Gates Tennis Center Meets Community Demands

Incorporating Pickleball and Celebrating Tennis

The Gates Tennis Center, built in 1975, is an award-winning public recreation facility that features club-like amenities with an emphasis on affordability and inclusivity, encouraging all Denverites to enjoy a fun and healthy lifestyle. Gates offers innovative and inclusive programming and community outreach that makes the facility a welcoming place for all.

Gates Tennis Center and Pickleball

The Park People’s role at Gates is to help run an excellent public facility that serves the needs of our Denver community. Due to significant community requests for pickleball over the past several years, Gates, with the approval of The Park People and the City, launched a pilot program to explore adding pickleball.

Pickleball has brought at least 3,000 new active participants to our public facility. That is 3,000 additional people now utilizing and enjoying the Gates facility who hadn’t before. In addition to multi-racquet sports enthusiasts, Pickleball has attracted a wide range of people, including families, players who use wheelchairs, the full breadth of age ranges from young children to older adults who can no longer play tennis, and individuals who previously may have been intimidated by tennis. 

The Park People has consulted with the City, the Gates Family Foundation, supporters of Gates, local athletes, and other community members, and the feedback we have received has been overwhelmingly supportive. Gates is a public facility, not a private club, and it is our duty to strive to be welcoming as well as to adapt to the growing and changing needs of the community. We are excited to see current pickleball players become future tennis players and current tennis players become future pickleball players; we know the potential synergies between these two wonderful sports is great.

Gates Tennis Center Hosts the 2022 Colorado State Open

The Park People and Gates Tennis Center are incredibly honored to host the 2022 Colorado State Open September 16th-25th. As an open-to-the-public facility with an eye toward inclusivity, and the longtime organizers of the Colorado State Open, Gates Tennis Center is proud to announce that for the first time in over 50 years, truly ALL Tennis Players are welcome to participate in the Colorado State Open. No membership of any kind is required. And, prize money is available for every winning division.

Gates is excited to make the Colorado State Open better than ever with our new sponsor, and software/platform partner of UTR (Universal Tennis Rating)! UTR has great player-friendly software, independent player ratings for singles and doubles, player ratings that update in real time, and many other exciting forward-thinking features. This system leads the industry in accuracy of true skill.

Want to take place in this historic event? Register here. For more information on the event, check out the Gates Tennis Center website. We hope to see you there!