Anna Leigh Waters

Anna Leigh Waters (born January 26, 2007) is an American professional pickleball player. She is regarded as the most dominant athlete in the sport. As of January 28, 2026, she has won 181 gold medals, 39 triple crowns, and was ranked No. 1 in the world for doubles, mixed doubles, and singles by the Professional Pickleball Association. She was the youngest professional pickleball player in history at age 12, and is known for playing doubles on a team with her mother. Her doubles DUPR rating is currently 6.882.

Early life Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 2007, Waters moved to Clinton, North Carolina, and lived there with her family until she was eight years old. In 2015 they relocated to Delray Beach, Florida, where Waters was a competitive soccer player, with ambitions to play college soccer. Both Waters' parents were collegiate athletes at the University of South Carolina, with her mother playing tennis and father playing golf.

Pickleball career When the Waters family evacuated North Carolina for two weeks in 2017 during Hurricane Irma, Waters began playing pickleball at her grandparents' home in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She told The Sampson Independent, "My father really was the one to show us how to play." She played in her first tournament several months later and, at 10 years old, won a gold medal in Women's Doubles. By 2019, at age 12, Waters won her first national title and became the youngest professional pickleball player in history. Since then Waters has won more than one hundred tournaments in doubles, mixed doubles, and singles.

Waters's coach and occasional doubles partner is her mother, Leigh Waters, a former NCAA Division I tennis player at the University of South Carolina. They are the only mother-daughter team in professional pickleball. In 2022, Waters and her mother were in the first nationally televised pickleball match in history on CBS Sports, at the Skechers Invitational Summer Championship in Los Angeles.

Waters plays with an aggressive style, characterized by strength and speed. She is represented by Octagon, signed with Franklin Sports as of 8 January 2026, and is the first pickleball athlete to be signed with Nike in a multi-year deal.