 |
|
« Back |
Post Date: Thursday, May 11, 2023 |
|
|
BallenIsles Country Club’s Andrei Daescu, former professional tennis player, on being drafted into Major League Pickleball, what it means for the club’s program and the sport he thinks might be the best out there. Andrei Daescu made headlines when he was drafted into the first Major League Pickleball teams - he was one of just 32 players included in that draft. Head racquet sports professional at BallenIsles Country Club, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Daescu, a former professional tennis player, started playing pickleball at the club in 2017 and spends a good bit of his time both teaching the game and competing himself. He recently talked with Club Director about his career, his club and what’s become of his favorite sport.
Club Director: Tell us about the road that brought you to BallenIsles.
Andrei Daescu: I was born and grew up in Romania and played a lot of tennis and soccer as a kid. When I was about nine years old, I picked tennis over soccer and got serious about the game. I started spending summers in Germany when I was about 12, studying at different academies, playing in tournaments and traveling. After high school, when I was 18, I was recruited to play at the University of Oklahoma and got a scholarship there. The head coach was John Roddick, Andy Roddick’s brother, and his assistant was also from Romania.
I player there for four years and earned a degree in Human Resources management, and went on to play professional tennis for about five years after that, until I had a shoulder injury and had to stop. I took a job with Jupiter Country Club in south Florida, and in 2017, the head pro position opened at BallenIsles. It’s a very enjoyable job. BallenIsles is a beautiful place with great people - it’s a great company to work for.
CD: How did you go from there to playing professional pickleball?
AD: I started playing pickleball in 2017. It was starting to get popular and we had a couple of members who’d played in different places and wanted to play at the club. So we rolled tape on the tennis hard court and got temporary nets for them and got a group together. They convinced us we should learn and we put together a clinic with some top pros at the time, and we learned the game and started playing for our members. At the clinic, the pros taught us all the rules, scoring and technique. At the end, they did a floor exhibition and I got to play with them. I really enjoyed the game! Two or three weeks after that, I played in my first tournament in Florida. I ended up winning after some close matches and things kind of snowballed from there.
I started teaching pickle ball in late 2018 after I’d played a bunch of tournaments. First, I learned what the game was about and did clinics with some established pros. And we were bale to help the pickleball community grow quite a bit. We went from 15 or 20 people to more than 200 now. The game is very popular and people have really gotten into it. I think the fact that I’m competent at it helps - it gets people inspired. Our players come out and play pretty much every morning. I definitely have the bug.
CD: People might not know there’s a major league for the game. Tell us about Major League Pickleball.
AD: Major League Pickleball started in 2021. The team owners and general managers select the players in the draft. They each chose two male players and two female players to be teammates, and those players play men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles. If a team score is tied, they play a singles tiebreaker. It’s a very exciting format and quite different from the tour format for sure. It attracts a lot of people. The players find it exciting, the spectators find it exciting, and it’s rally scoring which is different from regular scoring. It’s more exciting for fans and keeps the games a little closer in score. There’s lots of adrenaline!
The first season we had three events. In 2022, we had six events. There are a bunch of big-name owners in there: Tom Brady, LeBron James - he owns the Milwaukee Mashers, which is the team I play for. In the Premier Division, we have 12 teams: 24 guys and 24 ladies. It’s very competitive and keeps growing.
CD: Tell us about getting drafted to the professional team - how did that happen?
AD: I was drafted in December of last year; that’s when they redraft teams for the next year. The general managers and owners have background information on all the players from the tours. Each player plays in a tour event and a lot of us have played in past Major League Pickleball events. The draft works just like it does in football or basketball: there’s a first round to a last round. They stream all the matches on YouTube and sometimes on broadcast TV. The owners are really into it. They keep track of all the players and see where everybody is and who might get well together and make a good team.
I think everybody wants to be drafted and wants to be drafted as high on the list as possible. There’s prize money depending on how teams do, and you want your team to do as well as possible. Major League Pickleball gets a lot of exposure- the tour gets good exposure as well, but major league turns a lot of heads.
CD: How have things changed for your since you were drafted?
AD: Things changed a lot! Pickleball kind of started as something to do on the weekends and keep me in shape. I’m training every day, hitting every day, working on conditioning and recovery. Being on the team turned my lifestyle back into being a professional athlete. And it changed our operations, too. I still do a lot of admin work at the club - I run our member-guest events and have events to keep track of. But now I travel a lot and spend a lot of time in planes and airports, and I spend a lot ofttimes in training and getting ready for events.
BallenIsles has been extremely supportive. You have to understand that pickle ball has come across the country like a tsunami. We went from putting tape lines on a tennis court to having our own pickleball facility with nine courts and a $1.3 million investment to make it start of the art. We’re planning to expand it to 15 courts in the next 18 months. The club understands the pickle ball is great and they see value in me competing. People enjoy having lessons and playing with me here, and the club has been very supportive of my traveling and playing in events - a little more than 20 a year. So far, it’s been a win for everybody - the club, me and our members.
CD: Do you think interest has gone up because people know who you are and know they’re learning from and playing with a professional player?
AD: 100%. I played a Major League Pickleball event in Ohio last October and it was on CBS Sports live and a lot of people carried it. And people know I learned to play in clinics here, so we get a lot of people into the game. Numbers are increasing for every kind of clinic out there. We have a local county league that our members compete in and that’s driven the interest quite a bit for sure. It helps expose the club’s program.
CD: So what’s so great about pickleball? What makes you love it?
AD: I love it because it’s a game for everyone. The learning curve for other games is much steeper. It takes people six months to learn to play tennis, but you can play pickle ball and start getting points in a couple of hours. It’s super easy to get into it right away. Mastering the game is difficult, but learning the actual game and picking it up is super easy. It’s much more social than other games - you can go in and out quicker than in tennis so you get a little bit of everything. It’s social, it’s competitive, it’s fun, it’s fast so a really good athlete can have a good time with it, but it’s also something where the person who always struggled with sports can have a really good time, too. And everyone gets a great workout. It just resonates. Pickleball is special.
For me, it’s great to compete and have my body in good shape. And it’s really great to make a living doing what you love. I get to expose a lot of people to the game and see their excitement. In the last three or four years, we’ve built a really nice community at BallenIsles and Palm Beach County in general. We’ve put together leagues that have close to 1,000 people in them now. Between tournaments and events and teaching camps, it’s definitely been extremely well received.
Original article below.
 |
|
|
