proof of that), it's likely a sure bet that you'll likely see him more on a pickleball tour event than a TV show.
In another article with business authority Bloomberg, he took the example of his original show in pickleball's current and now successful effort of becoming THE game: "There's a big crossover: Survivor is a middle-America, older demographic. And like Survivor, pickleball is really trying to reach a younger audience." And just as this post goes out, The New York Times has already posted another article on this game as has most big newspapers and media outlets... further proof that Tyson's move to the pickleball court was one of the best choices he's ever made.
And oh, we cannot forget about the night this summer that he took to the diamond at Chase Field to throw out the opening pitch at an Arizona Diamondbacks game. He's had quite a cool summer.
The best thing to happen to ceremonial first pitches.@TysonApostol of @survivorcbs and @TheChallenge came out of his decades-long baseball retirement tonight. pic.twitter.com/A09sy8VT62
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) August 10, 2022
Is there any challenge @TysonApostol can't win?! pic.twitter.com/mtL3zOEJaI
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) August 10, 2022
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