How a Hurricane Led to Pickleball's Favorite Duo: Leigh and Anna Leigh Waters

Leigh and Anna Leigh Waters are two pickleball champions who started playing pickleball at the very same second. Now their mother-and-daughter partnership on the court has become a legend in the pickleball universe. Leigh shared with the Pickleball Fire podcast how the 2017 hurricane in Florida became the reason behind the initiation of their pickleball career.

As the hurricane caused an electricity outage in Florida, Leigh’s family moved to their relatives house in Pennsylvania. As they had nothing to do in their spare time they decided to try out pickleball. After that, it was love at first “dink.” During the two weeks Leigh and Anna Leigh stayed in Pennsylvania, they played continuously from dawn to dusk. They even skipped lunch and took a break only to visit the local grocery store in its place. As Anna Leigh said, pickleball was the only good thing that came out of that post-hurricane period for them.

Anna Leigh played at the 3.0 level in her first tournament, which resulted in her being promoted quickly to the 3.5 level. Anna Leigh started by playing 4.5, which was a learning curve because she found it quite challenging at that stage despite her tennis background. After playing in different division for awhile, Leigh considered herself very lucky when she got that chance that she had been waiting for – a chance to play alongside her daughter Anna Leigh.

The pairing resulted in massive successes in 2019 with them winning nationals. As they were preparing for a third major win in 2020, the pandemic came and held them back from meeting their goals for the year. So the pair tried to polish their skills by training hard during their break from competition. They worked on their defensive strategy in no man’s land or the land of opportunity, as Anna Leigh likes to call it.

Leigh said how she loves to stay on the left side of the court for most of the game to have her forehand in the middle. That is an advantage for her because her game is quite aggressive on one side. However, the opponents can quickly adjust to her being on the same side. That became a disadvantage, and that’s why Leigh focused on improving her game on both sides during her training. Her goal during the training, as she described it, was to play equally aggressively on both sides of the court. Having been told they could never win the game at the pro level by hitting the ball hard, they tried to diversify their strategies and styles.