Pickleball Eye Injuries Rise Sharply, Prompting Ottawa Players to Adopt Protective Goggles

On an Ottawa pickleball court, a player pulls on a pair of lens-less goggles before the first serve. Friends who don't play tend to laugh at them, according to a player named Himes, who is quoted in the Toronto Sun's report. Then those friends try the game, see how fast it moves, and put the goggles on too. Another player, identified as Hines in a separate line of the same article, says she is seeing more people put on protective glasses before they step onto the court, and she calls that a good sign.

The trend has a medical backdrop. A recent study in JAMA Ophthalmology found that pickleball-related eye injuries have risen at an "alarming rate" over the past four years, as the sport's popularity has exploded. The authors listed retinal detachment, orbital fracture, globe trauma and hyphema among the injuries. They came from direct hits by pickleballs, strikes from paddles, and falls. The authors recommended standard guidelines for eye protection to bring the numbers down.

Ottawa optometrist Harry Prizant agrees. He plays both pickleball and squash, and he knows what a fast ball can do when players are moving and standing relatively close together. In his telling, a pickleball is almost exactly the size of the eye's orbit. A ball coming straight at a player can displace the eye within seconds, he said, and the eye can be lost. He said he has seen it, along with a lot of trauma, bruising and retinal detachment. Prizant never plays without eye protection and recommends the same to every patient who plays.

The scale of the sport helps explain the numbers. Pickleball Canada says about 1.54 million Canadians played as of January 2025, a 57 per cent increase since 2022. That growth has brought friction. The City of Ottawa developed a pickleball strategy to manage demand for courts and to address noise and tension between tennis and pickleball players. In 2023, after neighbours complained about noise, the city told the Manotick Tennis Club that pickleball would no longer be allowed on its converted outdoor courts at Centennial Park.

Eye injuries are not the only ones on the rise. Falls and other injuries are increasing as more people take up the game. But eye injuries draw particular attention because they are largely preventable and the outcome can change a life.

Diana Dowthwaite, president of the Ottawa Pickleball Association, has watched the growth up close. The association is in its 12th year and has 650 members, a number she says "could be in the thousands" if the city had more places to play. "The biggest issue is a lack of venues," she said. The association does not require safety eyewear, but it extremely strongly recommends it, makes members aware of the risks, and helps by ordering glasses and offering member discounts.

Dowthwaite's own habits changed after an incident involving a friend's husband. He always wore protective eyewear, but after a break one time he forgot to put his glasses back on and took a ball to the eye. She said the injury cost him 50 per cent of the vision in that eye. She had not worn glasses before that. Now she puts them on with her sneakers and says she will never play without them. She said members have been hit in the eye and there have been many close calls. Some who were wearing glasses still ended up with bruising around the eye, though without direct damage to it.

She also described the shift in her own events: if 15 people are playing, she said, 13 are certain to be wearing glasses. She considers that encouraging because she expects the risk to grow. Paddles are becoming more sophisticated, faster and more powerful, she said, and players stand close together. A turned head, a slower reflex, or a ball deflected off a partner can be enough to cause harm to someone without glasses. Whether formal eyewear guidelines follow the study's recommendation is the thing to watch.