Racket sports count for the highest contribution of eye injuries in modern sports, so with pickleball on the rise it would be good to address this issue to create a bit more awareness for the need to consider eye protection while playing pickleball.
A standard safety briefing by a pickleball instructor to beginners should mention eye protection but afterwards this is often quickly forgotten about. You might say well the Pros dont use any...yes thats true but those accidents are less likey to happen as the Pros have much better control, but there was an incident dat Lucy Kovalova was struck in her eye by a ball coming of her partners (Simone Jardin) paddle.
Eye injuries often happen as a result of a ball deflection on the injured player side of the court this could be a deflection of your own or your partners paddle, not a direct hit from the opponents and most likely during recreational or lower level tournament play but this is not always the case of course. The most common diagnosis during the follow up period was retinal breaks (20%), (75%) patients sustained a severe injury. (source: BMJ)
So lets talk about what you can do to avoid eye injury, if you Google sports safey glasses you might be shocked by the prices you see, so is there an alternative ooohhh yes there is, first option is using a frame without the glasses in the frame or Google just safety glasses and suddenly you find very inexpensive options which look very similar to the sports safety glasses or even are of the same brand.
Personally I wear safety glasses most of the time, it takes time to get used to but it is better to be safe then to be sorry and being a target myself on court often it can quickly shake you up after being struck by a ball and it can have an effect on your confidence, result in withdrawl from a tournament of suffer lasting eye damage.
Pickleball supposed to be FUN but it is important to be safe so my recomendaion is....considder eye protection while playing pickleball.