Pickleball revives Kolkata clubs, boosts membership at historic venues

Pickleball is doing something rare in Kolkata: it is helping old clubs look young again. At the Royal Calcutta Turf Club, Arup Mullick said the sport brought a huge influx of new members by mid-2024, enough to force the club to introduce non-playing membership categories.

The change was not just on paper. Mullick said mornings that once belonged to horse-riding began filling with players arriving at 6 a.m. for pickleball, a daily reset that says as much about the city as it does about the sport. At a venue built on tradition, pickleball has become a way to keep the gates busy and the membership list moving.

That pattern has spread well beyond the Turf Club. Kolkata clubs now on the pickleball map include the Royal Calcutta Golf Club, Saturday Club, Tollygunge Club, Calcutta Swimming Club, Calcutta Punjab Club, Hindusthan Club, South Club, Shyambazar Athletic Club, Bengal Rowing Club, Eastern Metropolitan Club and DKS. Some have fully embraced the sport; others are still adding it to their calendars, but the direction is clear: pickleball is no longer a novelty tucked into one corner of the city.

The numbers back up the shift. By late 2024, Kolkata had more than 50 dedicated pickleball courts and more than 60 total playing spaces when makeshift courts in apartments and complexes were counted. East India Pickleball helped set up more than 15 dedicated courts in the city in 2024 alone, a sign that the buildout was moving fast enough to create real depth, not just a few headline venues.

Access widened beyond private clubs in December 2024, when Kolkata opened its first public pickleball court in Ward 87 on Southern Avenue. Mayor Firhad Hakim said the site was meant to break barriers created by expensive private memberships, while councillor Manisha Bose said the area had been transformed over about three years from an underused, dusty space into a multi-sport arena with pickleball added that year.

The player pool widened too. One Kolkata report said more than 600 people were actively playing pickleball in the city in late 2024, with participation stretching from children to players over 55. Early tournament crowds skewed younger, but later events became more mixed, and women-led groups such as Dink Queenz, founded by Aastha Seth and Nisha Chowdharry, grew to more than 200 members in just a few months.

Competition has started to match the buzz. The Indian Pickleball Association announced Kolkata’s first DUPR-certified PWR event at Ballygunge Arena from November 21 to 24, 2024, with junior, 35+ and 50+ divisions. The announcement pointed to the Delhi PWR DUPR India Masters, which drew 750 players over four days, as a benchmark. Then in February 2025, the Ultimate Pickleball Showdown at Calcutta South Club drew 143 players across 197 entries, showing that the city’s club courts are no longer just social overflow. They are becoming tournament-ready.

That is the larger story inside Kolkata’s clubs. Pickleball is not only adding courts. It is changing who walks in, when they arrive, and why the institutions want them there. The West Bengal Pickleball Association, formed in 2024, now faces the next test: whether club adoption can translate into lasting access, more facilities and, eventually, a local franchise in the Indian Pickleball League.