Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Anna Leigh Waters: From the Youngest Prodigy to Pickleball’s #1 Player | E144

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Anna Leigh Waters: From the Youngest Prodigy to Pickleball’s #1 Player | E144 · In Search Of Excellence

0:00
Randall Kaplan: Most pro athletes, I think you can't play until you're 18 years old, but you're 12 years old, and you become a professional athlete.
0:06
Randall Kaplan: As you think about a professional sport, you might be the youngest professional athlete in any sport ever.
0:12
Randall Kaplan: What's
0:13
Anna Leigh Waters: crazy is when we got silver in that tournament, I was actually 11, 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, it was 11, which makes the stats even better for me. Okay, so I don't know there might be, like, a skateboard or something, who's 11 and played a pro tournament. We haven't really figured it out. So it would be interesting to know if I was the youngest
0:41
Randall Kaplan: ever. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers and trailblazers of excellence, with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is Anna Lee waters. Annalee is the number one ranked female pickleball player in the world, and at only 17 years old, she is the best female player in the history of pickleball. At the age of 12 years old, she became the youngest professional pickleball player in the world.
1:20
Randall Kaplan: She won her first triple crown when she was 14 years old, and at 15 years old, she became the number one ranked player in singles, doubles and mixed doubles. She's won 44 singles titles, 40 women's doubles titles and 44 mixed doubles titles, and is the all time leader on the women's side and PPA tour titles. Her 30 triple crowns are more than any other player in the sport, either male or female. She's won at least one gold medal in 41 of 45 PPA tour events played, and her 128 total gold medals is 82 more than her nearest competitor on the women's side. Emily, thanks for being here. Welcome to the Search of Excellence. Thank you for having me. You were born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and grew up an hour outside of Raleigh. Yes, your your mom's grandfather was in the hog business, and your dad was a farm manager of that hog business. How did that influence your life growing up? It's kind of crazy because the first eight year my eight years of my life, the closest target was an hour from where I lived. So it was honestly just a great place for me to grow up, because it was just all the neighborhood kids.
2:26
Randall Kaplan: And every day after school, we'd, like, get together and play like, I don't know, like hide and go seek, or Nerf guns around, like, the entire neighborhood. So that was really cool, because where I live in Florida now that like really wouldn't be possible and interesting enough when I was about eight years old and I was playing tennis, soccer, I hadn't found pickleball yet, but my parents were like, maybe she's got some athletic ability.
2:48
Randall Kaplan: That's when they decided to move to Florida for me to pursue athletics. But before then, my coaches used to go up to my parents and they'd be like, is this your daughter? She's so unathletic. When I was like, five and six, I was, like, extremely unathletic. Well, that's interesting, because you were born with the athletic gene. Your mom played tennis in college. My dad played golf in college. Your grandfather was a draft pick for the Chicago Cubs.
3:11
Randall Kaplan: So at one point, you said you weren't very good. At one point, did you realize I actually had some real talent? I don't know.
3:20
Randall Kaplan: I just remember when I was, like, five years old, and I used to play soccer. I just, like, run around the ball, and like, I'd sit and, like, pick flowers on the field, and I used to, like, cry to go to soccer practice. Like, I really didn't like playing sports. I was into like, dance and like, going to school and friends. And then all of a sudden, one year, my mom kept making me go to practice.
3:40
Randall Kaplan: And then one year, I was just like, wait, I actually really love this. And I kind of became addicted with sports and everything athletic. So I think it's not really I was necessarily bad at it. I just really wasn't interested in it.
3:51
Randall Kaplan: So that made me bad at sports.
3:51
Randall Kaplan: But then all of a sudden I got really interested in it, and I think that point kind of happened when I decided to play tennis, because my mom, my whole like, childhood was like, I don't want you to play tennis, because she played tennis, and she didn't want to, like, force me into something and force me into tennis. But when I said I wanted to play, she said, okay, and we'd drive like, an hour to Raleigh, where I used to play tennis, and we'd go for like an hour lesson, sometimes maybe stay the night and do another lesson the next day. So that's when I started kind of really enjoying sports, and then I started liking soccer as well.
4:22
Randall Kaplan: So it kind of just transformed that way. You started playing soccer when you were five years old, yes, and at some point, when did you really and then you played soccer seven or eight, when I decided to play tennis.
4:31
Randall Kaplan: But yeah, I played soccer at five. And then I didn't start playing competitive soccer until we moved to Florida. So it was just like rec soccer. But at what point did you say to yourself, Okay, I'm pretty good.
4:43
Randall Kaplan: Were you scoring five goals a game and everyone else? It really wasn't like it when I when I was in North Carolina, I really didn't think I was good at any sport, but my parents, I think, thought I was good. So when I moved to Florida, I think that's when I kind of started realizing I was but I never like you.
5:00
Anna Leigh Waters: Even now I think I'm good at pickleball, but I really don't think I'm good at I don't know it's something weird in my head that I think is why I'm actually good and drive myself to play, because I never think I'm good enough. So I'm always, like, really working at things. But I always, when I was younger and in Florida, I always thought I was going to be a professional athlete, but I didn't necessarily think I was good at the sport. It's like, a weird mental thing, but I was like, I'm going to was like, I'm gonna be a professional athlete. I'm gonna be like, Serena Williams one day. But I, like, didn't necessarily think I was really good at
5:28
Randall Kaplan: that time. You just said something that I found absolutely crazy. You said you think you're good at pickleball.
5:33
Anna Leigh Waters: Yeah, I think I'm good, but I don't know you don't think you're great. I don't know that. I don't get the hype. I don't know You
5:39
Randall Kaplan: don't you don't think you're great.
5:40
Anna Leigh Waters: I do. I mean, looking at I try not to look at stats, but like, when people tell me my stats, I'm like, Wow, that's pretty cool. But I'm like, don't think about that.
5:47
Anna Leigh Waters: Anna Lee, because I think the main thing is when athletes start to get complacent and think they're really good at something, is when they get past or when they stop having the motivation to get better. So I think my parents have gonna done a really good job too, of like, keeping myself humble and like, being like, keep your head on track. Like, anytime I play an opponent, even if it's first round, I'm like, nervous, and I'm like, All right, I never think like, Oh, I got this match. You know. Whereas some athletes feel that way about themselves, they think they're like, the best thing you know, that walks the earth, but that's not me. So
6:15
Randall Kaplan: you're good at tennis, or eight years old, and your family says, All right, we're gonna move to Delray Beach from North Carolina. Yep, because you're a very good athlete, a lot of pressure on you at that age to say, oh gosh, I better make something Yes. But
6:29
Anna Leigh Waters: also, funny fact, we used to vacation at the Boca Raton resort. I don't know if you've ever been there, and they loved it so much. They were like, we just want to be on vacation all the time, which is what they felt Florida was. So I think it was kind of both things. But my parents actually sold their house in North Carolina in a week, and they sold all their furniture in the house, which is, like, unheard of, and, like, even photos that were in the house, like the people who bought the house kept everything. So it was, like, insane. They were like, All right, we're moving. And the next week we were in Florida. It was crazy. Like, that doesn't usually happen. But
7:00
Randall Kaplan: were you? Did they tell you why you why?
7:03
Randall Kaplan: Because I'm 80 years old, we
7:05
Anna Leigh Waters: think you have potential, like in sports, we think it's better for the family, like we want to move to Florida, you'll have more potential to, like, be around better athlete. Because, like I said, I had to drive an hour to go get a tennis lesson. They wanted that to be easier for me, me to have more access. They wanted to give me a chance. Kind of, they weren't banking on the fact that I was going to be good, but they wanted to give me the chance to kind of see if I would be good or not. At
7:30
Randall Kaplan: this point in your life, at eight years old, what were you like as a kid?
7:35
Anna Leigh Waters: I was very hyper energetic, like I always wanted to be doing something like I said, I love playing with, like, neighborhood kids. I wasn't really the type of girl to just, like, sit in her bedroom and like, play with things. I did do that, but I was always like, playing with the boys, like at recess, I go play soccer with the boys. Like I was kind of a tom boy. Like, growing up, I'm a little more girly now than I was when I was younger, but I always loved playing sports, and I always loved doing aggressive things. Like, WWE was one of my favorite things when I was eight years old. And I like, wrestle my dad on the bed and, like, put him in these head locks. And we'd like, fight and like, do all so I was like, oh, and my my cousin was my best friend. His name's right? And we used to just always like play and like fight and like, do like sports outside. Like, we would just always like, that was my thing.
8:21
Randall Kaplan: Would your dad let you win? Would your dad let you win these wrestling matches?
8:24
Randall Kaplan: Yeah, I think he
8:26
Anna Leigh Waters: just wanted him to stop because I was actually doing the moves on him where, like, in WWE, they're not actually, like, hurting the person. But I put him in the head lock and he'd tap out,
8:34
Randall Kaplan: who was your favorite male and female wrestler? Um,
8:39
Anna Leigh Waters: I really liked Roman Reigns. I think he was my favorite WWE wrestler on the male side. And then I liked the twins. I can't think of their last name. There these two twins, two twin girls, and one of them actually dated John Cena when the WWE thing was going on.
8:51
Anna Leigh Waters: So I like John Cena as well. But I think that's why I like the twins. But then I liked Roman Reigns on
8:57
Randall Kaplan: the men's side.
8:57
Randall Kaplan: Have you seen the Vince McMahon special? But
9:02
Anna Leigh Waters: my trainer knows I love WWE, or I used to love WWE, so he told me that should be my next watch. It's very, very good. I need to watch if
9:08
Randall Kaplan: you're a fan, you have to watch it. Yeah, let's move to september 2017 hurricane Irma, which did $77.2 billion of property damage, Category Five. Hurricane, your power was knocked out for two weeks. What happened next? So
9:24
Anna Leigh Waters: we had a dog in Florida. Her name is Maggie.
9:26
Anna Leigh Waters: She just passed away a couple months ago, unfortunately, sorry, but when the hurricane hit, my dad stayed with our dog because we couldn't really take her to Pennsylvania in the short amount of time. That all this happened. So my mom and I flew to where my grandparents lived in Pennsylvania, which is in Allentown, which is where I was born. And we hadn't been there in a while, and I was like, doing my schoolwork. Because I was homeschooled, we was doing my schoolwork in Allentown while hurricane Irma is hitting Florida. My dad's there with the dog, and I'm, you know, I've done all the schoolwork I can do for the day, and I'm kind of bored, right? Because I don't have any friends in Allentown anymore. Yeah, so I'm just kind of bored, and my grandmother's like, why don't you come play pickleball? And at the at that time, I literally thought it was you hit a pickle, like, over the net with, like, something, because my mom and I played tennis. We're like, too good for pickleball, kind of, at the time, we didn't really want to play. So a couple of days goes on and I refuse to play. We both do, like, we refuse to play pickleball. And then finally we get to the point we're so bored that we go and play with my grandfather at the park. So like, 9am one morning, and literally, the first time we play, we're like, hooked. So we finished that session, and then we're like, Can we play again?
10:30
Anna Leigh Waters: So then I think we played again at like, 1230 and then after that, we're like, we want to play again. I think we played like, three times, like, the first day we ever played pickleball, because we were just so addicted to it. And
10:39
Randall Kaplan: then you went to Dick's Sporting Goods and looked for rackets, because they have rockets. My
10:43
Anna Leigh Waters: grandfather had one good paddle from Dick's Sporting Goods and but we were just using, like, some, like, crappy paddle, I don't know, some sub cheap paddle. And so we went to dicks. We're like, man, these paddles were, like, kind of expensive. And at the time, they were like $65 and now, now you look at a nice paddle, it's like 300 bucks. Yeah. So, yeah, exactly. So we were like, well, like, I think we bought one more good one. And then we were like, if we continue to like it, then we'll go, you know, buy another one. So we got another good paddle, and then we used the paddle so much that the paddle actually, like the good one, actually, like, had broke by the time we had finished, or by the time we had left Allentown, the paddle was like, broken, and my grandfather, like, tried to glue it together, because we had paid so much for this paddle and he wanted so I think my grandfather played with like a broken, like glued paddle for like a year, or something like that. But we were just addicted. We played so much. We literally broke the paddle the couple weeks we were there, and my dad's calling us because, like, the hurricanes over, he's like, you can come home now. We're like, no, we want to play pickleball. Sorry, so I think we stayed for like, two more days or three more days after we could even come home just because we wanted to play more pickleball. Let's
11:48
Randall Kaplan: talk about the history of pickleball, which most people don't know about.
11:50
Randall Kaplan: Pickleball was invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington by three friends at the summer home of Joel Pritchard, who was a neat little factoid. Served as a Republican congressman from 1973 to 1985 and who, as the story goes, felt compelled to invent a new game to occupy their board kids. Its name comes from a pickle boat, which, for those who don't know, which I didn't know, is a hastily assembled rowing crew, and was a nod to the new pedal sport that they were cobbling together from parts of other sports, including badminton, tennis and even wiffle ball. Explain the rules of pickleball for those who don't know. So
12:30
Anna Leigh Waters: pickleball, I kind of like to say, is a mix, like you said, between like badminton, ping pong and tennis.
12:34
Anna Leigh Waters: You can fit four pickleball courts on one tennis court. So when you're playing pickleball, just like tennis, you serve from one box cross court to the other box, but there is a kitchen line, so the serve has to go over the kitchen line. Now the kitchen the kitchen line creates this kind of non volley zone, which you can't step in unless the ball bounces, and you also can't follow through into it.
12:55
Anna Leigh Waters: Okay?
12:56
Randall Kaplan: So just to be clear, what, what, what you're saying, there is a kitchen area that I think is four feet from the net. How many feet it is that runs parallel to the net?
13:08
Randall Kaplan: Yes? And it's a stripe, just like tennis, right? And if the ball lands in the kitchen, you can step in the kitchen, right?
13:17
Randall Kaplan: But if the ball doesn't land in the kitchen, your toe can't even touch the line, or you lose
13:21
Anna Leigh Waters: the point your paddle can't even hit the kitchen after you hit the ball.
13:23
Anna Leigh Waters: Or that's a bowl. Okay,
13:25
Randall Kaplan: so I just want to make clear that you know what we're talking about here.
13:28
Randall Kaplan: There's, there's a parallel line that in the kitchen is the space between that parallel line and then that, yes, okay, so keep going, correct. Okay,
13:39
Anna Leigh Waters: you can explain that part. So after you serve your opponents return, you have to let bounce, which is a little interesting, because in tennis, you can serve in volley if you want. In pickleball, you can't serve in volley. So you have to let their second shot bounce, and then you hit your third shot, and then you try to move into the net, which a lot of people when they first start playing pickleball, they think they should hit their third shot and stay back, but you should try to get to the net as quick as possible and pick a ball right? So then once you're at the net, like you said, you can't STEP into the Kitchen unless the ball bounces, and you also can't follow through. So you might see us on TV hitting these like soft shots or these soft dinks over the net, and people have no idea. They're like, why don't you just hit it hard, but you have no idea how much spin and how low it's staying over the net, so you don't want to hit that hard, or else your opponent can just put that away on you. So we hit these soft shots, and then once we see the ball get a little higher over the net or a little less spin, that's when you can kind of be aggressive and hit the ball hard, right?
14:35
Randall Kaplan: I think a lot of pickleball players, and including me, when you start playing, you just wail away.
14:40
Randall Kaplan: Yeah, I was the same way, right?
14:40
Randall Kaplan: And then when you whale away, what you learn is the ball comes back faster than you hit it, for sure, because someone has usually gotten someone is at the net. If you're returning a serve, you whale away, they are at the net already, and they're just gonna crush it back to you.
14:57
Randall Kaplan: But I think when people do see the game. On TV, they cut, oh my gosh, this is so easy. They're just lobbying the ball, lobbing the ball, but it's not,
15:05
Anna Leigh Waters: no, it's not, it's not as easy as it looks.
15:07
Anna Leigh Waters: Everybody comes up to me after they've seen in person, like, wow, this is way faster in person than is on TV. Yeah.
15:12
Randall Kaplan: I mean, like, like, many things are a lot faster. Yeah, it's it's fun.
15:14
Randall Kaplan: It's addictive, for sure, very addictive. It's great. So you were home schooled, and then what was that like? Did you feel like you were missing out on friends and the maturity and the social aspect of being around kids your own age, male and female? Yeah.
15:31
Anna Leigh Waters: So the first eight years of my life, I lived in North Carolina, and I went to a private school there. So that was through second grade. And then when we moved to Florida, my grandmother actually came down from Allentown to homes with me. She was a school teacher, so third grade was my first year I started homeschooling. And funny thing, I actually hated going to school in North Carolina. I had mommy.
15:52
Anna Leigh Waters: Itis like, I never wanted to be away from I'm an only child, so I never like
15:56
Randall Kaplan: mommy. Itis predefined term. She said I had,
16:00
Anna Leigh Waters: I had, I don't know any time went to school. I just miss my mom so much. Um, so I think when I moved to Florida, I was actually really happy that I didn't go to school, because, like, my mom was a stay at home lawyer, so I got to see her all day, and we'd go play sports and play pickleball and stuff. So I absolutely loved it. But I think homeschooling really worked for me, because, like you said, if I hadn't been playing sports, maybe I wouldn't have gotten that interaction with people.
16:20
Anna Leigh Waters: But when I was about 10, I would go play pickleball with my mom and all of her friends, or all the people that play pickleball, and they were older. So a lot of my best friends growing up were actually like people in their 20s to 70s, like this huge range. I really wasn't around people like my own age too much.
16:36
Anna Leigh Waters: I did play soccer, so I had like, my soccer friends, and they were my age, but a lot of my best friends were older. I was actually invited to one of my so I was like, 14, I think, and one of my best friends was having their wedding. They were getting married, and they asked me to be their flower girl. I was gonna be like the oldest flower girl ever. But it just shows you how, like, I was so young that I had these like friends who were older than me.
17:03
Anna Leigh Waters: So November
17:04
Randall Kaplan: 2017, two months after you come back from Pennsylvania, you played in your first tournament. It was the Delray Beach gamma tournament, which we didn't even sign up for, which is funny. So you just showed up and said, Hey, can I play? No, we didn't even want to play
17:17
Anna Leigh Waters: the tournament. We were just playing for fun. And all the people in the Delray Beach pickleball Club, which is where we started playing after we came back from Pennsylvania. We're like, you need to play this tournament. So they found us partners, they signed us up, and then we basically just showed up to the tournament. We didn't even know what level we really were. They signed me up for the lowest level, and they signed my mom up for Pro, which is what she started in. So I started the lowest level. My mom started in the highest level. In mid tournament, they bumped me up to three five. So I started in three Oh. Mid tournament, they're like, You're too good to be in the lowest levels. They bump me
17:46
Randall Kaplan: up to three five. Just for those people don't know, what are those numbers mean?
17:49
Anna Leigh Waters: So three Oh, sometimes tournaments have two fives, but that's rare. So
17:53
Randall Kaplan: can you be a one or two? No, okay, so that's just two five,
17:57
Anna Leigh Waters: I think is like the lowest. But some tournaments don't even have that three Oh is like the
18:01
Randall Kaplan: low for non pro players, people are kind of classified you do, right? Yeah, so beginner, intermediate and advanced. What are
18:12
Anna Leigh Waters: I would say?
18:12
Anna Leigh Waters: Beginners, probably three, oh to four, oh and then intermediates, probably four, oh and then 455055,
18:24
Randall Kaplan: I would say is advanced, right? So what number are you 10? I'm
18:27
Anna Leigh Waters: like a I think my duper is a six. I think my duper is like a six. I don't know you. You might have the stats on that as well. I don't know my duper is
18:37
Randall Kaplan: so your so your mom went pro in 2018 and she was playing doubles, yes. And so much of our good fortune comes from things that just don't go according to plan, yes. So her partner doesn't show up, right?
18:48
Randall Kaplan: What happened next?
18:51
Anna Leigh Waters: So my mom's partner didn't show up to play a tournament Texas. This was the Texas open in Dallas, Texas open in Dallas, and like, a week before the tournament, or maybe not even her partner, was like, I can't go. But we had already had our flights booked. We were going, and my mom's like, Anna Lee, like, do you want to kind of play with me? And I was like, Sure. Like, we can try it. So we were just thinking of this as, like, something fun we were going to do, and I was just going to fill in for a partner.
19:13
Anna Leigh Waters: And we actually ended up getting second in the tournament and losing to the team who won it went three games. Pickleball is two out of three games, like sets, kind of and we ended up losing in three to the team who won in the finals. So that was pretty cool. My mom was like, Alright, I guess you're ready to play, bros. So she ended up the next year, we ended up playing together, and I think in January, so that was what in November was that tournament, or something like that November, and then in January or February, we ended up beating the number one team in the world who hadn't been beaten in like 50 some matches, or 100 and some match, something crazy like that.
19:48
Anna Leigh Waters: That's incredible.
19:50
Randall Kaplan: I think most pro athletes, or people who play professional sport, I think you can't play until you're 18 years old. In some leagues, you're you can't even play college basketball. You have to play.
19:58
Randall Kaplan: Least one year before going into pros. Yeah, but you're 12 years old, and you become a pro professional athlete. I know you're the youngest female pro player ever, but as you think about a professional sport, you might be the youngest professional athlete in any sport ever.
20:16
Anna Leigh Waters: What's crazy is when I when we got silver in that tournament, I was actually 11 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, okay, which makes the stats even better for me. Okay, so I don't know there might be, like, a skateboard or something. He was 11 and played a pro tournament.
20:34
Anna Leigh Waters: We haven't really figured it out, yeah, so it would be interesting to know if I was the youngest ever, but,
20:41
Randall Kaplan: but, I mean, I've got five kids, and I've got three kids who are past 1122, year old twins, 20 year old son.
20:48
Randall Kaplan: Actually, they're going to be 23 and 21 each in a month and two months. But I was thinking back as I was preparing for this today, and I was thinking, what, what were my kids like at 11 years old? I mean, how big were they? What were they? Like, how athletic were they? I mean, I can't even begin to imagine them being in Yeah, they didn't.
21:08
Randall Kaplan: They're not naturally gifted athletes. I don't think they're gonna mind me saying that my son skateboarded from five years old on, and he was locally good, but, you know, nowhere like the Ryan Sheckler, who was on my show, or these other guys. But what? What were you thinking at 11 years old, I'm playing an approach was, was, did I really know what you were doing to sink in? And said, I'm going pro at 11? I
21:34
Anna Leigh Waters: think it was, well, when I first started playing pickleball tournaments, they were like 10 minutes taped courts. They didn't feel as big and as grand as they do now, like we're playing in these huge stadiums, but it was still a pro event.
21:44
Randall Kaplan: Okay, so just not to cut you off, what is a temp net and a temp court?
21:47
Randall Kaplan: Because they're all over the country now, yeah,
21:51
Anna Leigh Waters: so a temporary net is kind of flimsy, and it's like, if you hit the net tape, your ball is going to go over, because the net kind of goes like this, because it's a temporary net. It's got on rollers, so you can, like, take it apart and build it back up, yeah, whereas, like these permanent nets, you can't really take apart and build back up.
22:10
Anna Leigh Waters: They're kind of just there. So like,
22:14
Randall Kaplan: tennis court, a permanent court has metal stakes that go into the cement, and that is kind of built in. I mean, you can take it off, obviously, but now what people are doing, because it's expensive to build pickleball courts and there's tennis courts, pickleballs take over tennis, yeah, is they put up basically, like you said, they're temporary post and and they're never going to be as good as a
22:38
Anna Leigh Waters: there's also different levels of like temporary nets and pickleball, think of like, the lowest level temporary net, because, like, the ones we play on the pro tour now, those are still temporary nets, but they're really nice.
22:48
Anna Leigh Waters: And they're like, they're basically permanent, okay, they're just not like you said, like into the ground, because we resurface a lot of the chords, so they don't want us, like, you know, like putting these poles into the ground, okay? But they're way nicer than, like, the first level, like temporary net, which we used to play on.
23:02
Anna Leigh Waters: And when I mean taped courts, I mean, like, it's on a tennis court, and they just put like, like orange tape on it, okay?
23:09
Anna Leigh Waters: And that's the lines. It's like, if it hits a tape, that's like, gone. You know what I mean?
23:16
Anna Leigh Waters: Whereas now it's like paint, so it's a good court, but they didn't resurface anything. It was just tape. And then they put this temporary net up, and that was like a pro match.
23:25
Randall Kaplan: So all right, so back to the question, you're 11 years old, and did you understand what was happening?
23:32
Randall Kaplan: Not
23:32
Anna Leigh Waters: really, to be honest. And I think that worked in my advantage, because I had no pressure. One, two, I was 11, and I was playing all these 30 year olds. So I'd hit a shot and like, laugh at them. I'd be like, Haha, I'm 11. You can't get you know what I mean, like, you're taunting at 30 years old.
23:45
Anna Leigh Waters: Not, I wasn't actually, like, pointing at them and saying that, but in my head, I was just like, oh, that's kind of cool, you know? But then eventually it got to the point where I just felt like I was their age. Like, even though I was 12, I felt like I was 30, playing a third.
23:56
Anna Leigh Waters: You know what I mean? Like, like, over time, like, now I'm still 17. I'm still young. Most people I'm playing are, like, 10 years older than me, but I still feel like we're the same age.
24:05
Anna Leigh Waters: Just because it's a pro sport you're playing at such a high level, like when you're on the court, you're really not thinking that this person is 25 and I'm 17, you're just thinking about point by point. But when I was 11 playing these tournaments, I had no pressure.
24:19
Anna Leigh Waters: I was playing with my mom. I was just having fun, and I think that's why I was playing so well. I was just having a great time playing what I loved, doing it with my mom.
24:26
Randall Kaplan: But soccer was your first love, and at some point you had a chance to play in Germany as a young age. And like so many great athletes, well, not so many super gifted ones, they have to pick. And so what, what was it that you said?
24:39
Randall Kaplan: All right, I'm soccer is my true love, but I'm gonna go for pickleball. Well, at
24:43
Anna Leigh Waters: the time I made that decision, I actually liked soccer more than pickleball, right? So this was around COVID, like, right before COVID happened, just when I got that offered to go play in Germany under the pro team, and I was considering doing it. I was gonna do school there. I think my parents might have like, Come, like to see. Not like, moved there, but like, been there some of the time. And I was like, we were making this decision, and then all of a sudden, COVID happened, and my parents were like, all right, not even on the table anymore, because we don't know what's going on. We're not going to send you away to a foreign country that they've never been to. So I think that kind of made the decision for me COVID, which kind of sucked, I guess, looking back on it, but I'm kind of glad at the same time, because I think I made the right choice.
25:23
Anna Leigh Waters: But when COVID happened, I didn't even play pickleball tournaments like we lived with my grandparents at the time, so we didn't like I said, didn't really know what's going on, and we wanted to keep them safe, so I just kind of trained, did stuff at home. I still trained soccer, kind of doing both. And then when we came back and played our first tournament after COVID, my mom and I went to a pickleball tournament, and we did terrible. We lost, like, second round. I remember us in the parking lot, like, after that match, being like, should we quit pickleball? Like, I'm just gonna go play soccer, like we suck, like we're gonna quit.
25:54
Anna Leigh Waters: Like we were just, like, my dad was like, What are you talking about? We're like, we're gonna quit. We're done. And then we realized, during COVID, all the players started putting lead tape on their paddles, and that made the makes the paddle more solid and hit harder. So, like, our game used to be to speed the ball up and hit hard, but we do that, and all these people were just hitting, like, hitting balls down our throats, like, super hard. We're like, this just doesn't work anymore. Like, what? And then we started, we realized they were putting lead tape on we put lead tape on our paddles, and we were like, paddles, and we were like, Okay, we're good again. So that's crazy. There
26:25
Randall Kaplan: were no rules, I know. I mean, in baseball, you have to have a wood bat. In pickleball, how far can you go?
26:30
Randall Kaplan: I mean, the the rackets have come a long way,
26:32
Anna Leigh Waters: right? That's actually something being discussed right now, because the paddles are getting a little crazy, like the spin people are able to make the power people are able to hit now is is getting out of hand, and there's no really regular there is regulation, but they're trying to figure out, like, what is that limit? Like, how high should the limit be? Should it be higher? So on TV, it looks faster and more difficult, but does that make it dangerous for the players? And then does that make it? Does that make the points actually shorter because people are able to hit these shots? Does it make it slower because nobody wants to speed up the ball, because somebody's just going to put so there's all these different factors that are going into this right now and April 1, they're going to come out with their first regulation of like, all right, this is what it has to be. So right now they're just trying to figure things out. But it's definitely an argument between players, paddle companies, tours, like about what the limit should be, what
27:23
Randall Kaplan: kind of players would benefit from a harder racket?
28:19
Anna Leigh Waters: Well, interesting enough. This is kind of, it's kind of personal preference. Personally, I feel like, let's say the power goes up to this extreme power, right?
28:29
Anna Leigh Waters: It's almost impossible to control because it's so hard, like there's there becomes a point where it's too hard. It doesn't even benefit you to have a paddle that's that hard, whereas spin the higher you go and spin, that's not ever gonna hurt you, you know, that's always gonna make you better. So if the spin super high, in my opinion, that's worse than the power being super high. Because I don't see these players using super powerful paddles, because they're not gonna be able to control it. They're gonna go to hit a dink, and it's gonna hit, you know, gonna hit, you know, it's gonna be like an overhead eventually, whereas other people think power spin is less important, and it can be as high as you want, and power needs to be lower. So it's just this kind of battle right now between kind of what it should be like.
29:09
Anna Leigh Waters: Should spin be higher? Should power be higher? Should they be the same? Should they be both low? Should they be both? Like, it's crazy right now, and it's hard to test too, because people are making paddles differently, like, some are foam injected.
29:21
Anna Leigh Waters: Others are just carbon. Some are foam in certain areas with carbon here, which really changes the effects of the paddle. And because the sports so new, people are probably like, what is she talking about right now, but because the sports so new, nobody really knows. Like people are still creating new technology, and, you know, they're figuring out dwell time means more than the grit on the actual paddle, which is dwell times, how long it stays on the paddle. And they're saying the grit and how it feels means nothing. So it's like this crazy they're finding out these crazy statistics. Recently that we didn't know. Like, for the past, like, 10 years, people have been playing pickleball.
29:58
Anna Leigh Waters: It's kind of crazy.
29:59
Randall Kaplan: Perfect time to plug your own paddle. What do you want to say about your own paddle?
30:03
Anna Leigh Waters: Yeah, so I use the paddle tech, a, l, W, C, that one is not foam injected.
30:05
Anna Leigh Waters: It's just carbon. And it's kind of the perfect balance between spin and power. It's probably a little bit on the poppier side.
30:11
Anna Leigh Waters: So I'll take a little bit less spin for a little bit more power, because that's my game.
30:18
Anna Leigh Waters: Paddle tech also have paddles that are kind of the opposite, more spin versus power, like you were saying which paddle would benefit which players. So I kind of feel like whatever your strength is, that's the paddle you should pick. Because, like, if you're
30:30
Randall Kaplan: if you're a beginner, you have no idea, right? It's right, then you kind of just have to test things out.
30:34
Randall Kaplan: You go to whoever the salesperson is telling you, oh, you're a beginner player, right?
30:36
Randall Kaplan: Or you, like, a
30:38
Anna Leigh Waters: certain player, and so you want to use their paddle. But I would say so, like, if you think you're more of a finesse spinny player, like, pick a paddle that really enhances that. Or if you're a banger and you, like, hit hard, like, pick a paddle that enhances that. Whereas, I think some people think, Oh, whatever.
30:50
Anna Leigh Waters: Weaknesses. I need more of that, but it's like, but if you're really good at that, you know what I mean?
30:57
Randall Kaplan: People a sense of how that fast that ball is going in baseball, if you're a pitcher, 100 miles per hour is, is the bogey you gotta you got a flaming fastball? What? What?
31:07
Randall Kaplan: How fast is that pickleball? So for
31:09
Anna Leigh Waters: a serve, like somebody who can serve really hard, I think it's like 70, maybe miles an hour, that they're hitting their serve, as far as, like, hands and put aways. I don't know the stats on that. I've just seen people with the radar gun doing the serves.
31:20
Anna Leigh Waters: But I will say, when you get to that, like five, oh, up level the ball, I would say, is probably coming two times harder than everything below that, and then when you get even higher, it's kind of crazy how hard people are hitting the ball. So
31:38
Randall Kaplan: we talked about this a little bit, but the game is actually won mostly at the net, right? I mean, whaling away is not going to get you very far, because the reflexes of players are just way too fast. I encourage everybody who hasn't seen an Instagram reel on your or Ben Johns playing pickleball, you got to see this, because that ball is going back and forth in less than a second, back and for sure. I mean, in some cases, milliseconds, right, yeah. But what is the speed? If you know, between a fast volley back and forth, yeah.
32:11
Anna Leigh Waters: Well, in the women's game, we tend to have longer hands battles. So like, if somebody like you said, hits the ball hard from the net, we tend to have that ball exchange for a longer period of time.
32:20
Anna Leigh Waters: Whereas the men's games a little slower and they hit more dinks, because when a guy speeds it up, usually, if it's not a good speed up, he can just put it away at your feet. So I would say the men probably hit it harder than the women do, but the women can hit it harder for longer, like our points are quicker so and it also depends on the paddle. Like I said, certain paddles hit harder than other paddles, but I would say, like the poppiest paddle, it's probably coming at you in less than a second. The
32:49
Randall Kaplan: I mean, it's hard for people to know, because, like you said, it's a lot faster in real life. And again, people really got to watch some of your volleys and some of Ben's volleys. I mean, yeah, not just yours, but, I mean, this is you can really see the speed on Instagram or when you're watching a YouTube video, just how fast this actually
33:05
Anna Leigh Waters: Well, I mean, some male players on their overheads have hit the ball so hard that when it bounces it like it stops, it just like, dies and swishes the grass.
33:13
Anna Leigh Waters: Yeah, basically the ball breaks.
33:13
Anna Leigh Waters: So
33:15
Randall Kaplan: for those people who don't know, by the way, we haven't talked about the ball, the ball is essentially a wiffle ball. It looks a little bit, and I haven't measured a little bigger than a tennis ball, yep, and it doesn't bounce,
33:27
Anna Leigh Waters: no. Like, if you were to bounce a tennis ball, I'd come out to probably about where you dropped it from, whereas a pickleball. If you bounced it from here, would probably stop there going
33:36
Randall Kaplan: from tennis to pickleball. You know, we have a pickleball court at our house, and we have a bunch of people who come over and, you know, the first few times, they're tennis players, and they they're used to lots of things in tennis that don't really transfer into pickleball. What are some of those things? Well, I feel like
33:53
Anna Leigh Waters: I kind of had the perfect amount of tennis. I played four years of tennis, which gave me kind of the strokes and the shot selection, but it it didn't make me so ingrained in tennis to where, when I went and played pickleball, like the bounce was really throwing me off. You know, whereas if you played tennis for, say, 20 years, and then you go play pickleball, you're like, What the heck is this ball doing like it's not bouncing at all, which is also why, I think, when you're playing both sports at the same time, you get kind of used to it. But if you've just played one your whole life, and then you switch to pickleball, might be interesting, but definitely like, if you're hitting ground strokes from the back with somebody, the ball doesn't bounce near as high as a tennis ball does. Also you're never really serving overhand. You can't, you can't serve overhand.
34:33
Anna Leigh Waters: And pickleball, so the ball is never like bouncing super high, like over your head, on your returns, like everything kind of is like, below the waist, except for some of the volleys, which are like up here, which is like tennis, but a lot of times in tennis, you'll see the ball bounce up super high, whereas in pickleball, most of the time it's super low, like more effective shots are keeping the ball low. Whereas in tennis, the more spin you put on the ball, the better it is. And pickleball, the more spin, the better it is. But it doesn't bounce high, it bounces lower, so it's kind of the flip.
34:59
Randall Kaplan: So in our lives as parents, we always want our kids to be better than us. I remember, and I can't remember how old I was, but and I'm not a great athlete, I think I'm average athlete. What sports did you play? I didn't really play any professional or I didn't really play sports as a kid.
35:18
Randall Kaplan: Okay, the best things I'm great at is throwing a football. Never played football, but it's something I'm very good at, okay, perfect spiral. Oh yeah, you know, with a professional ball I could throw at 55 yards.
35:28
Randall Kaplan: Oh, wow. Okay, yeah, the highlight of my athletic career was I was on vacation. Tom Brady was there, and he was walking down toward the beach. I was playing this guy who we were jawing and trash talking for months before we got down there.
35:44
Randall Kaplan: It was a wedding, and he's a stocky guy, and we're warming up on the beach, and he's throwing bull. Let's I'm just trying to get my arm loose, and I'm lobbing him over there, and he's going back and back, and he just kept going. And at some point I've got to come in to catch his balls, right? And I'm still throwing a tight spiral, and now I'm putting a little heat on it, because you need a little heat to get it to go further. And I could see Tom coming down on the beach, and my wife was sitting 10 foot behind me, and she could see Tom, and I just waited for him to pass me, and I told this guy, JJ, and, JJ, if you're listening, I got you on this one. And I told him, go deeper, you know, go deeper. And, you know, he went like this. He was probably 40 yards down, and he was just not getting the ball back to me, and so I go, go on.
36:34
Randall Kaplan: He goes like this. And I, I let one loose. It went way over his head, and Tom Brady says, holy shit, what a cannon. And you know, that's about as good as it's going to get for me.
36:47
Anna Leigh Waters: Yeah, no, but he remembers exact words must have meant a lot, yeah, yeah.
36:52
Randall Kaplan: And I said to my wife, too. I said, I looked at her, she said, I know, I know I'm never gonna hear the end of it for the rest of my
37:00
Anna Leigh Waters: life. That's pretty cool, though. Yeah.
37:03
Randall Kaplan: Then I then I said, Yeah, you know, you're million percent right. You're you're never gonna hear the end of it. And then I wake surf as well. And I'm a pretty okay, pretty decent wake surfer.
37:14
Anna Leigh Waters: I went surfing for the first time ever, and, oh my gosh, where did we go? It was, like, the biggest, oh, we went to Costa Rica. It was the biggest wave swell of the year. And it was my first day surfing, and I was out there and these crazy high waves. It's my first day, and I'm, like, doing terrible. I think I rode like one wave the whole day, and it's kind of scarred me. Regular surfing, yeah? Just regular surfing.
37:38
Randall Kaplan: You just went out there on your own with other No, there was a guy, there was an instructor, yeah, but he
37:42
Anna Leigh Waters: didn't tell me until after that. It was the, like, the highest waves. Yeah, I could, I rode one all the way down, but I'd like, Get up and then fall off.
37:53
Randall Kaplan: So I remember beating my dad at basketball, and he was not an athlete, either, but I remember, I don't know how well I was 1112, years old, my son, Charlie's 20 years old, at some point he can beat me at basketball, maybe, maybe not. Charlie, if you're listening, you're definitely better skateboarder than me. I am a better surfer than you. You could beat me a pickleball, but I can throw the football a lot further than you can, and you think you're faster than me even at 56 I'm not really sure that you are. We'll have to see about that one day. But it is a great moment when you're when your kids do better than you. It's an accomplishment. At some point your mom used to kick your butt at pickleball,
38:34
Anna Leigh Waters: for sure, and then
38:37
Randall Kaplan: you played her in a tournament, and you beat her. And your mom didn't like that very much at first. No,
38:42
Anna Leigh Waters: she didn't.
38:42
Anna Leigh Waters: It was kind of weird, because it kind of went from her like annihilating me in tournaments and mixed devils, so then all of a sudden, I beat her like in a tournament. And it was very interesting night. It wasn't that she told my dad and I to go to dinner by herself,
38:58
Randall Kaplan: hotel room when she showered and
39:00
Anna Leigh Waters: we yeah, we went up, and I was kind of like, well, first of all, playing your mom in a professional tournament is a thing on its own. Like, that is crazy. Like the emotions, like, you want to win, but you want her to win, but you don't want to win, but then you're competitive, so you want it's like, the craziest thing ever. But then, like you said, it was the first time I'd ever beat my mom in pickleball, and she didn't really know how to take it or react, because, like you said, she had kind of beaten me my whole life at every every sport, because I wasn't that old. But then when I got to this age, I think I was 12, and I beat her, and she was like, It's not time yet. Like, you're 12 years old. Like you shouldn't be beating me yet, and I had beaten her for the first time. So it took her, I think it took her, like, 24 hours, and then she was over it. But the first that 24 hours was definitely an interesting day. I don't think anybody really knew how to like go about the day. It was just weird,
39:47
Randall Kaplan: right? So you said your mom was a lawyer.
39:48
Randall Kaplan: She'd been practicing for 15 years, worked at a firm called Nelson Mullins, and then she gave up her law practice to basically be your coach, tour manager. What was that like at that exact moment when, I mean, that's really the ultimate sacrifice,
40:04
Anna Leigh Waters: yeah, I mean, when she decided to stop being a lawyer, we were playing together at the same time, or we were playing together as a team, so we were traveling, playing pro tournaments. So it wasn't yet like she was still coaching me, but it wasn't like she wasn't playing anymore, and she just kind of took this, like behind the scenes role. She was still playing pro, and we were having so much fun. She was like, law, law is always going to be there for me, but, you know, I don't know how long we'll be able to play together and do this. So I think maybe she thought kind of in her head, when we stopped playing together. She might become a lawyer again, but then she realized how awesome Pickleball is and how she never wanted to practice law again.
40:38
Anna Leigh Waters: And so good
40:41
Randall Kaplan: move on her part, because I used to be a lawyer, and I absolutely, yeah, I started my career, very unsuccessful lawyer, by the way,
40:49
Anna Leigh Waters: yeah, so I think being a lawyer is also just stressing my mom out. She was doing, she was practicing law, and she was hearing all these, like, bad stories and stuff. So I think she just didn't really enjoy that. So playing pickleball was much happier for her. So after she tore ACL and we couldn't play together anymore, she I was kind of like, Mom, do you want to coach me? Like, and it kind of, I didn't really ask her that question. It kind of just happened, like, after she recovered from her knee injury to ACL, she recovered, she then just started practicing with me and then feeding me balls. And it kind of became more of like this coach aspect, because we used to, when we'd go practice, she'd work on something and I'd work on something. It wasn't just, you know, her telling me what to work on, and us working on that. So it kind of progressed into this thing where, now she's my coach. I don't pay her, so I'm sorry mom, but she does it because she loves it today. No, I don't pay her.
41:41
Randall Kaplan: Kardashians, where you have a mom is worth hundreds of millions of
41:45
Anna Leigh Waters: dollars for Yeah, no, I don't. I don't pay her. At the she has another student who she teaches, and he pays her. Christian al Shawn.
41:49
Anna Leigh Waters: Does he have a number one player? Not mixed doubles,
41:57
Randall Kaplan: putting it on the spot here, watching right over here, she's thinking, God, my daughter better F and say yes, right now,
42:05
Anna Leigh Waters: no, but so she thought he had potential, so she started coaching him, which was actually good, because we could practice together, and it helped me, because he's like, he's top 10 in all three as well.
42:17
Randall Kaplan: How old is he?
42:17
Randall Kaplan: 24
42:20
Anna Leigh Waters: he's old 24 compared to me. I know, right? I think he causes her more problems than I do. So maybe that's why I don't pay her. I'll pay her if I start causing her problems. But so now it's kind of like this thing where she's, like, known as, like a pickleball coach. Like when people looking are looking down at the sport, they see her as, like, a really good coach, but they don't really remember us playing together, because the sport kind of exploded right after she tore ACL, which kind of sucks, because we were the number one team when she tore ACL, and we were on top. And now all of a sudden, people look at the sport and they don't remember that. They just see her as my coach. And like you said, my manager and my mom, when she does all those things, she books all the flights, you know, she does everything for me. So I couldn't do what I do without her. She takes all the pressure of everything but pick a ball off of me so I can just really focus on playing, which is awesome. And then I have my dad, who kind of does the same thing.
43:12
Anna Leigh Waters: We all travel together, and we're all just very dedicated to the sport and I guess my professional career, which is kind of cool that I get to do with my whole family, because for a while it was just my mom and I traveling together, but now my dad travels with us, which is very needed, because I told my mom, I think this year, we've been home the least amount of any year. It's just gotten crazy where I'm doing stuff like podcasts and sponsors are asking me to do things, more tournaments, just all this crazy stuff. So having two people to kind of help me get through that has been awesome. But I feel like every year, there's something else that's like added to my plate, and then one of them takes it for me. So I'm very lucky right now
43:52
Randall Kaplan: when your mom gave up her career, at what point did your dad, he was managing a hog farm, right in the family business. So when did, when did he? So
43:59
Anna Leigh Waters: my dad actually sold his part of the hog farm, because it was like his family's hog farm that he was working for, and they, I don't know how it was split up, but he sold his share of it, and then he started working for a construction company in Florida where he sold construction materials so he could kind of work from home too. It was like, half and half. Like, you have to go to some sites some days, but other days he could be home. So I kind of had both my parents work from home for a lot of my life, which was awesome because I was able to do fun stuff with them. And we're like, we're really close family. Like, my mom's like my best friend. I think my dad's my best friend.
44:29
Anna Leigh Waters: My dad's like my brother. We just like, do things that makes mom upset. Like, like, we just play pranks on mom all the time and do fun stuff. So it's been really cool to kind of grow up that way. I'm an only child too, so I don't have any siblings, so that also makes me closer to my parents, which is cool, but, yeah, it's just been great to travel the country with
44:50
Randall Kaplan: them. In some sports. You reach the pinnacle of your career when you're 19 years old, maybe 20 years old.
44:54
Randall Kaplan: You reach a pinnacle of your sport when you're 14 years old, number one in the world, and singles, doubles and mixed doubles. How did that feel when you became number one in all three categories? To
45:03
Anna Leigh Waters: be honest, I remember getting the things in the mail that said, like, oh, number one player in the world.
45:08
Anna Leigh Waters: And I was like, Oh, this is cool. Put on the shelf. And kind of like, is it a trophy? Yeah, it's like, a little, it was, like, a, like, a rectangular thing that set up like this, and it just said Anna Lee waters, number one in the world, women's singles. And then one said women's doubles, and one's a mixed double, whatever. Like, I remember getting these in the mail box. I mean, like, yeah, it was a nice trophy. But I remember, like, literally, like, looking at it being like, that's cool, putting it on the shelf, and like, going on with, like, my day. Like, I think we might have celebrating, gone to dinner, but I don't know, like, I said, I never was like, I'm number one in the world. And, like, thought about it all the time, but it was just really cool. And I feel like I just kind of always expected that of myself. So when it happened, I was like, Oh, like this. This is, like, what I always thought I, like, was gonna do. So, like.
45:50
Anna Leigh Waters: Cool that it happened. But like, I always thought I was gonna, I always thought I was gonna, you know, be number one, which I think that self belief, but also that kind of, like, drive is kind of like the perfect combination to why I've been able to, like, sustain it for so long. But at the same time, pickle is getting tougher. A lot of better players are getting into sports. So I don't know how long at this point, looking back and like, I probably should have enjoyed it more, because now I'm like, I don't know how long I'll be number one in all three so I should really enjoy, you know, every moment that I'm number one in all three divisions. I
46:21
Randall Kaplan: think it's very rare that people know at a young age what they want to do. I mean, I know a lot of people, you know, when I was young, you want to be a professional baseball player, football player, but very few people can actually do it. What's your advice to everybody, all the all the teenagers out there and even the young adults? Well, even
46:38
Anna Leigh Waters: the reason I figured it out was because I really didn't like school growing up. So I'm like, What can I do that I don't have to go to like, a nine to five job? And I was like, I love playing sports, so like, I'm gonna try really hard in sports, so I don't have to do that, you know, when I'm older. So I think one of my MLP owners is Gary V Gary Vaynerchuk, who
46:55
Randall Kaplan: was on my show a couple weeks ago. Awesome. Okay, shout out to Gary. So, like,
46:59
Anna Leigh Waters: his motto is, like, you might be 40 and still not really, you know, know what you're gonna do in life, and that's not too old. So I don't want to be like, figure it out when you're, you know, 10 or 11 or whenever. I figured out, because I was just very blessed and very lucky, that I was able to figure out what I wanted to do, and even then, I didn't really know I was going to play pickleball. It was more like 1213 that I really was like, All right, I'm going to stick to pickleball. So I was very blessed that I was kind of that decision was just kind of put on a platter for me, and I was like, I'll take it, whereas, like some of my friends and other peers that you know, they don't really know what they want to do in their life yet. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think you know, eventually you'll figure it out, and the most important thing is just kind of doing what you love. Because Pickleball is what I love, and that's why I chose it. So my message would be, just do what you love whenever you find it. I think it's the right path for you. Let's
47:47
Randall Kaplan: talk about pickleball now, and some statistics here. Okay, Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in America. It's grown 39% since 2019 in 2022 there were 23 point 8 million tennis players and 36 point 5 million pickleball players.
48:04
Randall Kaplan: Today there's over 40 million pickleball players. The population of the United States as of December 1 of this year, was 346,199,668 people, which means that 11.55% of pickleball players in the United States play pickleball. Why
48:25
Anna Leigh Waters: it's just so fun and addicting. Like you said earlier, like, I feel like the problem maybe a couple years ago is people just didn't want to try it, like they were, like, they were like, it's kind of stupid, kind of like, what my mom and I thought, like, I'm not even gonna try it. I feel like now a lot more people are trying it, and the second they try it, they're just addicted. And then want to play. And then tell everybody they know, when we first started playing pickleball, anytime we saw any of our friends or anybody we knew, were like, Have you played pickleball yet? Like, you need to go play. So I feel like the more because people started actually playing it just kind of like boomeranged from there, like it started spreading, and people were like, it's so fun.
48:58
Anna Leigh Waters: Just play once, like it'd be addicted. I also think it's the only good thing that came out of COVID, because a lot of families couldn't go out and do things together, but they could put pickleball courts up in their driveway, and they were actually playing that way. Or they'd go to their local parks and they'd play pickleball. So it was a way that their families could interact, because Pickleball is something that all levels can play and have fun. Like I can go play with my dad, who's like a 3035 and I'll still have fun playing with him. Gotta
49:22
Randall Kaplan: come over, because I have a lot of three Oh players playing at our house.
49:24
Randall Kaplan: But like tennis a fun game, by the way, it's very fun, but in tennis, you couldn't do
49:31
Anna Leigh Waters: that. So I think that's why it was a great sport during COVID, because everybody could play to everybody could play together, like my seven year old grandma can go out and hit with us, you know, whereas in tennis, that couldn't be possible. And also the celebrities started playing, and they started posting it on social media. I think one of the Kardashians put a court at their house. So I also think the fact that celebrities love it, and many influential people love pickleball and want to put a lot of money into it, like there are so many billionaires that I've met through pickleball, and they're so passionate about the sport that they don't want it to fail. So if you have 10 billionaires not wanting pickleball to fail, it's pretty hard for it to fail, you know, type thing. So yeah, I think we're just lucky that a lot of people really love the sport.
50:12
Randall Kaplan: Interestingly, you don't have to be a young player to enjoy it or be good at it. 20% of people who play pickleball are 55 years and older, which
50:21
Anna Leigh Waters: is crazy, because when I first started playing, it was like 100% of people were 55 and older. That's cool. Stat. Now,
50:28
Randall Kaplan: you said it's easy to play tough to master what? What do you need to do to master it. For those of us who are frustrated and wish we could be better, what? Well, I think
50:40
Anna Leigh Waters: the first thing is like you just need to play like the first step of pickleball. Don't listen to what anybody's telling you. Just go out and play how you want to play, and then after maybe a couple months of kind of figuring out your game style, then you can start watching instructional video. And doing things like that, but I think the first couple months, just don't listen to anybody. Just go out and play. You know, you got to know the rules. But other than that, just play how you want. Because when my mom and I first started playing, we played this super aggressive game style, and that was not how pickleball was played at all.
51:05
Anna Leigh Waters: Like everybody was just hitting these soft shots, these soft inks, and we were out there, like wailing at it, because that's what we were used to by playing tennis. And everybody was like, You need to change your game. You won't get better doing this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, there were maybe three people who told us we were what we were doing was okay, one of them being Ben Johns, and everybody else was saying, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna never get better doing this. So I think some people still have that opinion now, but it's a lot different.
51:29
Anna Leigh Waters: Like people are saying you can play more aggressive. I mean, you don't hit every shot hard, but when you get the shot, you should go for it, whereas when we first started playing, it was you get the shot, you still hit a soft shot back. And we figured out that was our strength and we used it. So I think if you're starting to play pickleball, figure out what your strengths are, and then figure out how to make them better.
51:51
Randall Kaplan: At some point, I stopped playing pickup basketball. You know, you go on Saturday, you want to be a weekend warrior. I'm not sure if I was 30 years old or 35 because I would always hear someone blowing their knee out or ACL injury. You know, you think you're 20 years old. And pickleball, lot of people are getting injured. Knee injuries are up. I started playing in this clinic on Mondays. It's for 3035, players, and I finally get moved up to the best court, playing my best pickleball ever.
52:17
Randall Kaplan: Someone hit a lob. I went up for it, barely nicked the top of my racket, didn't hit it, and I came down on my ankle sideways, and was just in I was there were, I don't know, 60 players there. I'm screaming in agony.
52:30
Randall Kaplan: Oh, my God, this is terrible. I could hardly walk. Went to my orthopedist, who he knew very well, because my son was a skateboarder, and he would break his wrist once every three or four months. So we literally went speed, yeah, at some point, the joke was shout out to Dr Grogan at some at some point, the joke was I should buy some kind of a frequent flyer, or, you know, frequent mileage, just to go to him, and it was a very bad spray. And I'm finally walking out without a lamp, but I can't it's very hard for me to move my my leg side to side, and I have not played in about two months. Okay, I said, What?
53:06
Randall Kaplan: What's your advice to all the people going out there not to get injured? I know there's
53:09
Anna Leigh Waters: a couple things I'm not saying. This is you, but a lot of people go out and play pickleball for the first time, having not done any physical activity in like five years or so, and they think pickleball super easy, and they go out and most of the time, like you said, they're going back for a lob and they fall backwards, or they run for a ball that they can't get to and they end up falling or something like that. So think of pickleball as like an easy, easier alternative to like basketball, like you said, but you also can't think of it as like, not a sport, as just like an activity, like bowling, you know, like you have to be in some shape to some athletic shape to play. You can't, you know, not do anything for five years and then go play competitive game of pickleball and expect not to get injured.
53:50
Anna Leigh Waters: So I think that's one of the main things, is people don't think it's as difficult movement wise as it actually is. Number two is, you're doing a lot of sideways movement in pickleball, which our bodies mainly want to go forward and backwards. So going sideways all the time isn't necessarily great for your joints and your, you know, bones, whatever. So that's why I go to my PT all the time, just for preventative work I do.
54:12
Anna Leigh Waters: Obviously get injured because I play so much pickleball occasionally, but going to a PT to kind of prevent these injuries from happening is a great step. So I would say maybe, if you're deciding you want to start playing pickleball a couple times a week, maybe seeing a PT once a week to just kind of prevent your injuries would be a good step. Or going to, like the gym a couple of times a week, I don't know, just just working out a little bit as well as playing pickleball.
54:36
Anna Leigh Waters: Don't just play pickleball.
54:38
Randall Kaplan: My doctor gave me an interesting stat. He said that if you're 50 years or older, you'll get injured one out of 100 times on average.
54:44
Randall Kaplan: Okay, which is a very interesting stat. I mean, this is his empirical these
54:49
Anna Leigh Waters: are, I probably get injured more than that. So that's a good stat for me. And he
54:53
Randall Kaplan: said it's the biggest part of his practice right now. And he's, we live in West LA, and he's, he's the guy.
54:59
Randall Kaplan: He's the doctor that everyone goes to when they break a bone or something. I just thought that was a very interesting stat. No, it is. Let's talk about what being a professional works. Talk about the leagues, how they work, and then talk about the teams and how those work, and how they interact with
55:15
Anna Leigh Waters: Yeah, this is kind of confusing for most people looking in on Pickleball.
55:17
Anna Leigh Waters: They don't really know what's going on right now with all the tours and leagues. I think when the PPA and MLP merge, which I'll get to what those are, I think that made it easier for people looking in to kind of understand what's happening. So I'll explain each one. I'll start with the A P, P, so the A P, P, um, all the pros kind of like to think of as like a feeder, to stand for Association, association.
55:37
Anna Leigh Waters: They're all kind of like that just flipped around, okay, um, so that's kind of like the feeder tour to the PPA. Like pros who don't want to commit to playing the top players in the world right away, kind of go play the A P, P tour, and when they get good enough.
55:52
Anna Leigh Waters: Then they decide to go to the PPA, or the PPA will sign them a contract, and they'll come play with PPA. The PPA is professional or pro pickleball Association, and that is where you'll see, like the number ones in the world, like Ben Johns myself. That's where, like, the top 10 means something they have rankings like, it's more legit, and that's like the number one tour. So you think of like, WTA ATP, like, that's what the PPA is. You get, you get what I'm saying, okay? And that is, like you play singles, mixed and gender doubles, and that's one tournament. And then they have all three
56:29
Randall Kaplan: at every if you want to, okay, yeah. And
56:33
Anna Leigh Waters: just like tennis, they have four majors every year, and those have more points than the other tournaments. And then they also have so a majors, 2000 points.
56:42
Anna Leigh Waters: And then they have what's called like a cup, and that's 1500 points. And then they have 500 points, which is just like their regular like a challenger type tournament. And the 1500s and 2000 tournaments are a week long. Kind of the qualifying is Monday, and then the draw starts Tuesday, and then I get buys, so I start Wednesday. I'm gonna buy because you're one of the best players, yeah. So the top, I don't know, it depends how many people are playing the tournament, but the top whatever, get a buy and start Wednesday, and then Wednesday through Sunday is like the main tournament. That's when you'll see the best matches, Saturday and Sunday. Saturday semi finals, Sundays finals. They call it championship Sunday, which is usually the most watched day of all the tournaments, because it's all the finals, which is usually the most grueling day for me, because I'm usually playing in all three finals. So it starts Wednesday. I'll play singles, mixed doubles, gender doubles, all on the same day, and then I'll do that five days in a row.
57:43
Anna Leigh Waters: And to win the tournament, you'd have to win all of those matches through all five days.
57:48
Randall Kaplan: So what number of matches do you have to win for each of those three titles, five
57:53
Anna Leigh Waters: to win five matches, unless you don't have a buy then it's six.
57:57
Randall Kaplan: And you're playing three matches a day for four days,
58:01
Anna Leigh Waters: five days, five days, six days. If you don't have a bye, how long
58:05
Randall Kaplan: are you in the court for on every day? And so how long is the break between these
58:09
Anna Leigh Waters: matches? Each match can be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half, and in between matches, I usually have anywhere from an hour and a half break to a four hour break.
58:21
Randall Kaplan: What do you do during your breaks? Usually
58:23
Anna Leigh Waters: I eat food, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, yeah, PB and J like my stomach's kind of weird, so I have to eat very bland foods on tournament days. So think of like Triscuits, Clif Bars, PB and J stuff like that.
58:36
Randall Kaplan: Shout out to all the potential sponsors. Yeah, right here. If you
58:40
Anna Leigh Waters: want to sponsor me, I'm open to it. I do eat your foods almost every day.
58:42
Anna Leigh Waters: On tournament days,
58:45
Randall Kaplan: talk to Kelly Wolf. You're awesome. And Ruth set us up today. So shout out to Kelly. Yes.
58:49
Anna Leigh Waters: Shout out to Kelly, best manager. But so like Wednesday, usually the tournament gets tougher as the week goes on, because, you know, you're getting into, like the semi finals and finals as the week goes on. So usually, like my matches on Wednesday aren't as long as like on Sunday, when you're playing a potential three out of five match, which can be two hours. So one of my Sundays was crazy. I had two doubles matches that went both to five sets, and then I had a singles match that went to three games, which is crazy. It was like, I was on court for like, like, six, seven hours. I think one day I was on court for 12 hours on a championship Sunday. So it's like, can be very grueling, especially at the end of the tournament, like playing those Sunday matches. It's, it's crazy, but that's the cups and the majors. When you get to, like, the five hundreds, it starts Thursday, and 500 what?
59:40
Anna Leigh Waters: So that's 500 points, okay, oh, 500.5 100 points, which is the lowest level tournament. You start Thursday. And on Thursday is all the singles. So you play all the singles up to the final match, and then Friday, you play all the mixed doubles up to the final match. Saturday, all the gender doubles up to the final match. And then Sunday, you play the finals of everything. So instead of alternating events on each day, you play everything in the same event, which can be kind of tough, because think about playing like four or five singles matches all in one day.
1:00:08
Anna Leigh Waters: I
1:00:09
Randall Kaplan: can't, right? I mean, I play one hour of pickleball, and I'm drenched in sweat fucking down the water.
1:00:16
Randall Kaplan: Last time I played, I was on my knees for a few minutes and just like, hey, man, like, I don't want a heart attack.
1:00:22
Anna Leigh Waters: Well, it's like, speaking of pickleball training, you have to train endurance strength, because you have to hit the ball hard, you have to jump a lot, and you have to have quick reaction skills.
1:00:29
Anna Leigh Waters: So it's like everything, like in you have to train it people.
1:00:31
Anna Leigh Waters: Like, what do you train them?
1:00:34
Anna Leigh Waters: Like everything. Because it has everything in it,
1:00:36
Randall Kaplan: right? So, so we'll come into the training regimen a little later, but I really want to talk about now, because I think people still don't understand the leagues.
1:00:43
Randall Kaplan: There were two leagues. They hated each other. They did hate a bunch of billionaires fighting, yes, and that was a huge thing. So what were they?
1:00:51
Randall Kaplan: The other
1:00:53
Anna Leigh Waters: league is Major League pickleball, MLP, and this is like a team format.
1:00:56
Anna Leigh Waters: So think they wanted to make it like basketball or football, where each city or state had their own team, and that was four players, two men, two women, and their whole aspect was they think Pickleball should be a team sport, not a individual sport, like tennis or golf. So all these people got together and they created this major league of pickleball, and they got all these owners, all these celebrity owners, to buy into the team. So like, I'm on the New Jersey fives, and Gary V is my owner, and he's got like, 10 followers in Instagram. He's this, like, crazy motivational guy. Who's he's the best, like, the best owner ever. He texts our team all the time, like, Great owner dudes,
1:01:43
Randall Kaplan: everybody, yeah, I mean, I've he was on my show.
1:01:46
Randall Kaplan: I loved him before, you know, love you know, love him even more now. Yeah, he's the
1:01:49
Anna Leigh Waters: same on like, some people, you're like, are they the same on Instagram as they were? In person, he's the exact same. He's on Instagram as he is. Instagram as he is in person. So he's awesome. Like you said, Tom Brady, he's got a team. Like, there are other owners, yeah, LeBron, like, basically anybody you could think, has got a major league pickleball team. And that's kind of what blew up Major League pickleball, because they were getting all these media meteorites. Like, they would post like, Tom Brady about a pickleball team, and it would blow up, you know, and, oh, pickleball must be huge, because Tom Brady's got the ownership of this team, whatever. So that's kind of how they made MLP really big, whereas PPA, kind of grass root grew it as like a tennis Tour, where they were trying to build, kind of the sport around the players, whereas MLP was trying to build it around, like celebrity owners who were kind of investing in these leagues.
1:02:39
Anna Leigh Waters: And then what happened is we played this was before they had this big split. We'd play like four MLP events a year, and they'd be like tournaments, right? And then all of a sudden,
1:02:52
Randall Kaplan: meaning meaning the teams play another team, just like a, like a
1:02:55
Anna Leigh Waters: bracket. It's kind of like the playoffs. We kind of had, like four playoffs a year, where everybody would be in a bracket, and you'd play up, whatever, the finals, and then four players per team, four players per team, and that means close to 20 teams. I think there were okay.
1:03:08
Randall Kaplan: And then, and then you have to win, to win the match is a you win, the men play the women's play, or men
1:03:17
Anna Leigh Waters: play the win, women play. Then you have the mixed doubles, so that you have two mixed matches. And then if you're tied, because that's only four matches total, if you're tied, you play what's called a dream breaker. And this is really interesting, because a guy could play a woman in singles. So it's a singles match, and each player plays four points, and you rotate so your number one singles player goes out, plays four points.
1:03:37
Anna Leigh Waters: Number two goes out, plays four points. That goes all the way down through all your players.
1:03:42
Anna Leigh Waters: And then once the last player is gone, then number one goes again, and you played 221,
1:03:48
Randall Kaplan: you're listening to part one of my awesome interview with Anna Lee waters, the number one pickleball player in the world who became number one in singles, doubles and mixed doubles since she's been 14 years old. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my incredible interview with Anna Lee. You.