- March 28, 2025
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The fun-loving, sometimes-raucous and usually competitive Lakewood Ranch pickleball community was served a big curveball at the end of 2024.
That’s when The Pickleball Club, on Sarasota Center Boulevard, shuttered operations. The company announced the closure on a Dec. 17 LinkedIn post, saying, in part, “it is with great sadness that we must announce that we have closed the company. We did not have sufficient financial resources to continue operations.” (The Pickleball Club founder Brian McCarthy did not respond to multiple phone messages and texts for comment.)
To some club members, based on interviews and dozens of social media posts, the closure wasn’t a surprise, necessarily, given customer service complaints and its high-end country club-like business model.
Yet the closure left a big void for the hundreds of indoor players who relied on the facility to get their pickleball fix — people like Lakewood Ranch Country Club East resident Mike Burzminski, a charter member of The Pickleball Club, which opened in May 2023.
The closure was a gut-punch to Burzminski, and many others. “When we heard about (the closing) we were actually kind of depressed for a few weeks,” he says. “A whole bunch of us were scrambling around going, ‘where are we gonna play pickleball?’”
The 33,393-square-foot facility had 12 championship-grade courts, an indoor players’ lounge observation deck, luxurious locker rooms and more, officials with The Pickleball Club boasted in press statements. Officials said it cost $10 million to $12 million to build.
“I was a legacy member,” Burzminski says. “I remember when it was a dirt field. I really liked what they were offering, and it was right by my house. They built it like the Taj Mahal.”
Memberships started with a $1,000 initiation fee and dues were $100 a month. Burzminski and several other former members of the club, in interviews, emails and social media posts, say prices increased randomly and often, especially on food minimums. One former member, Bob Haskin, says he and his wife ended up paying some $5,000 for the club in a year and he dropped out prior to its closure. “Not too many people can afford to pay that for pickleball, especially when there are all these outside opportunities,” says Haskin, who is president of the The Lakewood Ranch Pickleball Club, an unrelated nonprofit dedicated to teaching and growing the sport.
Yet like a killer dink shot or crafty slice that catches an opponent off guard, the feisty Lakewood Ranch pickleball community is pivoting to other options — while holding out hope for a local savior to rekindle indoor pickleball in the area.
Haskin, Lakewood Ranch’s unofficial pickleball mayor who teaches and plays the sport, says, of course, there are multiple free outdoor options, beyond the dozens of courts in private developments and communities. The list includes Lakewood Ranch Park and what’s informally known as Pompano Park in Sarasota County, behind Robarts Arena on Fruitville Road. The 12 Pompano courts have been a popular option for displaced Lakewood Ranch players. G.T. Bray Recreation Center in west Bradenton has outdoor courts, too, but it’s 22 miles from Lakewood Ranch — a 45-minute drive, at least, in season. Several players say outright that G.T. Bray is too far.
One other outdoor option is coming soon — much closer to home for Lakewood Ranch residents: Manatee County’s new Athletics and Aquatics Center at Premier Sports North Campus. On Rangeland Parkway near the Lakewood Ranch Library, construction on the multisport facility, which will include a competition-sized swimming pool, therapy pool and a geothermal yard, began earlier this year.
The good news? The east Manatee County campus is designed to include 24 pickleball courts — including 14 covered courts. The not-as-good news for those who want to play pickleball today? The courts, and sports facility, won’t be ready until late summer or early fall 2026, county officials say, more than 18 months away.
While Haskin says he enjoys indoor and outdoor pickleball, some people prefer to play exclusively indoors. The weather is one obvious factor, but the indoor feel on the feet and body is better, too, says Pam Williams, a Lakewood Ranch resident and avid pickleball player. “It’s a totally different situation when you play outside,” she says. “You don’t have that consistency outside.”
Indoor pickleball is the name of the game at Dill Dinkers — a Maryland-based franchise pickleball courts business that has captured the attention of many Lakewood Ranch pickleballers. The company, through husband-and-wife franchisees Heather and Tim Dull, opened the first Dill Dinkers in Florida in mid-January, with a location near the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport.
At 500 Tallevast Road, in a former dance studio for the Sarasota Ballet, Dill Dinkers has 11 indoor courts with top-tier court surfaces, a designated dinking court, a state-of-the-art reservation system, a pro shop, a ball machine and a viewing area, the Dulls say in a statement.
More importantly, say Burzminski and Haskin, who have both played at Dill Dinkers, that place puts the focus on the sport — not the add-ons and revenue generators.
“Dill Dinkers is so much different,” says Burzminski, who adds that the first few weeks of playing at Dill Dinkers — 13 miles from Lakewood Ranch — have been like days of pickleball past. “It’s no frills. They have one bathroom and one check-in desk. It’s just pickleball courts, and those courts are wonderful.”
The Dulls say the timing — of opening a month after The Pickleball Club closed — was fortuitous. “There has been a giant outpouring of support from Lakewood Ranch,” Heather Dull says. “It was like a reunion on the court. People were crying and hugging each other.”
Dill Dinkers has more frills than Burzminski lets on. It has multiple event spaces, leagues for all ages, clinics, private and semi-private lessons and places to socialize, say the Dulls. It costs $45 a month to be a member, or $450 for the year, and there are hourly fees for court time, $32 (for four players) for members, $64 for non-members. The Dulls say they want to encourage non-members to come check out the sport, so it’s not a members-only model.
The Dulls, who have worked in finance and owned math and reading learning centers in Maryland, became Sarasota snowbirds during the pandemic. Like many others, that’s also when they picked up pickleball. They actually listened to investor presentations from the founders of The Pickleball Club, but, says Heather Dull, “we didn’t think they had the right model to be successful.”
The Dulls are also opportunistic. They have been following the online rumors of maybe a pickleball investor buying the closed club space in Lakewood Ranch and restoring it — under a different business model. The Dulls have development rights to open 10 more Dill Dinkers locations from Bradenton to north Fort Myers. “We are evaluating that opportunity,” Dull says. “We are interested in that space. We are interested in being in the Lakewood Ranch community.”
