World of Pickleball Stop in Milledgeville Canceled Despite New Courts

Milledgeville’s scheduled World of Pickleball stop — set for March 13–15 at the newly opened pickleball courts at Walter B. Williams Park — has been canceled, WGXA reported. “UPDATE: As of March 2, this event has been canceled,” the WGXA story by Addison White states, without giving a reason for the cancellation.

The planned stop was billed as one of 25 nationwide dates on the 2026 World of Pickleball tour and, according to Visit Milledgeville material cited by WGXA, was expected to welcome “250 to 400 players, along with their families, spectators and local vendors for a ‘weekend of activity on and off the court’.” Visit Milledgeville also framed the event as a tourism driver: “Players will be traveling for this multi-day competition and are expected to generate an increased use of local lodging, restaurants, and businesses throughout Milledgeville and Baldwin County during the weekend.”

Local officials had positioned the new courts as an economic-development investment tied to federal stimulus money. The Union-Recorder reports that the Governor’s Office of Budget and Planning issued a request for outdoor recreation grant applications and that funding for those grants “came from the American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed in March 2021.” Tobar told the Union-Recorder, “And the county received $6 million for three separate projects,” and the paper names Haley Hicks as the grant writer who prepared three applications.

Construction partners were publicly thanked as the courts opened. The county manager thanked Freedman Engineering and Dyer Construction Company in Milledgeville for making the new pickleball courts a reality and described the facility as an economic engine: “This a great facility,” he said. “This thing is going to explode. It’s already exploded in this community. It’s going to bring a lot more people into this community. This is just the start. We’ve got the water park. We’ve got the pickleball courts. We’ve got the lights. Let’s bring people back to Milledgeville. When I first moved here, you had a lot of baseball and softball tournaments. Let’s get them back. This is an economic development tank. Let’s move forward.”

Local leaders framed the courts as both social and strategic. Former Commissioner Henry Craig said, “And I’ve met friends for life playing pickleball,” and noted meeting their families over the years. Griffin urged long-range planning: “For any community, and we’re talking about our community now, we have to strive and move to the next level,” Griffin said. “We have to get the right people on board.” The Union-Recorder also reported that “Former Commissioner Johnny Westmoreland said the new pickleball courts were a long time coming.”

WGXA’s March 2 update does not include a cancellation reason or a statement from World of Pickleball organizers, and the station’s copy directs readers to Visit Milledgeville’s website for additional information. With the tour stop removed from the March calendar, the boost Visit Milledgeville expected for hotels, restaurants and vendors tied to 250–400 out-of-town players will not occur as planned for the March 13–15 weekend, and local officials and businesses will now face a sudden gap in the event schedule that had been promoted as a community and economic opportunity.