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Andre Agassi is back on the court, just a smaller one.
The eight-time Grand Slam winner made his professional pickleball debut last month at the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships, teaming up with 18-year-old Anna Leigh Waters, the top-ranked female player in the world, in a mixed tournament.
He won his first match before dropping his second, but after participating casually over the years, he’s hooked.
“Dude, I’m not just liking it, I’m loving it. … It’s an anomaly to see any support ever at this kind of pace, but it’s easy to see why,” Agassi said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital. “My family was looking for things to do, and watching how like bring people together, generations together, how it breaks cultural barriers, breaks down gender barriers, breaks down generational barriers, low-point of entry, nobody’s intimated to try it, it’s challenging at every level. Tell me when to stop, for crying out loud.”
Agassi caught wind of “Dreambreaker: A Pickleball Story,” a Netflix documentary – now streaming on MAX – directed by Ashley Underwood, Larry David’s wife. She, too, has caught the pickleball fever, which might make for an amazing “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode.
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“I played pickleball, my husband and I played. We had a fun group during COVID. That’s actually when I got started,” Underwood told Fox News Digital. “I was a tennis player before, and someone asked me to come play pickleball, and I fell in love with the sport. I went to a major league pickleball tournament in November 2021, and I couldn’t believe what I saw in the pro game. They’re just playing like a completely different sport almost than recreational players. Just real athletes, incredible to see, and honestly, I saw that this was the birth of a professional sport. So I wanted to chronicle a unique moment in time.”
Despite his tennis success, though, there are a lot of nooks and crannies that Agassi still needs to get used to.
“It’s really hard. These guys are so specialized, it’s so sensitive, such little margin for error,” Agassi said. “There’s so much nuance that creates opportunity. It’s not like ‘see space, hit space.’ There was a lot I had to unlearn, but some things came instinctively. I grew up with a racket in my hand, and in this case it’s a paddle, so I’m going to make good contact. But the blood pressure, it’s hard to find a place to put it when you’re out there on the pickle court.”
A report found that there were nearly 20 million participants in 2024, a 311% increase from 2011.
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