(Left to right): Teenagers Tama Shimabukuro, Arjun Singh and Kelly Goodnow have made significant strides in professional pickleball, but many fear they could suffer burnout due to their early exposure to the professional game.
As a sport’s popularity reaches fever pitch and talent spotting mechanism becomes seamless, more youngsters tend to bypass the long process of graduating to the senior level. Some players are more mature than their age, more gifted than the average players, and possess the calibre to compete at the highest level. So, they need to be promoted to the elite level instead wasting time and talent in domestic tournaments.