By Gregg Voss
Back in India in his youth, Prashanth Kumar played many sports. His repertoire included karate, gymnastics, soccer, field hockey, cricket and basketball, among others. He also played a lot of squash, a racquet game involving four walls and hollow rubber ball. Kumar loved them all. But when he moved to the United States in 2000 from Bangaluru and got busy building a career, those sports fell to the wayside. One day in late 2022, Kumar’s doctor noted he was pre-diabetic and had high blood pressure. Something needed to change, and returning to sport proved to be a life-changing decision for Kumar. The doctor suggested hitting the gym, but Kumar had tried that previously and it just didn’t stick. Instead, he discovered a great alternative. Kumar had never heard of pickleball until he was strolling around the tennis courts in his transplanted hometown of Milpitas, California, and saw a flyer for a pilot program.
Interested, but noting there was nothing posted about the game’s rules, he spied a man on the sole pickleball court incorporated into one of the tennis courts.
“I decided to ask him what pickleball was,” Kumar said. “He showed me the paddle and the ball. He showed me how to play. There was nobody there. We played and it was fun, hitting the ball. It wasn’t as strenuous.”
The next time Kumar returned to the court, there were more people there. He helped another man put up the pickleball net, and in turn that stranger gave Kumar a paddle and they played together.
“He and I played quite a few times,” he said. “Then I decided to get my own paddle. I got better at playing it and then I got to know about the Milpitas Pickleball Club, which helped start the pilot program.”
That’s not an uncommon path for pickleballers — little to no knowledge about the game before trying it and then falling in love with it. For Kumar, it was radically different than working out at a gym.
“The reason it stuck for me I could go anytime and play,” he said. “You can pick it up pretty fast. My movement around the court was from squash.”
Kumar could go play after putting his son to bed around 8:30 p.m. The courts were lit until 10 p.m., so he got in roughly an hour of fun. That’s not all. The social aspect was potent, which is another reason he started coming every day.
“There were people coming I didn’t know,” he said. “I could play pretty much with anybody. It didn’t matter how good or bad they were, I could just play.
“I think it was welcoming because the people who were playing, they invited me to play. Other sports I haven’t seen that. It didn’t matter who you were, you could come and play.”
That led to significant health benefits. Pre-diabetes is a thing of the past, and his blood pressure is under control. Kumar is quick to point out he made more changes to his life than just playing pickleball; he improved his diet as well. He saw his mom battle diabetes and didn’t want that for himself.
“It requires food control and exercise,” he said of diabetes. “It needs a mixture of both. In my case, going to the gym to work out myself was hard, but every day it was clockwork, I would go play (pickleball). The food part is something else you have to control off the playing part.”
Pickleball also pushed Kumar into a larger community role. He served as the city liaison director for the Milpitas Pickleball Club and eventually became a commissioner for the Milpitas Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources Commission. That’s significant because he hadn’t had much interest in civic service before. But pickleball changed that. In fact, you might say pickleball changed just about everything for Kumar. Perhaps the biggest perk is that he’s playing with his 13-year-old son Vyom, and so father-son time together is not only instructive, but a fun way to create memories for them both.
“Even for a child of 9 or 10, it was easy for him to pick up,” Kumar said. “When I started playing, he wanted to play pickleball.”
The big question is, has Vyom beaten his dad on the court?
“Not yet, but I see him getting there,” Kumar said with a laugh. “He has a better drive than me.”
Gregg Voss is a journalist based in the Chicago suburbs who has been writing sports for newspapers and magazines for more than 20 years. He is a freelance contributor to USA Pickleball on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
