'Work night shift, cannot sleep past 9am': Noise from pickleball players plagues Serangoon resident every morning

For three years, Facebook user Toh Ray endured the hammering and knocking as a shelter was built outside his home.

When construction was finally completed, he thought he could finally get proper rest — but he thought wrong.

Pickleball players have entered his neighbourhood, and the noise generated from their sessions have been preventing this Serangoon resident from sleeping, he shared in a Facebook post to Complaint Singapore on Wednesday (Aug 16).

"I work night shift, [but] cannot sleep past 9am," the user wrote. "All because these people come play this sport every day…"

Pickleball is a sport that uses table tennis-like paddles — albeit larger — to hit a perforated and hollow plastic ball, identical to a floorball ball. The sport has recently gained traction among youth.

He shared that it isn't just the cheering of the players when they play that disturbs his sleep, but also the sound of the game itself.

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"The sound of the ball is really penetrating and loud," he explained.

In videos he shared on his post, the players in question can be heard "ooh"-ing after a play was made.

When the ball is hit, a high-pitched popping can be heard.

According to Toh Ray, these pickleball enthusiasts don't live in this neighbourhood.

He added, at a loss: "Don't know what we should do… If it's badminton, [there would be] minimal sound [and it would] still be okay."

'It's a torture technique'

It seems the popping of the pickleball isn't just a problem for Toh Ray, but also for people in parts of America.

Across the country, many residents expressed their displeasure for the trending sport.

"I thought maybe I could live with it, maybe it would fade into the background," a Virginia resident, 43-year-old Mary McKee, admitted to the New York Times in an article published in June. "But it never did."

Said John Mancini, 82, about the public courts near his home in Massachusetts: "It's like having a pistol range in your backyard."

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Retired engineer and pickleball player Bob Unetich told the Washington Post that from 30 metres away, a pickleball match is "close to 70 decibels, close to the sound of a vacuum".

Describing it as being similar to the beeps of a garbage truck, or rain hitting a tin roof, Unetich, 77, explained why that might anger some. 

"We have fine-tuned our hearing — our brain — to pick up higher frequency sounds and we're most annoyed by sounds in that range because it interferes with our ability to understand any communication and what's going on around us."

Pickleball getting popular in Singapore

Pickleball was introduced to Singapore in 1990 but has only experienced growth in popularity in recent years, CNA reported in March.

There are between 30 to 40 interest groups who play pickleball regularly in Singapore, with 1,500 to 2,000 active players across the board, according to Singapore Pickleball Association (SPA) president Chong Siew Tan.

Tan added that the SPA has programmes aimed at introducing pickleball to schools in Singapore and getting more people to try the sport out.

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khooyihang@asiaone.com