For almost twenty years, the racquet facility at Ventana Canyon Club and Lodge has carried one label. Tennisresortsonline.com has named it a Top 100 Tennis Resort in the World every year since 2008, and that ranking still hangs over how most members describe the place. Ask a longtime resident what happens on those courts and the answer comes back automatically: tennis.
Walk over and count. The club's own membership page, updated this summer, lists 15 lighted hard courts on the property. Seven of them are for tennis. Eight are for pickleball. The sport that used to get a couple of taped-off lines on a spare tennis court now has more dedicated real estate than the game the resort built its national reputation on.
The Number the Rankings Don't Show
A tennis ranking measures history. A court count measures what people are actually doing on a Tuesday morning, and at Ventana Canyon those two things have quietly split apart.
| Sport | Dedicated lighted courts | National recognition |
|---|---|---|
| Tennis | 7 | Top 100 Tennis Resort in the World, every year since 2008 |
| Pickleball | 8 | No comparable award category exists yet |
The award still points at tennis because pickleball has not been around long enough at this level to accumulate the same kind of decade-spanning accolade. The court count points somewhere else. A resident who joined the club for tennis in, say, 2015 and hasn't set foot on the pickleball side is standing in the smaller half of the facility now, not the bigger one.
A Different Title on the Same Job
The club didn't just add courts. It changed the title of the person running them. Jonas Ehrlin came back to Ventana Canyon this year, and he came back as Director of Racquet Sports, not Tennis Professional. That distinction matters more than it sounds. Ehrlin held the tennis pro job here from 1995 to 2002, left, and returned to a role that now formally covers both games under one person instead of splitting them between separate hires.
Ehrlin is Swedish, came to the United States to play for Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, and became the winningest player in the school's history and in the Big Sky Conference, a record that earned him a spot in the Weber State Athletics Hall of Fame. That's the resume the club is putting in charge of pickleball now, not just tennis. The title change is the club's own admission that racquet sports here means more than one sport.
Day-to-day pickleball instruction runs through pro Brian Branscome, who offers private and group lessons Monday through Saturday, plus organized team events and competitions. The two-pro structure, Ehrlin overseeing racquet sports broadly and Branscome running pickleball specifically, is itself a sign of how much staffing the club now dedicates to a game that didn't have a pro shop line item a decade ago.
The Week, If You Actually Play
None of this means much until you know when to show up. Here's the rhythm the club actually runs, based on its posted schedule:
- Tuesday and Friday mornings, 7:30 to 9:00 a.m., there's a structured learn-to-play session for people still working on fundamentals and match play.
- Lights are on all eight pickleball courts, so evening play is available well past sunset, not just during the cooler morning hours.
- Weekend drop-in sessions run Thursday evenings or Saturday mornings, with exact timing set by the pro shop week to week.
- Courts are reserved by calling the Racquets Pro Shop directly. There's no self-service online booking system for members to check.
- The pro shop supplies paddles and balls for anyone who shows up without gear, and a ball machine is available for practice for a fee.
That last point is worth sitting with. A club that expects most members to already own equipment doesn't stock loaner paddles as a matter of course. Ventana Canyon does, which tells you the club is still actively recruiting new pickleball players rather than just accommodating an established base.
The Same Story, Just Bigger, Across Tucson
Ventana Canyon isn't reacting to a trend that exists only inside its own gates. Tucson Racquet & Fitness Club, across town, expanded to 22 dedicated pickleball courts and now markets itself as the fastest-growing pickleball club in Southern Arizona. In Oro Valley, a community center pickleball league that struggled to find enough players for a single doubles match six years ago now runs into court shortages on its six courts, two of which were added specifically to keep up with demand.
The national numbers back up what both of those local examples suggest. As of 2024, pickleball had grown 45.8% year over year to roughly 19.8 million players in the United States, a growth rate that outpaces nearly every other participation sport tracked at that scale. Ventana Canyon's eight-court build isn't an outlier decision. It's a private club matching a curve that's already reshaping public courts and gyms all over the region.
What makes Ventana Canyon's version distinct isn't the size of its response. Eight courts is respectable but not remarkable next to TRFC's 22. What's distinct is that the club let pickleball court count pass tennis court count at a facility that has spent almost two decades building its identity, and its national ranking, entirely around tennis. Most clubs riding the pickleball wave don't have twenty years of tennis prestige to weigh against it. Ventana Canyon does, and it still built the extra court on the pickleball side.
What This Means If You Already Have a Key Fob
If you've been a tennis member here for years and never crossed over, the math has changed underneath you without an announcement. There are more places to play pickleball at your own club than there are to play the sport you joined for, and the club just put a Weber State Hall of Famer in charge of both.
The practical upside for a resident is scheduling flexibility that didn't exist in this form a few years ago. Lit courts mean you're not boxed into daylight hours in August. A Tuesday or Friday 7:30 a.m. clinic slot means beginners have a standing on-ramp rather than having to catch a pro between other bookings. And the loaner paddle policy means a guest or a grandchild visiting for the weekend can pick up the game on a whim rather than needing their own gear shipped ahead.
If you've been meaning to try it, the on-ramp is already built. If you've been playing tennis exclusively because that's what the club is known for, it might be worth walking the extra fifty feet to the other side of the facility and seeing what eight courts of demand actually looks like on a Saturday morning.
Ventana Canyon has always been a place people choose for how it fits their life, not just how it fits their calendar. If you're weighing what living inside a community like this actually looks like day to day, Thalia Kyriakis can walk you through it with the same attention to detail she brings to her clients' closings. Reach out to request a confidential consultation or home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
