Pickleball: Sour by name, but the stories are even sourer!

Everyone knows “pickle” in English means something sour: pickled cucumbers, mango pickle, and so on. But “pickle” also has a figurative meaning: in a pickle — stuck in a dilemma; to be in a sad pickle — in a truly awkward, messy situation.

So how on earth did this hybrid sport — half tennis, half badminton, half ping-pong — end up with a name that sounds both sour and ill-fated: pickleball?

It only arrived in Vietnam recently, yet it’s spreading like wildfire: from past-their-prime tennis guys, uncles whose athletic peak has rolled downhill, lively middle-aged ladies who love a workout, to pretty young women who play for fun — and mostly for photos. Everyone is diving in like fish back to water.

But honestly, I’ve never seen a sport with this many scandals! People blame it for cracking family happiness: husbands come home from pickleball suddenly cold toward “the boss at home”, while the ladies walk to the court with their rackets looking far too cheerful.

Every possible accusation under the sun — pickleball gets slapped with them all.

That’s pickleball in Vietnam: tangy, crunchy, fun, and full of drama in every flavor. Truly the sports equivalent of “Oan Thị Kính”.*

I wonder… in other countries, is it also “convicted” of causing all sorts of outrageous trouble like this?

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Mr. Old Man, 08.12.2025

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* “Oan Thị Kính” is a Vietnamese idiom referring to extreme, undeserved injustice. It originates from the classical chèo opera Quan Âm Thị Kính, in which the gentle woman Thị Kính is falsely accused of attempting to kill her husband, cast out of her home, and forced to seek refuge in a pagoda — enduring one injustice after another with no way to clear her name.