Pickleball is spreading around the world – and one Bangor University graduate has taken the game back to his home country of Kuwait after falling in love with the game during his time in Wales.
Indeed, he’s just staged the first pickleball tournament in Kuwait.
Hani Haidar studied at Bangor as a postgraduate, and tried out various racquet sports. He and his friends hadn’t even heard of pickleball before when they first gave it a try – and without knowing the rules, they played it as if it was table tennis.
He enjoyed it so much he thought he’d learn more – and headed to social media.
“I saw that there were two clubs in North Wales, and messaged them, telling them I’m interested in pickleball and would like to learn,” he told Pickleball 52. “They replied to me with all their session times.”
He learnt to play – complete with the actual rules – at North Wales Pickleball Club, and loved joining their community.
“I met a lot of pickleball players, they were really amazing and supportive, because it’s a new sport and I hadn’t any experience, I was a beginner!” he recalls.
Of course, he soon improved, playing all around the North Wales area and into Anglesey.
But then his graduation got closer, and he began to make plans for going home.
“When the time came for me to return back to Kuwait, I thought, ‘I can’t live there without pickleball!'” he laughs. He realised he needed to start a club there, so started the process of picking up the necessary qualifications prior to leaving Wales.
Now the Kuwaiti pickleball community is getting bigger and bigger, with adults and children alike joining in, and there’s even a network of groups across the Gulf area, meaning players can travel and meet and compete elsewhere.
His first pickleball tournament in Kuwait attracted more than 60 players – and it won’t stop there.
“Of course we will do more!” he concludes.
Fantastic news that players starting to play in the UK are spreading the game far and wide. That’s how it arrived here in the first place, people picking it up on holiday in the US wanted to carry on playing in the UK and now there are 45-50k players across the UK!