World No. 1 Anna Leigh Waters recently appeared on the Pickleballers podcast.

She talked all things pickleball, of course, including what her pro debut was like.  

“At my first tournament, I played 3.0 and I played the women’s division,” shared Waters.  “They had so many complaints because I wasn’t a 3.0 that they bumped me to a 3.5 in mixed.” 

She was only 10 years old at the time, but already showing promise on the court. 

One of the questions Waters gets asked regularly is what took her from a 4.5 to the pro level? Did she change her paddle, did she do more cardio? What was the secret to her elevating her game? 

It was actually prescription glasses. 

“I figured out I needed prescription glasses because I’d been playing without glasses. I wore prescription glasses and I played a 5.0 tournament and we annihilated everyone,” revealed Waters. “Even now, sometimes I’ll play without them and I’m way worse.”

She went on to discuss her first tournament at the pro level. 

“[Leigh Waters] was supposed to play a pro tournament in Texas, and her women’s partner pulled out at the last second and she asked, ‘Anna Leigh, do you want to play with me?’ I played pro in all three divisions,” explained Waters.

Leigh and Anna Leigh ended up facing each other twice in pro women’s singles during that event. 

Anna Leigh won the first time and Leigh won the second. 

“The first time [Leigh] won the first game and then she actually coached me against herself, and I beat her because of her coaching. So then for the finals, [Leigh]’s like ‘I’m not coaching,’” she continued. 

“We were going to dinner before our singles match and she wouldn’t really talk to me at dinner because she said, ‘I need a glass of wine,’ and then we played and she smacked my butt in the final. She beat me in two out of three. I don’t think I won a game. And then she killed me in the game to 15,” she said. 

“It was funny because they had cardboard cutouts of us at the tournament, so then the people who were cheering for my mom had her cardboard cutout and then the people that were cheering for me had my cardboard cutout,” she added. 

That was the first and last singles tournament Leigh Waters ever played. 

Then in women’s, Leigh and Anna Leigh played Lucy Kovalova and Sarah Ansboury in the finals. 

“We won one game, but lost the other two,” said Anna Leigh.

And at that point, Anna Leigh Waters was only 11 years old. It was truly only the start of a life-long road to becoming the most dominant pro pickleball player in the world. 

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