Howdy. This is The Erne, the pickleball newsletter that’s 🎵 easy like Sunday morning 🎵

Here’s what we've got today:

• Tennis legends take on pickleball

• Pickleball on a cruise ship?

• Walmart joins pickleball craze

TENNIS LEGENDS TAKE ON PICKLEBALL

This past weekend (April 2nd, to be exact), 4 tennis legends competed for a $1 million prize. John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and Michael Chang competed at the first event of its kind, dubbed the Pickleball Slam.

The format of the event included 2 singles matches: Roddick vs. Chang and Agassi vs. McEnroe followed by a doubles match of Roddick/Agassi vs. Chang/McEnroe.

The matches included some great rallies including this one.

For those who don’t know, McEnroe is well known for his fiery personality and outbursts which led to some fun moments during the match like this.

All in all, these former tennis champs had glowing reviews of pickleball after the tournament, including Agassi, who had this to say: “I never thought I was gonna say this, but I am playing this as long as I can walk. I can’t wait to get back out there”.

Check out the full highlights. (Roddick/Agassi ended up winning the doubles match up 2 games to 1).

Pickleball to the moon 🚀🚀🚀.

PICKLEBALL ON A CRUISE SHIP?

Now we know that cruises are a polarizing choice of vacation. Some people swear by them. You get to see multiple locations, eat as much as you want, and don’t have to worry about entertaining your kids. On the other hand, some people consider being trapped on a boat with thousands of other people hell on earth.

At the Erne, we don’t take sides. But, we can all agree that Royal Caribbean’s recent announcement that they’ve added pickleball courts to 16 of their ships makes cruises infinitely better.

Check out this photo:

If our cruise ship looked like this…we wouldn’t get off the boat

WALMART JOINS PICKLEBALL CRAZE

Walmart made a major partnership announcement today that will bring pickleball to everyday communities.

Walmart has partnered with Break the Love, a new platform for finding people to play with and places to play across the country.

Through this partnership, Walmart is offering 125,000 comped reservations for customers, Walmart+ members and associates. You can check out more about the partnership and learn more about booking a free reservation here.

This is a pretty remarkable step by Walmart and demonstrates just how quickly pickleball continues to take over in the US.

WHAT’S COOKING IN THE KITCHEN

• Is this the most watched point in pickleball history? (for the boomers out there, this video has over 10 million views on TikTok)

• DC Mayor allocates $750k to build 4 new pickleball courts. Pickleball courts ain’t cheap!

• Subway announced a new sandwich dubbed “The Pickleball Club”

THE PICKLE JAR

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