Route 66 Open draws 412 players for Edwardsville pickleball weekend
412 players packed the Route 66 Open in Edwardsville, where five guaranteed games, DUPR results and more than $2,400 in prize money met a centennial weekend.
Four hundred twelve players gave the Route 66 Open real weight before a ball was even struck. The four-day tournament ran June 11-14 at Plummer Family Park Pickleball Courts in Edwardsville, and Saturday’s session lined up with the city’s Route 66 centennial celebration, turning the event into part sports stop, part festival draw.
That scale mattered because the format rewarded the kind of player who wants volume and a path to Sunday. The tournament used round robin play with a playoff for pools of three or more teams, and every entrant was guaranteed at least five games. More than $2,400 in guaranteed prize money was on the line, with the top money brackets split across men’s and women’s doubles on Friday and mixed doubles on Saturday. Results also counted for DUPR, which gave the weekend a ranking consequence beyond the medals.
Edwardsville has built the backdrop for this kind of field. The city says its annual Route 66 Festival has been running for more than a quarter of a century, and 2026 marked the 100th birthday of Route 66. The centennial calendar stretched beyond pickleball, with concerts at the Wildey Theatre on June 11-12, a Cars showing at Leclaire Park on June 12, and the main city festival set for June 13 in City Park.
Plummer Family Park was part of the story before the tournament ever arrived. The first phase opened in 2020, and phase 2, launched in 2024, added four full-size baseball diamonds, six sand volleyball courts and 13 more pickleball courts, including a championship court with seating for tournament play. Earlier park plans said the site already had 12 pickleball courts, and One More Game Pickleball Club helped push the expansion with a $135,000 donation commitment. The city also approved a $15 million construction agreement for phase 2, underscoring how heavily Edwardsville leaned into the project.
That is why the Route 66 Open landed as more than another weekend bracket. It used a civic milestone to showcase a facility built for tournament play, filled the courts with a field large enough to signal real amateur demand, and tied local recreation to Route 66’s biggest anniversary in a way that made the whole event feel bigger than pickleball alone.
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