"Open to the public on a first come, first serve basis." That is the entire policy at one pickleball location in Pinehurst. Less than two miles away, a second location asks for a $15 recreation registration before you can book a court. A third asks for a country club membership, and even then you are sharing time with members who have been playing there since before pickleball had a name recognizable outside a retirement community.
If you have searched for pickleball courts in Pinehurst and come away more confused than when you started, that is not a research failure on your part. Directory sites list five courts, or twelve, or two, depending on which one you check, and none of them are wrong. They are just each describing a different piece of a system that runs on three separate sets of rules.
Why the Court Count Never Adds Up
The confusion comes from treating pickleball access in Pinehurst as one pool of courts when it is actually three distinct systems stacked on top of each other: a free municipal court that anyone can walk onto, a fee-based municipal gym that requires a short registration, and a private club complex that requires membership or a member's invitation. A directory that only sees the private complex will report twelve courts. One that only sees the municipal gym will report two. Neither is measuring the whole picture, and neither tells you which one you can actually use tonight.
Here is how the three break down.
| Location | Setting | Courts | Access | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Wilkison Tennis Courts, Rassie Wicker Park | Outdoor, village park | Shared tennis and pickleball lines | Open to the public, first come, first served | Free, including equipment checkout |
| Cannon Park Community Center, Rattlesnake Trail | Indoor gym | Two courts lined into the gymnasium | Village recreation registration | $15 per six months for residents, $30 for non-residents, $7 drop-in |
| Pinehurst Country Club, No. 6 complex | Outdoor, private club | Twelve dedicated asphalt courts | Membership, or a guest of a member or resort stay | Membership required |
The Free Tier: Rassie Wicker Park
The Andrew Wilkison Tennis Courts sit inside Rassie Wicker Park at 10 Rassie Wicker Drive. The courts are open to the public on a first come, first serve basis, unless reserved for private play, and run from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. If you show up without a paddle, that is not a problem. Tennis and pickleball rackets and balls are available for checkout through the Village Parks and Recreation Department, and lights at the courts can be switched on and run on a one hour timer for anyone playing past dusk.
This is the version of pickleball in Pinehurst that costs nothing and asks nothing of you beyond showing up and waiting your turn if someone got there first. It is also the version that most of the online directories undercount, because a shared tennis and pickleball facility does not fit neatly into a pickleball-specific listing.
The Municipal Tier: Cannon Park's Indoor Gym
A different kind of court sits inside the Cannon Park Community Center on Rattlesnake Trail. The $4.9 million, 19,555-square-foot center includes a full-size gymnasium with court lines for basketball, volleyball, and pickleball, which means the two indoor pickleball courts here share space with other village programming rather than standing on their own.
Access runs through a modest village registration rather than a club application. Players register as a local resident for $15 per six months, or as a non-resident for $30 per six months, and a drop-in rate of $7 per day is available for anyone who wants to try it once before committing. This is worth knowing because online listings often flatten this into a generic "membership required" tag, which makes an indoor recreation gym sound like it belongs in the same category as a private country club. It does not. Pickleball paddles and balls, along with horseshoes, shuffleboard, and bocce equipment, are available for free checkout during business hours at the Parks and Recreation office, the same office that handles the Wicker Park checkout, so a single stop covers both courts.
The indoor setting matters for a practical reason beyond weather. A wood gym floor plays differently underfoot than outdoor asphalt, and for anyone managing knees or hips, that difference is often the deciding factor in choosing this option over the free outdoor courts.
The Membership Tier: Behind the Gate at No. 6
The largest concentration of courts in Pinehurst sits behind a different kind of door entirely. The Pinehurst pickleball courts are located in the Pinehurst No. 6 complex, next to the main clubhouse, and the facility includes twelve dedicated outdoor asphalt courts with permanent lines and nets, available only to members. Guests can play by calling ahead about rates if they are staying at the resort or accompanying a member.
Pickleball arrived at the resort in 2012, well ahead of the sport's national surge, and the program has grown into something closer to a full department than a side activity. The courts are managed by head pro Aimee Bonnell, who leads instruction, tournaments, and resort programming alongside assistants Hailee and Sean.
That infrastructure is why national tournaments land here. The World Pickleball Tour is returning to the No. 6 complex on October 10 and 11, 2026, for its Pinehurst Open. Brackets run from the 3.0 to 5.0 skill range across age divisions from 19 and up through 70 and up, and entry requires a $70 registration fee plus a $30 fee for each event a player enters. You do not need a club membership to register for the tournament itself, which makes it one of the few times a year that non-members get meaningful access to these twelve courts without a member's sponsorship.
Matching the Court to the Game You Actually Want
Once the three tiers are laid out side by side, the choice mostly makes itself depending on what you are optimizing for on a given day.
- Free and flexible, weather permitting: Rassie Wicker Park. No registration, no fee, and equipment is available if you forgot yours.
- Air conditioning, a forgiving floor, or a rainy afternoon: Cannon Park Community Center. The $7 drop-in rate is a low-commitment way to test whether the indoor surface suits your game before paying for a six-month registration.
- Tournament-level courts, coaching, or a full slate of twelve dedicated surfaces: the Pinehurst Country Club complex at No. 6, through membership, a member's invitation, or a resort stay.
- Watching or entering competitive play without a membership: the World Pickleball Tour Pinehurst Open on October 10 and 11, 2026, which opens the private complex to registered non-member players for the weekend.
None of these tiers is objectively better than the others. They exist for different reasons, serve different budgets, and solve different problems depending on whether you want a quick evening game, a reliable indoor option, or serious court time with instruction attached. What changes the experience is knowing which door you are walking up to before you get there with a paddle in hand and find out the hard way.
If you are already living in Pinehurst and building out the parts of daily life that make a neighborhood feel like home, from where you play to where you eat to how you spend a Tuesday evening, that kind of local detail tends to matter more than any single listing photo ever could. Rose A Ward works with people at every stage of that process, from those settling in to those weighing a next move, and is always glad to talk through what makes a particular pocket of Moore County fit the life you are trying to build. Let's Connect.
