You might be wondering, why was this magnificent, easy-to-use site created?
Great question! My name’s Marco, an amateur pickleball player from Christchurch who didn’t learn to dink for 1.5 years, and I was sick and tired of looking for tournaments to play at by scrolling through various Facebook posts, random websites, reading flyers and posters, or asking other people (ew!) for more info
After years of this torture, I figured enough is enough, and created my own version of what I would’ve wanted to see – a central hub up-to-date pickleball tournament calendar where you can find key details upfront, but follow links for more details / to register. Along with filters, so you can quickly see tournament in your area etc.
I guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted to see this, as as soon as I posted my site to the Pickleball NZ Forum FB page, it got over 100 likes within a day and people commenting that this is what they needed:
“Awesome! I didn’t think I needed it until I had it! 👍” – Alan McMahon
“Fantastic, it’s been a struggle to be honest” – Duane Cameron
“I hate you” - Anon
That was in 2025, and what started as a small hobby site has now ballooned into tens of thousands of visitors, hundreds of newsletter subscribers, and in 2026 we can safely say NZ Pickleball Tournaments (NZPT) is the largest pickleball tournament directory in NZ
What’s cool is that this is entirely community-driven, organisers and pickleball players can submit their own tournaments – and the more tournaments that are added, the more organisers and pickleball players will continue to visit the site to see what’s going on aka. a self-sustaining continuous loop
While we remain independent, this exponential growth has led to NZPT being directly referred to by Pickleball NZ Association (the national governing body for Pickleball in Aotearoa) as the main source of truth for all confirmed upcoming pickleball tournaments in New Zealand
Proof: https://www.pnza.org.nz/where-to-play/tournaments (see screenshot below)
..and we remain diligent to NOT include tournaments where details are still to be updated, as we want people to be able to plan accurately (otherwise organisers may submit dates early before they've confirmed details, which may prevent others from using the same dates, even if they do not end up going ahead with it or change the details later on)
Anyway, if you just skipped to the end, the main thing is that I created this site for myself exactly how I’d want to use it, so if other people benefit too, then all the better
Enjoy
