The South Florida Roots of Pickleball GOAT Anna Leigh Waters

Pickleball has plenty of late bloomers, from retirees reinventing themselves to tennis converts who finally give in. Anna Leigh Waters is none of those people. She is the sport’s first true phenom: a generational talent who became the youngest pro at 12, the most decorated champion before she could vote, and the unquestioned No. 1 who now wins so often the stat sheets read like typos. The eye-crossing numbers include 168 career gold medals, 38 triple crowns, and an 89-match singles win streak dating back to May 2024.

But when I drove up to Boynton Beach to meet her for a weekday hit, there was zero entourage swarming or PR circus. Instead, I met a teen athlete who is a competitive beast on the court and a grounded Floridian in every other aspect possible. She was hanging with her new dog, Archer, who has no idea his mom is the greatest pickleball player alive.

Waters was born in Pennsylvania on January 26, 2007, but the family left before she could walk, bouncing to North Carolina before landing in Delray Beach.

“We rented a house on the Intracoastal in Delray Beach, right off The Ave,” she remembers. “We loved that. We had a golf cart. We would drive down the avenue all the time, go to dinner.” Eventually, the family settled in Boynton Beach, the quieter home base she still returns to between global tournaments.

Pickleball came along with a storm. When Hurricane Irma hit, the family evacuated to Pennsylvania, where her grandfather insisted they try the quirky backyard paddle game he loved. That was the spark.

“We came back to Florida and found the Delray Beach Tennis Center,” she says. Those early sessions became the foundation of her career: Four courts in the back. A small but competitive community. A club that pushed her and her mom, Leigh, into tournaments before they were even sure they wanted to compete. Then came the 5 a.m. drives to Davie to find even more competitive games.

Her first tour was not glamorous. It was a sequence of South Florida parking lots, back courts, and weekend bracket boards, she says. A lot has changed in eight years.

This fall, Waters hit another level. At the 2025 Jenius Bank Pickleball World Championships, she swept singles, doubles, and mixed for her 38th triple crown. She defended her singles dominance, winning the finals 11-4, 12-10, and pushed her streak to 89 straight wins. She was still riding the edge between relief and satisfaction when I sat down with her the following week.

“Obviously, it feels amazing, but every day there is a lot of hard work,” she says. “You can’t become too complacent, because everybody’s working their butts off to try to beat you and become the No. 1 player. Even if you’re No. 1, you have to fight for that every day.”

Her idea of a break? A maintenance hit, some recovery, then mapping out the next heavy training block. “Worlds were actually three weeks in a row for me,” she says. “So, when that happens, and I’m stretched and playing a lot of tournaments in a row, I’ll take more days off.”

This is how phenoms stay phenoms. It’s a daily grind.

There’s already a new generation coming up after her. Waters lights up when she talks about pickleball’s growth, especially among kids.

“When I used to go to pickleball tournaments, it was all older people, and I was the only kid under 50 or 40,” she remembers. “Now you go to a tournament, and there’s like 300 kids there. I hope I played a role in that.”

She’s well acquainted with the skeptics, too: The tennis diehards. The online critics. The people who still think pickleball is a fad. “The hardest part is getting ’em on the court,” she says. “Once they’re on the court, 99 percent of people tend to love it.”

Those viral videos of her shouting “It’s a real sport!” into the camera come from a genuine place.

“I feel like one reason they say that is because I’m a female and they’re like, ‘Females shouldn’t act like that on the court,’” she says. “But then you go look at the men, and they’re doing the exact same thing. We’re competing. We’re playing for millions of dollars, sponsorships, ranking. There’s so much emotion.”

She is unapologetically intense, but she draws a line: “Being fiery, but still having good sportsmanship.”

Off the court, Waters has a busy calendar and a few passions she protects from the sports grind. Cooking is a big one. Her Southern grandmother cooked everything from scratch. 

“When I was younger, I thought scratch was an ingredient,” she says, laughing. Her YouTube channel mixes lifestyle content with a cooking series that debuted with her mom as the first guest. She also loves to shop, travel, and just recently became a dog mom. Archer, her Bernedoodle puppy, entered the picture four days before the World Championships — not exactly ideal timing, unless you’re the type of 18-year-old who picked up a life-changing skill while fleeing a hurricane.

“I’m waking up at 2 a.m. during Worlds, tending to my puppy,” she says, adding she hopes Archer will travel with the team and eventually become a service dog if his training progresses.

In the midst of it all, she’s thinking about legacy. At her young age, she’s expanded the definition of a professional athlete, and she’s clear on what she wants the future to look like.

“I obviously want to be remembered as the GOAT,” she says. “But also, maybe as a pioneer for the sport and a pioneer for helping young kids get into the sport.”

Standing across from her on a sunlit Boynton Beach court, it is easy to believe that is exactly where she is headed. The kid who started on four courts behind the Delray Beach Tennis Center now defines a global sport, and she is just getting started.