How To Save Money On Lining a Temporary Pickleball Court

A question was recently posed by a pickleball ambassador in Eastern Wisconsin about the big expense incurred when you have to use blue quick-release painters tape to put down temporary lines in gyms where you are required to take them up each time.

Tom wanted to know if there was a less expensive place to buy the 2″ inch tape.

I imagine there are many others going through the same tempy pickleball court problem, so I decided to post my anwser to Tom below. Read on…

Tom, we get the same challenge here in Indiana. We’ll be moving indoors soon and buying the blue painters tape in bulk since we put down 3 courts in our elementary school gym. We had 20-25 people playing each night last winter and we anticipate that number will be bigger this year.

Home Depot carries a 6 pack of 2″ for $36.97 which gets your per roll price down to $6.16.

Now this may go against some of the pickleball purists out there, but we don’t use 2″ tape when we have to take it up after each session. Too expensive.

What we have found in our very extensive Brookville, Indiana pickleball player tracking research, is that the size of the lines don’t seem to matter to the recreational pickleball player.

They all seem to come back each week no matter what width line we go with.

So we generally go with the least expensive and quickest ways to get our tempy pickleball courts up and running.

Sometimes we use some of the existing basketball or volleyball lines which may make our non-volley area a couple inches smaller and sometimes our baselines might be up to 6 inches shorter than regulation. We just put a pickleball paddle in their hand and give them something that remotely resembles a court, and amazingly the people just keep coming back and bringing friends with them, so life is good.

Generally we use 1 1/2 ” painters tape which Home Depot carries in a 6 pack for $32.97 which gets you down to $5.50 and sometimes we even go down to 1″ which Home Depot has in a 9 pack for $31.97 ($3.55 per roll).

Keep up the good work in Eastern Wisconsin.

May your day be filled with Much Happiness, Great Health and Plenty of Pickleball.

Rocket