The beauty of pickleball over tennis is that it relies more on strategy and shot selection rather than the pure athleticism and high level technique that tennis requires at the 5.0+ level.
As I’ve gotten older, my athleticism has declined such that I could no longer compete with the high level younger tennis players. You need to run a lot in tennis, and need good technique to maintain fun, good rallies.
Pickleball blunts the high level athleticism and technique required through the smaller court dimensions and NVL zone. You don’t need as good technique because of the lack of strings to really spin the ball like you can in tennis.
The end result is that rallies are a lot more fun. A good pickleball game, we can often have rallies of 10-20 shots or more, filled with lobs, dinks, ground strokes, smashes, resets. You really need to think about shot selection based on your own position and the opponents positioning.
Tennis is more about hitting a good serve, hitting a good ground stroke or volley to put the ball away. Unless you are super athletic, you just can’t have the sustained rallies with variety and strategy that you can have with pickleball.
In summary, pickleball allows the person with little or medium athleticism to enjoy the strategy and joy of good rallies that you can’t enjoy with tennis unless you are supper athletic with good technique.
Plus I’ve found it a lot easier to find high level pickleball players compared to high level tennis players. Similar high competition makes for more fun games.