Three weeks into World Pickleball Magazine’s Road to the English Open series, the tournament is no longer just a date in the diary. For the players involved, it is beginning to test bodies, confidence, relationships, time and identity.
Three weeks ago, the Road to the English Open felt simple.
Twelve players. One destination. A long runway stretching towards Birmingham and the NEC.
Now it feels heavier than that.
On one side of the country, Sarah Reading sits in her car after league matches replaying missed drops and failed resets in her head, wondering whether she has pushed herself too far by entering 4.0.
Elsewhere, David “Thomo” Thompson is icing an ankle shaped by old football injuries while quietly admitting that “a good week would be to not feel so tired”.
Julie Vickerman rolls her foot over frozen bottles after developing plantar fasciitis, only to discover that slowing down physically may actually improve her pickleball.
Simon Heaps talks about the sport with the urgency of a man who understands exactly how finite time can be.
“There is no tomorrow. It has to be now.”
That line hangs over almost every story in Week Three.
Because the Road to the English Open is no longer simply about preparation.
It is beginning to cost something.
Not dramatically. Not catastrophically. But quietly. Gradually. In ways that feel increasingly recognisable to anybody who has ever tried to pursue something seriously while the rest of life continues moving around them.
The body starts speaking first.
Sarah’s back aches after drilling blocks and long waits between matches. Karen Farnhill is balancing thyroid medication, fatigue and tennis elbow while trying to keep progressing before Birmingham. Kath Knowles is recovering from a second hamstring injury and privately questioning whether retirement from the sport is approaching faster than she wants to admit.
“I question myself every day since the injury about retiring from the game altogether.”
She says it casually. Almost lightly. But the sentence lands heavily anyway.
Kath’s Road to the English Open currently feels, in her own words, “full of potholes”. Physio appointments. Water aerobics. Heat and ice routines. Adjusted exercises. Tiny signs of hope. The emotional uncertainty feels familiar to almost everybody else in the project now, even if their circumstances are completely different.
Because almost all of them are beginning to ask some version of the same question.
Do I actually belong here?
Sarah’s answer changes almost hourly.
This week she completed 764 intense minutes of pickleball across coaching, drilling and league competition before leaving one session wondering whether she could “really play pickleball anymore”.
Not because she wants to stop.
Because she suddenly cares so much.
That distinction matters.
Sarah’s week feels like somebody accidentally discovering elite-level obsession later in life. She now structures days around training blocks, recovery, nutrition, tactical work and AI-generated preparation schedules. She studies Instagram clips. Watches endless pickleball content. Tries to organise drilling around travel schedules and work commitments. Worries about category levels. Questions whether she is genuinely ready for 4.0 competition.
At one point she admits:
“I have a buzz and a fire in my belly.”
At another:
“Am I overstepping the mark?”
Both feelings coexist now.
That emotional contradiction may actually define the entire project.
Laura Yeomans feels it too, from 3,000 miles away.
This week she landed in Canada with a group from her academy, immediately stepping onto the courts at the impressive Court X facility while privately wrestling with whether she should even be competing at 4.5 level at the English Open.
Her confidence has taken a hit after missing out on the PPL draft because her DUPR rating was not high enough.
“I shouldn’t let it get to me as much as it does.”
Again, the honesty is what makes the line work.
Laura’s story this week is fascinating because externally her pickleball life appears to be accelerating. Coaching more players. Running sessions. Travelling internationally to play. Becoming increasingly respected inside the game.
Internally, though, confidence is wobbling.
“Today was the first time this week that I’ve picked up my paddle to play and not coach.”
That single sentence captures one of the hidden tensions inside the project. The more pickleball expands, the harder it becomes for some players to protect the simple joy that brought them into the sport in the first place.
Not everybody is spiralling inward, though.
Stephen Hargreaves’ week felt different.
Lighter. Faster. More upward-moving.
A new training group in Bridlington and Scarborough brought stronger opposition, harder games and eventually something that mattered enormously to him.
A second invite.
It is one of the smallest details in the entire project and one of the most revealing. Anybody who has played competitive sport understands immediately what it means. Acceptance. Recognition. Validation that you can survive at a higher level.
On the drive home, two players texted Stephen to tell him how well he had played.
“It put a smile on my face knowing I was able to hold my own in every match at that level.”
For the first time in the project, Stephen sounds less like somebody hoping to compete and more like somebody beginning to believe he belongs.
Thomo’s story sits at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum.
His week carried the unmistakable tone of somebody who still thinks like an athlete while slowly realising his body no longer negotiates on the same terms.
A singles tournament in Swindon brought flashes of progress, tactical frustration and a quarter-final performance that briefly reminded him of the level he still believes is somewhere inside him.
“The ankle held up. So that was good.”
Tiny sentence. Huge meaning.
Everything around it tells the larger story. The old football injuries. The fatigue. The coaching. The family life. The work commitments. The pickleball machine he is considering buying because organised sessions are becoming harder to access around ordinary life.
“A good week would be to not feel so tired.”
There is no self-pity in the line. Just recognition.
And perhaps that is why it feels so powerful.
Many of the players are beginning to realise that improvement no longer depends entirely on effort. Recovery matters now. Energy matters. Time matters. The body has started entering negotiations.
Julie’s week may be the clearest example of that.
After finally stabilising the serve that has haunted her emotionally for weeks, she developed plantar fasciitis severe enough to force her to reduce movement and training volume.
At first it felt like a setback.
Then something unexpected happened.
By moving less, Julie slowed the game down. By slowing the game down, she started placing the ball more carefully. By placing the ball more intelligently, she started winning more.
“There’s possibly a lesson there.”
Classic Julie. Reflective rather than dramatic.
Her role in the project feels increasingly important because she sees pickleball differently to many of the others. Alongside club sessions, committee meetings and coaching responsibilities, she also volunteers as a tour guide, works with arts organisations and helps visually impaired visitors experience theatre productions through touch tours.
Her background in sports development runs through everything she says. Even now, she talks about other people’s success almost as warmly as her own.
But something is changing.
Reading the updates from the others, especially Simon Heaps, has started altering her own relationship with competitiveness.
“I really probably should be more competitive.”
That sentence may quietly become one of the most important in the whole project.
Because Simon’s influence now stretches far beyond his own story.
At 70 years old, a bilateral amputee and Type 1 diabetic, he talks about pickleball with a kind of urgency that forces everybody else to reassess their own excuses.
“When you start dreaming about pickleball then obsessed pretty much sums up my life.”
The humour is still there. So is the warmth. The jokes about divorce lawyers. The tactical analysis. The concern about exposing partners because of wheelchair mobility.
But underneath it all sits something more confronting.
“The clock is ticking.”
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
And that awareness changes the emotional gravity of everything around him.
Perhaps that is why so many players referenced each other this week.
Emily Williams, balancing motherhood, university work, club responsibilities and league competition, described her Road to the English Open as “organised chaos”. Zoe Ashbridge spoke movingly about feeling as though she is “on borrowed time” with pickleball before fostering children later this year changes the structure of her life completely. Karen talked about scheduling life around practice nights, tournaments and caring responsibilities while trying to keep her own health stable enough to continue progressing.
Nobody is living inside isolation anymore.
The stories are beginning to bleed into one another.
One player’s resilience changes another player’s mindset. One player’s competitiveness exposes another player’s self-doubt. One player’s physical struggle reframes what somebody else thinks is possible.
Three weeks ago, this project looked like twelve people preparing for the English Open.
Now it looks more like twelve people trying to work out what they still want from themselves.
And perhaps that is the real story slowly emerging underneath all of this.
Not medals.
Not DUPR ratings.
Not podium finishes.
Just ordinary people discovering, sometimes uncomfortably, that they care far more than they ever expected to.
If you’re following how the global game is shifting week by week, the World Pickleball Report breaks this down every day in our morning briefing.
For a clearer view of where the sport is heading each month, you can download the latest free issue of World Pickleball Magazine.
Chris Beaumont
Founder and Editor-in-ChiefChris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at…
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