Pickleball may have been invented in the mid 1960s, but the sport’s Gold Rush is happening as we speak, before our eyes. Seemingly every week there’s another press release from an organization in the sport, or a new organization hanging up its hat and getting in on the craze, and it can be hard to keep up.

This post is a handy guide to the organizational acronyms you may see making press releases, and to organizations that we’ll be covering in this column. Hopefully I don’t forget any; after all, by the time you read this post, another Pickleball organization may have cropped up.

I’ll divide these into four categories: Governing Bodies, Professional Organizations, Tournament-running organizations, and Ranking Systems.

Governing Bodies

There was an excellent article in SI in May of 2022 discussing the competing/feuding IFP-WPF issue.

Professional Organizations

Tournament Operating Organizations

Ranking Systems