Anna Leigh Waters, the #1 Women’s Pickleball Player, Will Earn More Than $3 Million in 2024, Her Rep Says

Anna Leigh Waters started playing pickleball after her family evacuated Florida due to Hurricane Irma in 2017. Her grandfather introduced her family to pickleball in his Pennsylvania backyard.

Former tennis player Waters, now 17, will be the highest-paid pickleball player, male or female, by 2024, says the sport’s face and manager.

“He’s going to make over $3 million this year,” his Octagon manager, Kelly Wolf, said in a phone interview Wednesday.

“He is a great player of pickleball and both the PPA TourProfessional Pickleball Association) and MLP (Major League Pickleball) know this.”

In contrast, Ben Johns, the number 1 man in the PPA, He told CNBC in May He is said to be earning more than $2.5 million this year from salary and sponsorships.

Water, Ranked number 1 in the world in singles, doubles and mixed doublesHe has endorsement and sponsorship deals with Fila (apparel and footwear), Paddletek (pickleball paddles), Carvana (motor vehicle sales), Lock Laces (elastic shoelaces), Pickleball4America (events such as the U.S. Open Pickleball Championship), Shiseido (sun care products), Cetaphil (facial washes and moisturizers), Biofreeze (topical pain reliever) and Collectbobbles (bobblehead).

“I’m young, I still live with my parents, but I make a seven-figure salary a year,” Waters, who turns 18 in January, said in a recent phone interview.

“There’s no one else right now who has all the deals he has,” Wolf added.

“Obviously Anna Leigh has her own cottage industry,” he added.

Anna Leigh’s mother and doubles partner, Leigh Waters, is a former Division I tennis player at the University of South Carolina. Leigh turned professional first, and when her partner withdrew from a doubles tournament in Dallas six years ago, Anna Leigh took her place at age 11.

“My mom asked me to be a reserve and we played and we got a silver medal in the pro tournament and my mom said, ‘Okay, I think you’re ready to play pro with me,’” Waters recalls. “That’s how my pro journey started.”

In 2019, at the age of 12, Waters became the youngest professional pickleball player in history.

Waters graduated from high school a year early by taking online classes. She’s using the year to enjoy life as a professional athlete and says she doesn’t miss out on things like proms and cheer that she would have experienced in a regular high school setting.

“I’ve been homeschooled since third grade, so I’m used to things like sports and school,” she said.

“But I also enjoy doing things outside of pickleball, I like cooking, baking, hanging out with my friends. But I think because I’m used to it, it’s just normal for me and anything else would be different.”

Pickleball, a mix of tennis and table tennis and an easy game played with a racquet and wiffleball, has grown from nearly zero to 13.6 million U.S. players in just a few years.

When Waters first visited a city for pickleball tournaments a few years ago, he noticed hotel staff asking him, “What are you doing in town?”

When he answered “Pickleball,” their response would be, “What’s that?”

Now their response is usually something like, “Oh my gosh, I love this sport. I just started playing,” or “This is my favorite sport to play with my friends.”

“When I first started playing pickleball, we would go to a local tournament and play on tennis courts or maybe taped courts at an indoor basketball court, and it was just a fun thing for people to do,” Waters added.

“And then when COVID hit, I realized pickleball was really growing, and it was because a lot of families were going to parks or even building courts in their driveways and it was something they could do together and have fun with. And then after COVID hit, the tournaments got a lot bigger. We were playing in bigger facilities, more national and worldwide sponsors were getting into the sport.”

Waters has played pickleball with former tennis pro Jack Sock and watched tennis stars such as John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, Novak Djokovic, James Blake, Steffi Graf and Maria Sharapova compete in pickleball shows. She thinks it’s awesome.

“I think Maria Sharapova was in one of them, so that was really cool for me,” Waters said. “Two tournaments ago in Las Vegas, Andre Agassi watched one of my singles matches, which was pretty cool.”

Waters currently plays for: New Jersey 5s In Major League Pickleball, Tom Brady and LeBron James has his own teams.

Earlier this month, they competed in a showcase event CityPickle at Wollman Track at Central Park. The team won all five of its games, four in regulation and one in a tiebreaker. Waters is a perfect 10-0 in its games, improving to 26-2 this season.

Ryan Harwood, General Manager of New Jersey 5, called the event a “tremendous moment” to “raise awareness among decision-makers on Madison Avenue about sponsorships and media rights deals.”

“I think it’s really good for the sport,” Waters said ahead of the event. “There’s about eight million people in New York City, so the fact that we’re going to be playing in Central Park and all the people who aren’t even there to watch pickleball, who are just in the park, are going to see it. And they’re going to be exposed to high-level pickleball.”