TTDI Residents Push Back Against Planned Pickleball Courts

By Danial Martinus  •  26 Feb 2026 in News

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The TTDI Residents’ Association (RA) is pushing back against plans to build four outdoor pickleball courts along Jalan Burhanuddin Helmi, right next to Menara KEN.

The proposed site, which used to be a parking lot (and a gas station long before that), sits directly behind homes on Lorong Burhanuddin Helmi 1, close enough that any rally can be heard very clearly.

The sport itself isn’t the problem, it’s the obnoxiously loud “pops”

If you’re not familiar with pickleball (though you’ve probably at least seen it somewhere on social media), it’s a sport that blends elements of tennis, badminton, and table tennis. Players use a solid paddle to volley a hard plastic ball to the opposing team, and vice versa.

One thing that sets the sport apart is the high-pitched “pop” that’s created when a paddle hits the ball. It’s no where near as quiet as the felted thud of a tennis ball or the softer contact of a badminton shuttlecock.

RA spokesman Khairudin Rahim argues that the noise generated from these pops would be constant as opposed to sporadic thuds like in other similar sports, potentially from early morning to late evening.

For nearby households with young children studying for exams, or simply people who just want a peaceful night, the repetitive pops could become more than a mild irritation. And there’s some science to back up that concern.

It’s not just volume

Singapore-based English news network, Channel News Asia (CNA), conducted sound level experiments with community pickleball courts, reeling in the expertise of audio engineering professor, Gan Woon Seng.

The court in question was just 90 metres from an apartment building. Gan used specialised equipment to measure the psychoacoustic metrics of pickleball versus other sports like badminton, basketball, and football. He placed his equipment in the third, 12th, and 25th floors of the nearby apartment block.

Pickleball ended up being the loudest (or most easily perceived by the human ear) at 18 sone. Sone is a unit of measurement that more clearly factors in how humans hear things, as opposed to decibels.

The second loudest sport was basketball at 11 sone. Quite a big difference, considering the fact that a normal conversation between two people only ranges from 4 to 8 sone, according to Gan. Football and badminton, on the other hand, didn’t even register.

From the third floor of the building, pickleball reached a level of 22 sone, making it incredibly loud (and probably really annoying to people who live on that floor). It’s the equivalent to sitting in a fully-packed restaurant. Watch the experiment here.

Play in sound-insulated facilities, RA says

Khairudin has suggested that if plans to build the pickleball courts go on, the sport should be held indoors in sound insulated facilities, so as not to disturb the surrounding peace. Open-air courts, he argues, are simply too exposed for such a tightly packed residential area.

According to the RA, DBKL has issued a stop-work order on the proposed site, following their protest.

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