Seventeen-year-old Anna Leigh Waters reached incredible heights in professional pickleball before she even graduated high school.

Today, she arrives at every tournament as the No. 1 seed in every division she enters and the most likely player in the field to win a Triple crown.

But of course, Waters' success didn't come overnight. While she might be one of the youngest pro athletes to ever dominate her respective sport, her tournament debut at age 11 was a little bit different than what she has experienced in recent years. 

“When I first started playing in pickleball tournaments, they were temporary nets and taped courts. They didn’t feel as big and grand as they do now when we’re playing in these huge stadiums,” said Waters. “But, it was still a pro event.”  

After Waters and her mom, Leigh, evacuated their Florida home in 2017 due to Hurricane Irma, they played pickleball for the first time with Waters’ grandparents in Pennsylvania. And they were hooked.

Anna Leigh and Leigh started consistently playing with the Delray Beach Pickleball Club. Two months later, they unintentionally found themselves playing at the Delray Beach Gamma Tournament.

“We didn’t sign up to play and we didn’t even want to play in the tournament,” said Waters. “We were just playing pickleball for fun, but all the people in the Delray Beach Pickleball Club said we needed to play this tournament, so they found us partners, signed us up, and we basically just showed up. We didn’t even know what level we were. They just signed me up for the lowest level at 3.0 and they signed my mom up for pro.”

However, in the middle of the tournament, they bumped Waters up to 3.5 since she was clearly playing well.

Leigh went pro in 2018, while Anna Leigh continued to just play for fun. But when Leigh was about to jet off to the Texas Open in Dallas, she received a call that her doubles partner had cancelled. Leigh asked Anna Leigh if she’d like to play with her and she agreed.

“We were thinking of this as something fun to do, and I was just going to fill in for a partner. We actually ended up getting second in the tournament and lost in game three to the team who won in the finals,” shared Anna Leigh.

After that, Leigh said it was time for Anna Leigh to play with the pros. They joined forces in women's doubles, and the mother-daughter duo became the top-ranked tandem in the game.

“What’s crazy is that when my mom and I won silver in the tournament at the Texas Open, I was actually 11 years old. And I was 12 when we beat the number one team in the world. So, a lot of people say I turned pro at 12, but if you count that one tournament, I was 11,” she clarified.

And at that age, Waters had a unique advantage over her fellow competitors. 

“I didn’t really know what was happening, and I think that worked to my advantage because I had no pressure. I was 11 and I was playing all these 30-year-olds. I was just playing with my mom and having fun,” she concluded. “I think that’s why I was playing so well, because I was just having a great time playing, doing what I loved, and being with my mom.”

Looking back at Waters' path to greatness is something special. And the exciting part is that the story is still being written. 

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