Committee holding key to tennis center pickleball hasn’t met

Even the most novice of pickleball players knows you “can’t volley in the kitchen,” that seven-foot-deep swath of court from the net back. But the sweet or sour question here is whether ‘picklers,” as they are called, will be able to volley at all at Key Biscayne’s Crandon Park Tennis Center.

Last March, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Raquel Regalado proposed bringing “America’s fastest growing sport” to the center. Commissioners voted 12-0, with no discussion, to direct Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to begin the process of allowing pickleball at the center.

The potential roadblock, however, what pickleball players call a “falafel” – a shot that falls short due to hitting the oversized wiffle ball without any power – is the center’s masterplan, which sprang from the 1940 donation of the 900 Crandon Park acres to the county by the Matheson family.

In return, the family was pledged that the county would build a causeway from the mainland to Key Biscayne. The Rickenbacker Causeway opened in 1947.

The original agreement for the tennis center, approved in 2010, required that a four-member committee, which included Bruce Matheson, would have to approve any attempt to alter the park’s master plan, which now limits use of the center to tennis.

But even an attempt to expand tennis, the Miami Open, at the center in 2014 was “pickled” (when a team earns zero points.) by the committee.

Attempted passage through that committee was the death knell of attempts by the famed tennis tournament to expand its footprint. Frustrated by the committee picking apart his company’s $50 million stadium expansion plan, open head Adam Barrett in 2014 said the tournament would be forced to leave if the plan failed. It ended up at the Hard Rock Stadium.

So, if the Crandon committee, which at this point consists only of Matheson, and presumably three other “Picklers” to be named later, rejected a tennis tournament, what chance does pickleball have of hitting an “ace,” a serve that cannot be returned, or a “dillball” – an inbound ball that’s bounced once – or even a “dink shot,” a soft shot that falls into the opponent’s “kitchen.”

In 2014 the amendment committee voted 3-1 to delay deciding on the tournament, which essentially killed the proposal. The dissenting vote was cast by – you guessed it – Mr. Matheson. The vote was mute because the Open already had moved on in search of another venue.

Commissioner Regalado did not respond to Miami Today requests for a comment.

The situation hangs like a pickleball caught in vortex of opposing winds.

An amendment is being prepared, but there is no timetable assigned to its presentation to the committee. Mr. Matheson, reached by Miami Today this week, had no comment.

Whether Crandon morphs into a future “Pickledome” – a court where a championship match is played – or collapses like a “Volley Lama” – an illegal move or fault, remains in “limbo,” which, gratefully, is not a pickleball term.