Registration opened on Wednesday evening for the English Nationals, to be held in Bolton from 31 October – and already the sign-ups are flooding in.
This year’s event will look slightly different – with only doubles matches played, and the first days reserved for players aged over 50.
In 2023, 696 players were registered – with others complaining that they were unable to take part.
Anticipating that the same may happen again but on a bigger scale, bearing in mind the growth of pickleball, Pickleball England have decided to make the Nationals a doubles event, with a singles event to be announced later in the year.
The expectation was that around 1,000 players would now be able to take part in the English Nationals with this new set-up.
And within two hours of registration opening, there were already over 800 people signed up.
“English Nationals is my favourite tournament,” said Pickleball England chair Karen Mitchell.
“It has always had a lovely friendly feel to it and Bolton Arena is within walking distance to restaurants making it easy to be sociable after the day’s play is over. We hope that we can retain that friendliness even with increasing capacity.
“We recognise that not everyone will be happy with the separation of Singles to a separate event or the age split decisions but we are doing our best to include as many players as possible. We are already looking at regional qualification for next year as a way to manage the rising number of players in the country.”
