Natchez Pickleball Players Raised $80,000 to Build 10 New Courts After the City Said No
Jaki Yarbrough’s opening serve arced cleanly across the net and landed deep near the baseline. Leigh Anne Mason met it with a crisp return. That single exchange, played on a freshly resurfaced court at Beau Pre Country Club in Natchez, Mississippi, marked the first rally on 10 brand new pickleball courts, built almost entirely with private money, in less than two months, after the city said no.
The city of Natchez had declined a proposal to add dedicated pickleball courts at Duncan Park, the public recreation space where local players had been sharing surfaces not built for the sport. Yarbrough and Mason, two of the organizers who led the push for real courts, didn’t wait around for that decision to change. They found a private club willing to hand over unused tennis courts, then asked Natchez’s growing pickleball community to fund the rest.
The community answered. Local players and businesses put more than $80,000 into resurfacing, fence repairs and new eight foot spectator walkways, all in a matter of weeks, turning three abandoned tennis courts into 10 dedicated pickleball courts.
A Public Rejection Led to a Private Deal
Natchez’s pickleball players had outgrown their space. Games were squeezed onto courts that weren’t designed for the sport, and organizers wanted the city to build dedicated ones at Duncan Park, the town’s public recreation hub. City officials turned the proposal down, leaving the local pickleball community without a clear path to real courts.
That kind of answer has become familiar to pickleball organizers in small towns across the country, where public parks departments often work with fixed annual budgets, competing demands from other sports, and permitting processes that can stretch a single court project out over multiple budget cycles.
Beau Pre Country Club stepped in where the city wouldn’t. The private club had three tennis courts sitting unused, and it agreed to hand them over for conversion. It’s a pattern playing out in towns across the country, where private clubs, homeowners associations and developers move faster than municipal budgets and permitting processes allow. Converting existing tennis courts into pickleball space is also far cheaper than building from scratch. National data tracking court conversions puts the cost of turning four tennis courts into 12 pickleball courts at around $150,000, compared with roughly $1 million to build that many pickleball courts on undeveloped land. For a facility the size of Beau Pre’s new 10-court setup, that kind of cost gap is exactly why converting existing courts made more sense than starting from an empty lot.
Raising $80,000 in Weeks, Not Years
Once Beau Pre agreed to the conversion, the organizers turned to fundraising. Dozens of volunteers and local businesses contributed, and the community raised more than $80,000 in private funding in just weeks. That money covered court resurfacing, structural fence repairs and the installation of new eight foot spectator walkways surrounding the courts.
The turnaround was fast by any standard. Three unused tennis courts became 10 dedicated pickleball courts in less than two months, a pace that would be difficult for most city parks departments to match given standard budgeting and bidding timelines. Beau Pre’s members didn’t have to run the project through a city council vote or a competitive bid process. They just needed players willing to open their wallets, and Natchez had plenty of them.
Opening Day at Beau Pre
The new courts opened with a ceremony that doubled as a thank you to everyone who made the project happen. Yarbrough highlighted the collaborative effort behind the courts, thanking county officials, first responders, local sponsors and Beau Pre’s Adrian Sandel for championing the facility.
She also reflected on a more personal thread running through the project. Pickleball had reconnected her with Mason, a childhood friend and now her tournament partner, and that friendship helped drive their shared vision to get the courts built. Gary Farmer gave a blessing of the courts before the ceremonial ribbon cutting. From there, the morning moved straight into play, with pickleball lessons offered to 20 beginners alongside open play on the remaining courts.
That mix of a formal ribbon cutting and a beginner clinic on the same morning says something about who Beau Pre’s new courts are actually for. This wasn’t a facility built to chase tournament traffic or out-of-town visitors. It was built by the same local players who will spend the next several years filling those 20-beginner lesson slots and organizing weekly open play, on courts they paid for themselves after their own city told them no.
Part of a Bigger Shift in Where Americans Play
Beau Pre’s new courts land in the middle of a national surge. Pickleball participation grew 22.8 percent in 2025 to 24.3 million players nationwide, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association’s 2026 Topline Participation Report, released in March. That’s up from just 4.2 million players in 2020, a more than fivefold increase in five years, with roughly 4.5 million people picking up a paddle for the first time in 2025 alone. That total splits into 16.8 million casual players, who play one to seven times a year, and 7.48 million core players, who play eight or more times a year, with the core group growing 20.4 percent year over year. Teens and young adults now post the highest participation rates of any age group, and women accounted for 42.9 percent of all players in 2025, up from 38.6 percent in 2020.
Tennis courts have absorbed much of that growth. More than 8,000 tennis courts nationwide were converted into pickleball courts between 2019 and 2025, based on an analysis of aerial photographs tracking new court construction across the country. The U.S. has roughly 270,000 tennis courts and 68,000 pickleball courts today, and the gap between those numbers is exactly where projects like Beau Pre’s tend to happen. That same analysis found the pace of tennis-to-pickleball conversions actually slowed last year for the first time, even as new standalone pickleball courts kept getting built. Natchez’s community followed the older, cheaper playbook on a smaller scale: three tennis courts nobody was using became a facility built specifically for the sport residents actually wanted to play.
Beau Pre’s members also had a built-in advantage that public parks projects rarely get: a single property owner who could say yes on the spot. No zoning hearing, no competing line item in a city budget, no waiting for a council meeting to land on the calendar. Once the club agreed to the conversion, the only remaining question was whether Natchez’s pickleball players could raise the money fast enough, and they answered that question in weeks.
What sets Beau Pre apart is who paid for it. Rather than waiting on a municipal budget cycle or a bond measure, Natchez’s players raised the money themselves and got their courts open in under two months. For pickleball communities elsewhere still waiting on city hall, it’s a working model: find a private property owner willing to convert unused courts, then fund the rest through the players who will actually use them.
Ten courts now sit where three empty tennis courts once did, and the first lessons for 20 beginners have already been taught. For a sport still adding millions of new players every year, that kind of grassroots expansion is increasingly filling the gap between demand and what cities are willing, or able, to build on their own.
