Pickleball has exploded in popularity in the last decade as a variation of tennis that’s easier on bodies and simpler to pick up for people who want to try something new. When comedy writer Sean Clements heard about a local turf war involving the low-impact sport, his brain started clicking.
“A friend of mine who was involved in the L.A. Tennis Center was trying to get them to add more pickleball courts,” he says. “They only had one, and he wanted to expand, and was talking about all of these contentious meetings and how passionate — and sort of psychotic — everyone was on both sides of it. And I thought like, ‘OK, well, here’s a good backdrop and central conflict.’”
The result is “The Dink,” a new Apple TV+ original movie debuting Friday on the platform. It stars “New Girl” alum Jake Johnson as a past-his-prime tennis pro Dusty Boyd who is encouraged to take up pickleball after he suffers an injury. Though he scoffs at the sport, he soon discovers a community that embraces him, including a friendly woman (Mary Steenburgen) who takes him under her wing. Along the way, his father (Ed Harris) tries to keep pickleballers from further encroaching on his tennis club.
That storyline hit close to home for Clements, a high school tennis player who was having difficulties when he revisited the sport in his 30s. A few friends suggested pickleball could be gentler on his body, and he resisted, but when a writer friend brought him to play with a big group, he was all in.
