As we reported some time ago, Microsoft’s billionaire CEO, Bill Gates, was an early adopter of pickleball. He posted a video on social media explaining the rules of the game and wrote, “50 years ago, I started playing this little-known sport with a funny name. Now it’s all the rage.”

Further evidence of Gate’s love of the sport emerged last week when he was chatting to Trevor Noah this week on the South African comedian’s “What Now?” podcast.

Letting Off Steam

The co-founder and ex-chief shareholder of Microsoft told Trevor about how he plays a “mix of tennis and pickleball” in his free time as a way to let off steam. 

Although Gates described tennis as his “biggest hobby,” he also told Noah he had been playing pickleball for five decades now!

“I love both sports, so it is funny to watch the fight over the court space and which one’s better,” he said when talking about the competition between tennis and pickleball. “They’re both amazing.”

He also rather interestingly commented that he’d been “a lifelong tennis player, and for me, the games complement one another. “Pickleball has helped me become a better tennis player, and tennis has done the same for my pickleball game.”

Fondness For Pickleball

The 68-year-old also said he was “relatively better at pickleball because I’ve been playing so long compared to other people.”

According to Forbes, Gates is worth $117 billion and made the bulk of his fortune with Microsoft.

His fondness for pickleball means you can often spot Gates attending tournaments as a keen spectator. For example, last spring, he went along to the BNP Paribas Tournament at Indian Wells, California. 

In an article published in July last year on gatesnotes.com, he admitted he had been “a little stunned—and delighted” by the sudden popularity of one of his favorite pastimes. He called it “a game with a funny name and strange terminology, such as, ‘dink,’ ‘kitchen,’ and ‘skinny singles.’”

“I look forward to playing a pickleball game with friends and family at least once a week and more often during the summer,” the self-proclaimed “pickler” said at the time.

Pickleball’s Inventors

Gates said he got his start playing pickleball after his father had a court built at the family’s house, largely because of his dad’s friendship with pickleball inventors Joel Pritchard, Barney McCallum, and Bill Bell.

He also mentions how the pickleball community was very small at the time and that there were probably only about a thousand people playing it exclusively in the Seattle area when he and his family took up the hobby.

A National Phenomenon

He certainly didn’t think back then it would ever become a national phenomenon.

He went on to say: “I don’t know exactly what’s driven this recent surge in interest in pickleball, but I think the fact that it’s so easy to play is one big reason.

“People like to say a lot of sports—even hard ones like golf—are ‘easy to play,’ but in the case of pickleball, it’s true.”

“Super Fun”

The Microsoft co-founder also surmised that more people are playing the sport because it’s accessible to “everyone from the super young to the super-old.”

“It takes minutes to learn the basics, games are short, and all you need is a net, paddle, and ball to get started. It doesn’t take much skill to hit the ball, either, because it doesn’t move as fast as a tennis ball. 

He sums it all up nicely by finishing with: “The best thing about pickleball, however, is that it’s just super fun.”