I'm David Ferrier in New Zealand are accidentally marooned in America and I want to figure out what makes this country tick.

Now one of the most fascinating things about being in a new country is observing what the people around you are doing with balls.

They say that dogs like balls, but in my experience people like balls way more.

Go to India and they're hitting hard round balls with a bat.

In New Zealand we do that as well,

but we're way more obsessed with tackling players to the ground

so we can steal their oval balls.

In England, they're running around in the grass doing fancy footwork with

their spherical balls and in America they bounce their balls and try and get them through a

small hoop. But I'd heard of a new thing they're doing with balls in America

involving a sport that's been named the

fastest growing sport in the United States.

Fall Saturdays may be for college football, Sundays the NFL, but you better make way for pickleball.

To me, pickleball looks like a cross between tennis, badminton and ping pong,

and the ball involved is hollow, made a plastic, and has holes all over it.

During the pandemic, around 5 million Americans turned to pickle balls to stop themselves

from going insane with boredom.

George Clooney was one of them.

Tom Brady and the Bron James have both bought franchises in various pickleball leagues.

In short, America has gone batshit crazy for pickleball.

So grab that ball and paddle and prepare to play the sport with the silliest name of all the sports because this is the pickleball episode. I'm a fly this bird.

That's down in America.

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