Ahead of the recent Thanksgiving holiday, several pros shared on camera what they’re thankful for.

Their responses—ranging from lighthearted to serious—were compiled into a social media video posted on the PPA Tour’s Instagram account.

The standout moment came from Jay Devilliers, who recounted a harrowing incident that nearly cost him his life.

"[I’m thankful for] life in general. I almost died a few years back. I had a bad accident. I actually have a skull fracture that goes 12 cm up north like that, and I didn’t know if I was going to be alive," he explained in the clip. "I’m just thankful to be here, and now I'm a professional athlete playing pickleball. Life cannot be better than that."

The accident Devilliers was referencing occurred in the summer of 2011 while he was training at the top-rated Bruguera Tennis Academy in the Barcelona suburb of Santa Coloma de Cervelló.

He was just 16 and a half when it occurred.

"We were at the pool inside the academy, and an incident happened while I was playing with my friends. We jumped in the pool, like fighting for one of those plastic balls, and the pool was designed as a diamond, so it's deep in the middle, but then it has stairs inside the pool," began Devilliers, in a phone conversation this past Friday.

"If you think of a pool that is rectangular, on the edges, there is like a little stair, so you can step on it and then get out from any position all around the pool. I didn't know it was all around this pool, too, and when we jumped in, I was close to the edge, and when I dove, I hit my head on that edge."

There were immediate indications that Devilliers was in urgent need of medical care.

The situation was escalating quickly.

"I was able to come back up to the surface, and I remember saying, 'Hey, I'm feeling very dizzy,' and then I started bleeding from my ears and nose, and so they got me out," he recalled. "After that, I kind of had no feeling in my lower body. The medical team came and they all freaked out, and then the ambulance came, picked me up, and we headed directly to the hospital at that point. It was pretty crazy."

Doctors immediately set to work, assessing the full extent and nature of his injuries.

Naturally, Devilliers was frightened.

"The first thing was to make sure that I wasn't a paraplegic because I had no feeling in my legs. The shock itself actually paralyzed my muscles, but it wasn't like my vertebrae were fractured, so that was a good thing. It was just the shock itself that was causing it. When they figured that out, they knew I had severe internal bleeding, and because it's the skull, they weren't able to do anything. The bleeding had to stop on its own. If it didn't, it could lead to potential brain damage," he recounted.

"I was fortunate that everything settled and my body did the right thing. I stayed hospitalized for another month, and then I was transferred back to my parents in France by ambulance. I could not fly because the atmospheric pressure wasn't good for me."

Fourteen years later, Devilliers continues to feel the lingering effects of the skull fracture.

It's a constant reminder of the accident.

"The skull is a flat bone, and flat bones never heal, so I still have the five-inch fracture from my eyebrows going north along the cranium," he revealed. "I am not affected directly, like I don't have pain if I touch my head or anything like that, but I have headaches in the morning—sometimes very light, sometimes heavy. That has always been the case since that happened."

Looking back on his time in the hospital is difficult.

There were moments when he thought he was done for.

"I could understand what the doctors were saying. The first thing they said was 'He's going to be a paraplegic most likely' because when they touched my legs, I had no feeling. I'm listening to this, and I'm an athlete. My dream at that time was to become a professional tennis player. I'm like, 'What am I going to do if I'm never able to walk again?' You're thinking the worst, but what can I do? I'm in pain. It's so depressing. Then they come up two hours later after doing all the tests and say it's because of the shock, and it's almost like a release. I'm like, 'Oh, I'm going to be able to play tennis again!' At that point, that was my main concern," said Devilliers.

"Then he goes to my mom, and he's talking in front of me, and he says, 'If the bleeding doesn't stop, his brain will be really damaged, so we potentially have to perform a very critical surgery.' That's not a surgery they like to do, so they decided to wait for a little bit and hope for the best. I was lying there in pain, my head was pounding constantly, and I was just thinking about my future. 'Did I just mess up everything just playing in a pool? It's like I just wasted everything here for a game with my friends.' That was kind of the thought process happening for me."

Luckily, Devilliers pulled through and recovered.

Fortune smiled on him.

"A few months later, everything was fine, and then reflecting on life in terms of how fortunate I am, it could have been so much worse. I could have literally potentially never recovered from that," mentioned Devilliers. "I feel like any young person feels a little bit unbeatable, indestructible, invincible, and I felt like all that was just 'No, I'm not invincible. I could literally be broken right now.' I felt much more humbled, thankful, and fortunate for all I have."

The 30-year-old Frenchman certainly has much to be grateful for today.

Along with a thriving professional pickleball career, Devilliers and his wife, Aleksandra, have four children, Danilo (8), Mateo (6), Leonardo (3), and Viktorija (5 months), and proudly reside in Wichita, KS.

"Every morning when I wake up, I have that reminder sometimes with some headaches that kind of tells me like, 'You can't complain about anything. Life is good. You kind of got a second chance.' That's why I'm probably one of the most annoying players, like I'm always high-energy and I talk a lot, but I'm just happy to have all this nowadays where I could have been on a completely different path," he concluded.

"And what I mean about "annoying" is that I joke a lot and don't take myself too seriously all the time, and I can talk a lot of trash. I feel like life is all about that, being happy. We all go through tough times, and some people go through tougher times than others. It's easy to see the dark side rather than the positive,  but at the end of the day, you've got to find joy in everything you do and be thankful for everything."

Devilliers’ ordeal offers a powerful reminder of how quickly everything can change.

What could have been a tragic ending instead became a defining beginning, shaping the outlook he carries with him both on and off the court.