We here at Murmurs from the Losers’ Bracket are delighted to see yet another return of pickleball’s premier troll, Doug Wanoy.
If, like me, you find yourself often reading pickleball-related online postings on social media, you probably have come across some strange posts from a contributor named Doug Wanoy.
I guess you could say that he’s a reliable breath of foul air.
Doug Wanoy isn’t his real first or last name. “Doug” is actually a 64-year-old retiree named Greg – I’m preserving a little of his anonymity here – who is an avid pickleball player in Raleigh, North Carolina.
A few years ago, this clever wordsmith branched out from just playing the game to writing about pickleball in a most unorthodox way, by creating a fictitious character who seeks advice for his imaginary issues.
The guy behind Doug Wanoy isn’t really asking for advice. He’s just winding up readers, trying to get them upset by the general vibe of creepiness that underlies his posts. If he does it just right, and he almost always does, those readers feel compelled to blast him in the comments section.
Trying to get a rise out of somebody in this way is known as “trolling”, and if you were paying attention, you’d see that Doug Wanoy is, paddles down, the most accomplished pickleball troll who has ever set foot on a Facebook group.
His posts often find that sweet spot between ridiculousness and believability. It’s probably an indictment of the overall lack of civility in pickleball that so many readers actually believe Doug Wanoy’s posts to be sincere.
Here’s one from a couple of years ago:
Our group has four courts which need portable nets setup and taken down each night. Each new member is required to attend a two hour training seminar on the net assembly, disassembly and proper storage.
I usually show a video, have a Q and A session, paper test and then evaluate the live assembly, disassembly and storage of each trainee.
After successfully passing the training course each new member is given the combination to the net storage unit padlock and then put on our master schedule for net setup. I usually assign a two member team for one week (Monday, Wednesday, Saturday).
The problem is a certain two member team who insist on working net setup together. These two ladies constantly fail to have the nets ready to go at our 6 pm start, nets are not at proper height, nets are not in the proper spots and the nets are improperly stored.
I conducted a routine spotcheck on the net storage unit and noticed that these women mixed net pieces (each net has designated numbers from 1 to 4).
I also watched the video surveillance camera footage and observed that they arrived over seven minutes late and were standing around talking until another member arrived and helped. I spoke to our president who seemed hesitant about suspending them both but we finally agreed to retraining.
I did not show our president the video footage because I want to keep the covert camera a secret at this time. I would appreciate if groups could send me their portable net policies and their training curriculum.
As in most of his made-up pickleball situations, he solicits the opinion of readers. Hundreds usually chime in, and the consensus is that he should get a life.
This can be great fun, and many pickleball readers have come to recognize his game and appreciate his brand of humor. But some sites don’t appreciate the troll, and his posts get taken down occasionally.
I’ve written about Doug Wanoy’s work before. And if you’d like to see more of the kind of posts he would write, here are some of examples:
But I was sad to see that Doug Wanoy had moved on, venturing away from pickleball for the past couple of years to inject the same kind of humor to an odd collection of other interests – including youth wrestling, metal detecting hobbyists, and national politics – and then to deal with the death of his longtime wife.
He’s back. At least for now. Doug Wanoy ended his pickleball drought in October by posting this:
“I live right by a public pickleball court. I have a fenced-in yard with several No Trespass signs.
To date I have accumulated around 122 balls that landed in my yard in only 1.5 years. Most are new and labeled ONIX Dura Fast 40 and Selkirk Pro S1.
A pickleball group of young ladies asked if they could buy their balls back (labeled with their HS logo). What would be a fair price per dozen?
I don’t want to rip them off but I would like to make a decent profit.”
The post drew hundreds of comments and 2.4 million views on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
I got in touch with Greg, aka Doug, to see if this meant he would become a frequent pickleball troll again.
“I don’t have a plan to write these things,” he said. “If I told myself I have to sit down and come up with something, I couldn’t do it.”
He does still play pickleball quite a bit, which serves as a constant source of inspiration for another Doug Wanoy sendup.
This new post, he said, came from a recent time when he was playing pickleball in West Virginia, and a kind woman who lived next to the courts would sit and watch the games, applaud good plays on the courts, and throw back errant balls that landed in her yard.
Greg thought: What would “Doug Wanoy” do if he lived next to the courts? He would keep the balls and charge players to get them back.
So, he sat down and wrote the post about the guy asking readers how much he should charge the local high school kids to buy back their pickleballs that landed in his yard.
“There really are people out there who would do that,” Greg said.
He was happy to see that he hadn’t lost his knack for upsetting pickleball players who read his post, and couldn’t stop themselves from telling off Doug Wanoy.
“I can’t believe you posted this,” one reader wrote. “You are a massive piece of (expletive deleted), and curmudgeon of epic proportions who should get hit in the eye with a pickleball every day. Is it fun being a real-life Grinch who is charging children for their $3 balls?”
That’s music to Doug Wanoy’s ears.
“I don’t mind it when people annihilate me and call me names,” he said.
MURMURS FROM THE LOSERS’ BRACKET
Read past editions of Murmurs from the Losers’ Bracket, including:
- Oh, the Horror! Playing with a Pickleball Partner who won’t Move Up
- Not a Softie When it Comes to Pickleball with a Foam Ball
- Do Pickleball Prayers Get Answered?
- Ten Tips for Being “Nice” at Pickleball
- Attention Pickleballers: Be On The Lookout For “Ball Blowers”
- The Etiquette Crisis with “Open Play”
- Lob into the Sun? Maybe, Maybe Not
- Mastering the Diplomacy of Round-Robin Scheduling
- Confessions of a Paddle Addict
Frank Cerabino is a long-time columnist for the Palm Beach Post in Florida, a pickleball addict like the rest of us, and a newly published author. Check out Frank’s newly released book, I Dink, Therefore I Am: Coming to Grips with My Pickleball Addiction (available on Amazon and a great read (or gift!) for any pickleball player), for pickleball tips and laughs!
