Augusta Pickleball Players Urge City to Build More Public Courts

At Warren Road, pickleball players are packed indoors while a stretch of underused, deteriorating tennis courts sits just outside. That friction, a sport with no room to grow surrounded by city property that could solve the problem, is what's pushing Augusta's pickleball community to make its case at city hall before another season slips by.

Glenn Hazelwood, president of the local pickleball club, wasn't subtle about where things stand: "We're actually falling behind on outdoor facilities. Not enough use and not enough courts available for outdoor pickleball." His proposed fix is straightforward on paper: convert three existing tennis courts at Warren Road into six dedicated pickleball courts, doubling capacity on land the city already owns. "Three tennis courts we could turn them into six pickleball courts easily," he said.

The human stakes are just as clear. Earnest Lowery, one of the regulars pushing for change, described what draws people out in the first place: "Community. We get a chance to come together as a group and just have fun." Player Sarah Heath made the case for dual-use solutions rather than waiting for new construction: "Even the tennis courts, some of the tennis courts could be fixed up to where you could have tennis and pickleball."

Augusta Mayor Pro-Tem Wayne Guilfoyle confirmed that renovations at Big Oak, McBean, and Blythe parks will include pickleball courts and expects work to move this year. "And that's going to be happening this year, as well as McBean and Blythe. We're not falling behind, it just takes time to get things in the process for it to occur," Guilfoyle said. Those parks, however, don't resolve the immediate crunch at Warren Road, where players are already out of space.

The obstacle is funding. Resurfacing tennis courts to support pickleball carries an estimated proposal cost of $540,000, and no source has been locked in. Guilfoyle pointed to the city's next Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) package as one possible path: "What they had estimated proposal is $540,000 to do that. One, find out where the money coming from, and two, is actually could use the money out of the next SPLOST package to do that. It won't be done overnight."

That last phrase is exactly the tension the pickleball community is working against. SPLOST packages run on election and budget cycles, not on the timeline of a sport whose players are already spilling out of available courts. The advocates making noise in Augusta are doing what any organized pickleball community needs to do to move the needle: they've named the facilities, shown up on-site, put a real dollar figure on the conversion, and engaged directly with the elected official who controls the capital planning conversation. Whether the $540,000 estimate covers Warren Road specifically or a broader set of sites across the city is still to be confirmed through parks department documentation.

Three parks already have pickleball written into their renovation plans. The question now is whether city leaders will accelerate the Warren Road tennis courts into that same pipeline before the indoor overflow becomes the outdoor standard.