PPA Tour Founder and CEO, Connor Pardoe, recently appeared on the Pickleballers podcast to discuss how he took his love for America's fastest-growing sport and built the world's best professional circuit from the ground up.

This is the PPA Tour’s origin story.

Pardoe grew up playing basketball and quickly caught the pickleball bug when he first played with his aunt in 2018. After that, he convinced his dad to play, too, and they traveled across the country competing in regional tournaments. 

“We were traveling for a work trip and we saw that there was a pickleball tournament in Atlanta and there were 400 players. I’d just gone to the tennis US Open and I had a great time, but I remember watching Simone [Jardim], Lucy [Kovalova], Irina [Tereschenko], and Anna Leigh [Waters], who was 12 years old at the time and playing with her mom Leigh,” shared Pardoe. “I remember watching them play, and I turned to my dad and said, ‘I had more fun watching that pickleball match than I did at the US Open.’ I loved it.”

That got Pardoe thinking.

“As an entrepreneur, I immediately started obsessing about it and running math on the back of my napkin, doing research, and finding out who all the best players were,” he said. “I wanted to host four or five tournaments a year and call it the PPA Tour.” 

Pardoe wanted the top players to participate to make a big splash.

“I messaged the pros on Instagram who were the best at the time: Matt Wright, Lucy Kovalova, Ben Johns, Irina Tereschenko,” mentioned Pardoe. “I said, ‘If you agree to come to all five of our tournaments, we’ll give you a $1,000 appearance fee to come.’”

The pros quickly jumped on board since those numbers were unheard of back then.

The PPA held its inaugural tournament in early 2020 at the Mesa Tennis Center in Arizona with 650 amateurs and a $50,000 prize purse for the pros as well.

“From that time, it was never ‘This is what I want it to look like in five years.’ Instead, it was a little bit bigger, a little bit better, try and grow a little bit each and every week, try to learn. The stuff you do well, try and do more of it. The stuff you screw up on, try and do less of it. Surround yourself with people who want to work hard and want to do the right thing,” said Pardoe.

“But at the same time, you have to have tunnel vision because no one wants you to succeed. Everybody wishes it was their idea, and everyone is so quick to point out the wrong, the bad decisions you make. I surrounded myself with people that I knew were going to work hard, care, and are good people. Doing that led us to where we are today,” he added.

And perhaps the most impressive fact of all is that Pardoe started the PPA Tour at only 23 years old, and he had two sets of twins with his wife, Carly, at home. 

“I love pickleball so much and I just thought it’d be fun to make a pro tour,” he concluded. “I never thought it would change my life in any way.”

To keep up to date on all things pickleball, follow us on Instagram or X (formerly Twitter).