Tennis legend Andre Agassi, an eight-time Grand Slam champion and former world no 1, is making headlines again as he prepares for his professional pickleball debut at the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships in Naples, Florida, starting April 30th, 2025.
The 54-year-old, who retired from tennis back in 2006, will team up with 18-year-old Anna Leigh Waters, the world’s top-ranked pickleball player in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, for the mixed doubles event. Waters is becoming one of the sport’s biggest stars and earned over $3 million playing pickleball last year.
Agassi, nowadays no stranger to pickleball (read our Pickleball guide), has played in high-profile exhibition events like the Pickleball Slam in 2023, which aired on ESPN, and recently launched his own line of pro pickleball paddles with JOOLA. Agassi has been rather passionate about the sport since retiring from tennis and he’s now a vocal advocate for its growth, citing its social and inclusive nature.
Agassi’s partnership with Waters, who already claimed 148 Professional Pickleball Association titles, came about after she saw his skills on YouTube and proposed they play together to boost the sport’s visibility, compete of course, but most of all have fun.
While Agassi humorously admitted he might “weigh down” the prodigious Waters, and that she’s probably “tired of winning so much” their pairing highlights pickleball’s rising popularity, with an estimated 48.3 million U.S. players between 2022 and 2023. The event will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network, marking a significant moment for Agassi’s new chapter, however, it does not seem he will continue with a full pro pickleball career.
“If I had the luxury of bandwidth to focus all my energy on just playing and body recovery and all that stuff, that would be a joy. But I don’t. I’m in a different season now,” Agassi commented.
The U.S. Open Pickleball Championships starts on Saturday in Naples, Florida. It’s one of the biggest pickleball tournaments of the year and gets crowds as large as 50,000 fans each year. Agassi and Waters will play their debut match on April 30th around noon local time.
