Chicago Slice taking a swing at newest pro sport: Major League Pickleball
CHICAGO (CBS) -- If you haven't at least heard of pickleball by now, you're way behind, but the fast-growing sport is no longer just for amateurs playing for fun.
Chicago has a new team playing in the relatively new pro league called Major League Pickleball. Teams from across the country are made up of four players: two men and two women.
CBS 2's Matt Zahn delved into the Chicago team's slice of pro pickleball life.
Pickleball certainly seems like the hot sport right now.
"It is the hot activity right now," said Ron Saslow, co-owner of the Chicago Slice. "I like the fact that it's fun, it's social, it's easy to learn, it's easy to play."
That's part of the reason Saslow got a group together to put a team into Major League Pickleball, the aptly-named Chicago Slice.
"Chicago Slice named by my youngest son Danny. We had a contest within the company, and all family and friends were able to enter. We saw hundreds of names, but we thought the great double entendre of Chicago Slice – being a shot in pickleball and tennis, but also of course with a great pizza-loving town like Chicago – made the most sense," he said.
The sport has attracted some high-profile investors – including Bulls star Zach LaVine, who's a part owner of the Miami team; and the Slice's ownership group, which includes supermodel Heidi Klum, Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts, retired tennis star Chris Evert, and others.
"They're doing so, because I think they're wise, knowing sports and business as well as they do, but I also think they have a passion for the sport, which makes it even more fun. So when we were interviewing people to be part of our ownership group, that was clearly a criteria as well, was that you had to have a passion for the sport," Saslow said.
Speaking of having a passion, Slice head coach RayJ Murphy certainly has that.
"Absolutely a riot. Absolutely. I thought I had done everything in tennis and platform. I had been a 45-year tennis pro, a platform pro," he said. "I was thinking about working on my golf game, and Ron called me and said, 'We've got this ergonomic technology we'd like to put on pickleball paddles. We'd love to have you look at it.' That started the journey, and Ron started putting together the team, and he knew that I had coached on the pro tennis tour."
While pickleball clearly has some similarities to tennis, Murphy said there are some key differences when it comes to coaching, especially with how fast players have to make decisions.
"I'm not going to give away too many of what I teach to the players, but I have a system where I teach them how to think the way all the top athletes in open skill sports think," he said. "It's just teaching them how to make fast decisions out there. The faster you make a decision, the better quality of shots you hit, the less errors you have. Ninety percent of the errors in this game are due to indecisions."
That system seems to be paying off. The Slice won a big event on the Major League Pickleball tour, taking home the title in first Challenger League Championship in California, hopefully setting the team up for more success down the road.
Right now, the Chicago Slice play exclusively on the road, with more events ahead on the Major League Pickleball schedule in the fall. Saslow said they hope they'll have their first home event in Chicago next year.
