Maybe it’s the shared first name. Maybe it’s their dominance on the pro pickleball circuit. Either way, World No. 1 women’s doubles duo Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright are the ultimate Galentine’s pairing.

Though they were rivals throughout the 2024 season in women’s doubles, their relationship didn’t exactly begin as a friendship. In a recent appearance on the Pickleballers podcast, Waters opened up about how their partnership evolved over time.

When Waters and Bright teamed up for the first time in 2025, Waters invited Bright to brunch and set the tone early, saying, “Let’s not pretend like we’re friends here.”

“I’m just very honest,” said Waters. “At the time, we were playing each other in every final. We were competitors.”

In reality, teaming up after spending so much time competing against one another requires a major mental adjustment.

“When we started playing together, the mentality was, ‘Let’s stop losing! Let’s win!’ We played a couple tournaments and won, but we weren’t that close. We were just coming together and winning,” described Waters. “Then we lost those a couple times and I really felt like it wasn’t our skill. It was because we really didn’t have much chemistry on the court.”

Since Waters had built strong camaraderie with Catherine Parenteau, and Bright and Rachel Rohrabacher often spoke proudly about their close friendship, Waters felt like the absence of that same bond between them was something missing.

“I wanted to make Anna feel secure, ‘Hey, you’re my partner. I believe we can be the best and we can win. Let’s become closer so that in these tight moments we can trust that we’re sticking together,’” revealed Waters. “Then we started hanging out and we started realizing that we weren’t as different as we thought. We’re similar in a lot of ways and we became friends.”

Bright echoed that feeling at the Jenius Bank Pickleball World Championships, sharing that it was there she truly felt they found their rhythm as friends.

“We really started to click on and off the court. Every match makes us stronger, and we’re working on developing a really good relationship off the court, too, which is something I didn’t necessarily expect with the partnership,” said Bright. “We hang out a good amount off the court, going to dinners, and we text all the time. We’re always yapping.”

Bright even went so far as to say that Waters is her wing woman.

And as we all know, that’s the ultimate sign of a true, genuine friendship.

“I’m pretty good at it too,” emphasized Waters.

In the end, both are incredibly grateful for the friendship they’ve begun to build. 

“With Anna, it’s honestly just been cool to have that closeness again as a partnership. I had that with Catherine, and with Anna, I see her all the time, so it’s really nice that we’re close,” concluded Waters. “Even when we’re not playing together, we can talk about things on tour, like chat and gossip. It’s nice to have a friend on tour.”

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