It’s easy to dismiss pickleball as an unserious sport. The kind that privileged people play in hot-pink skorts and polo shirts at a bougie gymkhana. This might just be a branding problem. We’ve mostly seen the game paired with sundowner pop-ups and cocktail evenings, packaged as a trendy offline activity for a generation tired of doomscrolling. It reaches most people as a fun first date, a Sunday pastime, a flavour of the moment, much like mahjong. Harsh Mehta sees something bigger.
At 28, he plays pickleball full time. And, as India’s first captain, Mehta just headed the senior national squad at The Pickleball World Cup 2026 in Da Nang, Vietnam last week. Some 64 countries participated. Mehta, who is known as The Wall, won a bronze medal in the Pro Men’s Doubles category with Vietnamese partner Quang Duong. “It was exciting, but I knew I had responsibilities as captain,” says Mehta. “I wasn’t just focusing on my game, but also team meetings, strategy building, working out who to send out in which match against which opposition.” He’s proud that India reached the quarterfinals against USA. “We went up against a really solid team and put up a fight. That kind of loss is satisfying in its own way — you’re not happy with the outcome, but you know you gave your best, so there’s nothing to regret.”
Mehta studied engineering, and holds an MBA. He only picked up the sport seven years ago. And while others were pickling about for fun, he’s gone all in, betting his career on a sport that’s only just finding its feet.
{{/usCountry}}Mehta studied engineering, and holds an MBA. He only picked up the sport seven years ago. And while others were pickling about for fun, he’s gone all in, betting his career on a sport that’s only just finding its feet.
{{/usCountry}}Shots fired
Mehta was already a state-level table tennis player in school. So, pickleball – a love child of tennis, badminton and ping-pong – came to him easily when he tried it at Mumbai’s Khar Gymkhana. The gameplay felt less rigid: Get the ball over the net and stop your opponent from hitting it back. As long as you know your kitchen (the non-volley zone closest to the net) from your dink (a soft shot that drops into the opponent’s kitchen), you’re set.
As the world came out of the pandemic, pickleball exploded on social media. “I’d watch the videos closely and pick up a few things,” Mehta recalls. He wasn’t thinking of going pro with pickleball – few people in the world were. He didn’t even know he was any good until he won a string of national tournaments in 2021 and bagged gold in both the Men’s Doubles Pro Category and the Team Event when India hosted the 5th Bainbridge Cup in 2022, featuring players from the US, New Zealand and Japan. It made him see that he had a real shot at the sport — and the sport had a real shot at becoming mainstream.
“It’s an easy sport to play,” says Mehta, but it’s very difficult to master. “You have to adapt very quickly. I cracked the code in terms of split-second decision-making. It’s about keeping your weaknesses hidden, and having a Plan B or C if things don’t go your way.” He’s good at reading his opponents, he says. “I get a read on how they are thinking after five or six points”. And he’s especially proud of his backhand flick. “I love how it creates pressure on the opponent, and it’s really deceptive”.
Bigger wins followed: At the World Pickleball Championship in Indonesia in 2023 and the Hong Kong Pickleball Championship in 2024.
Paddles up
When he completed his MBA two years ago, Mehta knew there was no way he’d be able to juggle a corporate job and pickleball. He had to choose. In India, taking up any sport full time is a risk, a new one, even more so. “But the field was less crowded, so I had first-mover advantage. There are still very few Indian players who are ready to drop everything for pickleball. I could count them on my fingers.” One of these players is Mehta’s sister, Naimi, 25, who won the women’s doubles title in the fourth IPA Nationals.
The flip side? There was no playbook to follow, no coaches to hire.Mehta studied fellow players on the court and watched videos of global greats such as the US’s Benjamin Ellingham Johns, who ranks No 1 in the world for mixed doubles, and Hayden Patrick, a 20-year-old pro US player. “The moment I step on court, hold the paddle, hear the sound of the ball, I hit my flow state,” he says.
The Pickleball World Cup is just three years old. In that time, India has seen public interest and corporate sponsorship grow. There’s no government backing yet, but Mehta is confident that will change. “Also, in the next five years, I feel there is good money to be earned from the sport,” he says. “The tournament prize money pool is getting bigger, international brands are looking for budding Indian players to sponsor, and there are pickleball leagues being set up.” He was recently picked up for ₹21 lakh by the Chennai Cool Cats for the Global Pro Pickleball League.
Game on
The sport has its detractors. “People call pickleball an old man’s sport,” he says. “They say that it has no effect on your physical strength. It’s easy to feel that way when you’ve only seen amateurs or elderly people play.” Mehta knows how demanding it can be. He practises for three to four hours every day, followed by another hour and a half at the gym. “I have to do drills, work on my gameplay.”
In India, pickleball is still largely a privilege of those who can afford fancy club memberships. Mehta wants that to change. “We need more courts, so more people can come and play.” But he’s glad he went all in. “My friends from engineering and MBA usually see my world as the more exciting one. They’ll say, ‘You’ve travelled to so many countries, you’re doing so well’. I get that they see it as me being lucky enough to pursue my passion.” Travel means being homesick more often than athletes admit. And Mehta still isn’t sure where pickleball will take him. “I have to stay fit and injury-free, and a season can swing between good and bad months.” He enjoys the moments of normalcy when he’s back home. “I am usually running errands or going to the bank.”
From HT Brunch, September 12, 2026
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