Short answer: Anna Leigh Waters is the most dominant player in women’s professional pickleball and, by most measures, the most dominant player in the sport full stop. Born January 26, 2007, she turned pro in 2019 at age 12 — the youngest professional in the sport’s history — and is coached by her mother, Leigh Waters, who also spent years as her doubles partner. As of September 2026 the PPA Tour lists her at No. 1 in the world in women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles simultaneously.
The 30-second version
- Age 19. Born January 26, 2007 in Allentown, Pennsylvania; the PPA lists her hometown as Boynton Beach, Florida.
- Turned pro at 12, in 2019 — the youngest pro in pickleball history.
- Found the sport during a hurricane. She started playing in 2017 while evacuated for Hurricane Irma.
- Her mother is her coach — Leigh Waters, a former NCAA Division I tennis player, and for years her doubles partner.
- Titles: the PPA’s own athlete page lists 172; Wikipedia counts 181 gold medals as of January 2026. The sources disagree; see below.
- 39 Triple Crowns — winning all three draws at a single event.
- 2026 was her year twice over: a first MLP championship with the New Jersey 5s, then singles and doubles gold at Nationals.
- Steal from her game: the two-handed backhand where the dink and the speed-up look identical until it is too late.
This is the second profile in our Pro Corner player series, after Ben Johns, and there was never much question who was next. If Johns is the ceiling for the men’s game, Anna Leigh Waters is something slightly different — a player whose whole career has been a demonstration of what happens when someone starts young enough that the sport’s conventions never have time to settle on them.
Who is Anna Leigh Waters?
Anna Leigh Waters is an American professional pickleball player, born January 26, 2007 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which makes her 19 as of September 2026. Her family moved to Clinton, North Carolina when she was eight and then to Delray Beach, Florida in 2015; the PPA Tour’s athlete page currently lists her hometown as Boynton Beach, Florida. She is 5’6” and plays right-handed.
Before pickleball she was a competitive soccer player. The switch happened in 2017, and the circumstances are the kind of detail that sounds invented: the family was evacuated for Hurricane Irma, wound up at her grandparents’ place, and picked up paddles to pass the time. Two years later, at twelve years old, she turned professional — the youngest person ever to do so in the sport.
The mother-daughter thing is not a gimmick
Her mother, Leigh Waters, is her coach, and for a long stretch was also her doubles partner — the only mother-daughter pairing in professional pickleball. Leigh played Division I tennis at the University of South Carolina, which matters: a lot of what makes her daughter’s game structurally sound traces back to someone who already knew what elite racquet-sport development looks like.
I bring this up because it is the single most transferable part of the story for the families I see at New England courts. The Waters path was not a special academy. It was a parent who understood the sport well enough to build a practice plan and stick to it.
How many titles has Anna Leigh Waters won?
Here I have to be careful, because the sources genuinely do not agree, and this is a recurring problem in pro pickleball record-keeping.
- The PPA Tour’s own athlete page lists 172 career titles, split 57 singles / 57 women’s doubles / 58 mixed doubles, plus 39 Triple Crowns.
- Wikipedia credits her with 181 gold medals and the same 39 Triple Crowns, stated as current to January 28, 2026.
Those two numbers cannot both be a complete count of the same thing, and neither source shows its work. The honest position is that she has won somewhere in the range of 170–185 professional titles depending on which events you count, and that 39 Triple Crowns — taking singles, doubles and mixed at the same tournament — is the figure both sources agree on and the one that actually conveys the dominance. Winning three draws in one weekend is brutally hard. Doing it thirty-nine times is the stat.
Rankings move constantly, so treat any placement as a snapshot. As of September 2026 the PPA lists her No. 1 in all three disciplines; the live board is at ppatour.com/player-rankings. We wrote about how the various ranking systems fit together in world pickleball rankings explained.
What did Anna Leigh Waters do in 2026?
Two things worth knowing, three weeks apart.
She finally won MLP. Waters was the No. 1 draft pick for the New Jersey 5s, a team that had reached the MLP Finals in 2024 and 2025 and lost both times. In August 2026 at Central Park in New York, the 5s swept the St. Louis Shock 2–0 for the franchise’s first title — and hers. Both matches went to a Dreambreaker, and per The Dink’s recap, she won the last two points of the Saturday tiebreaker over Kate Fahey from 20–20. Our full write-up is in the 2026 MLP Finals recap.
Then she went to Nationals and won two more. At the Veolia Pickleball National Championships in Cary, North Carolina (August 31–September 6), she took women’s singles, beating Kate Fahey 11-1, 11-9, and women’s doubles alongside Anna Bright, beating Tyra Black and Jorja Johnson 11-5, 11-6, 11-3. The Triple Crown got away in mixed, where she and Ben Johns were upset in the semifinal by JW and Jorja Johnson 4-11, 11-9, 11-6. Everything from that week is in our Nationals results recap.
A note on partners: hers change, and the PPA’s athlete pages are frequently out of date on this specific field. Rather than tell you who she is “currently” playing with, I will say that at Nationals in September 2026 her women’s doubles partner was Anna Bright and her mixed partner was Ben Johns, and leave it there.
What paddle does Anna Leigh Waters use?
She signed with Franklin Sports in January 2026, a move away from her previous paddle sponsor, and she is also the first pickleball athlete signed to a multi-year Nike deal. She is represented by the agency Octagon.
On the exact paddle model, sources currently conflict — the PPA athlete page and the retail listings do not say quite the same thing, and signature lines iterate fast. We keep that answer on a dedicated page that gets updated rather than guessing here: what paddle does Anna Leigh Waters use.
Steal this from her game: the disguised two-hander
Every spotlight in this series ends with one thing you can actually take to a Tuesday night session, and with Waters it is not a mystery. It is the two-handed backhand.
Most club players treat the backhand as the shot to survive — they run around it, or they block and hope. Waters inverted that. She will occasionally run around her forehand to hit a backhand instead, because it is her weapon. But the part worth copying is not the power. It is the disguise.
Her setup for a heavy topspin dink and her setup for a speed-up look the same. Same preparation, same body position, same window. The opponent cannot commit early, because committing early to the wrong one loses the point outright. That uncertainty is worth more than pace.
What that looks like for you:
- Build one preparation, two outcomes. Practice the topspin dink and the speed-up off an identical setup so your paddle position stops announcing your intent. Start with our two-handed backhand guide.
- Earn the right to attack. The speed-up only works because the dink is genuinely threatening. If your dinks float, disguise buys you nothing — fix that first via the pop-up dink.
- Win the exchange that follows. A speed-up starts a hands battle you have to be ready for. Our guide to winning hands battles is the companion piece.
- Pick the right ball. Aggression without selection is just gambling — point construction covers when the attack is actually on.
If you want to work on this with eyes on you rather than from a screen, that is what the coaching directory is for.
Frequently asked questions
How old is Anna Leigh Waters?
She was born January 26, 2007, which makes her 19 as of September 2026. She turned professional in 2019 at age 12, the youngest player ever to do so in pickleball.
Who coaches Anna Leigh Waters?
Her mother, Leigh Waters, a former NCAA Division I tennis player at the University of South Carolina. Leigh was also her doubles partner for several years, making them the only mother-daughter pairing in professional pickleball.
How many titles has Anna Leigh Waters won?
Sources disagree. The PPA Tour athlete page lists 172 career titles as of September 2026, split 57 singles, 57 women’s doubles and 58 mixed doubles. Wikipedia counts 181 gold medals as of January 2026. Both agree on 39 Triple Crowns, which is the more meaningful figure.
Has Anna Leigh Waters won Major League Pickleball?
Yes, for the first time in 2026. She was the No. 1 draft pick for the New Jersey 5s, who swept the St. Louis Shock 2-0 in the Finals at Central Park in New York after losing the 2024 and 2025 finals.
Is Anna Leigh Waters the best pickleball player in the world?
In women’s pickleball the case is close to settled: as of September 2026 the PPA lists her No. 1 in singles, doubles and mixed at the same time, and no one else is near her Triple Crown count. Compared across genders the question is not really answerable, since the fields are separate.
Written by Jason Regan, founder of Regan Family Pickleball in Leominster, Massachusetts. Career facts here are drawn from the PPA Tour athlete page, Wikipedia and The Dink, all linked above; where they conflict, both figures are shown rather than one picked silently. This is part of the player spotlight series in the Pro Corner — see also the pros worth knowing and the Learn hub.