Thursday’s showers created challenges at the Biofreeze USA Pickleball National Championships.

On Wednesday, the day before, play was cruising along, but weather reports loomed large, showing all day rain for Thursday.

In answer to the inclement weather forecasted, the PPA and USAP held an emergency meeting to run through scenarios and planning. With nearly 3,500 participants, even the smallest delays could mean long waits, late nights, and potentially cancelled brackets.

The joint teams ran through several different options for success and made the decision to move everything indoors so play could run without interruption. On Wednesday night, PPA and USAP teams taped dozens of courts indoors, working around Brookhaven’s tennis programming. Wi-Fi was run inside Brookhaven’s two indoor clubs, four pro courts with seating stages and chairs were built out, broadcast cameras and filming setup were transferred, courts were renumbered and designated, and dozens of semi-permanent nets were carried inside and reset.

When setup finished, the facility had 22 indoor courts in the first club and 29 in the second to run the day’s matches on. Amateur and senior pro brackets for Thursday were shortened to one game to 15 points, win by two in the main draw and one game to 11, win by two in the backdraw. To make room for the unexpected pickleball brackets running all day, Brookhaven Country Club canceled all of their indoor programming on Thursday starting from 8:00am.

“We’re committed to finishing our scheduled matches and running as efficiently as possible to get through Thursday’s play, even with the decreased number of courts,” said Bryce Morgan. “The joint teams of PPA, USA Pickleball, and Brookhaven Country Club leapt into action to ensure play could go on and stayed on-site past midnight to execute planning successfully.”

Le Freak’s musical performance on Pickleball Boulevard previously set for Thursday has been rescheduled to 2:00-3:30pm on Friday to avoid the rain. All play is expected to resume outdoors on Friday morning as planned.