The breakup nobody saw coming

$380 million says you need a new paddle. One step to neutralize kitchen bangers.

April 09, 2025

It’s the end of an era in women’s professional pickleball, as the greatest team to ever do it comes to an unceremonious end. The sudden split between Anna Leigh Waters and Catherine Parenteau has left far more questions than answers in its wake.

Chief among them: Could ALW and new partner, Anna Bright, be even more dominant?

A closer look below.

In This Issue:

  • Pickleball’s most dominant team breaks up

  • One step to neutralize bangers at the kitchen

  • Pickleball’s explosive paddle sales

Let’s pickle.

Our Picks ☝️

⏱️ Smashing: Texas Group Goes for World Record

The Pickle Breakers attempt a Guinness World Record Saturday for longest pickleball marathon: 36 hours of nonstop mixed doubles action. All for a good cause.

⛔️ Cooked: David Dobrik’s Uninvited Pickleball Guest

YouTuber Airrak paid a visit to David Dobrik’s LA mansion for a high-stakes game of pickleball. His partner? World #12 Roscoe Bellamy. (Spoiler alert: Dobrik lost.)

⌚️ Needed: Can an App Improve Your Game?

A reddit user made an Apple Watch app that tracks the type, quality, and speed of your pickleball swing. It’s a work in progress—but yours to try for $4.99.

🚨 Gotcha: One Facility’s $80k Security System

City councilors in Decatur, Alabama, are taking security at their new pickleball facility seriously—just approved: $80,000 worth of facial recognition cameras.

Getting Smoked at the Kitchen Line? Step Off

In nearly every pickleball point, your goal should be to gain the kitchen line. But what if your opponent across the net has more firepower than you? Do you hold firm and hope you can take the heat—or get proactive and regain control?

Selkirk pro James Ignatowich loves a good firefight, but he’s not afraid to admit when he’s outgunned. In these situations, he relies on one simple but often overlooked strategy: taking one big step back.

It may sound counterintuitive, but that extra few feet of space can help level the playing field.

✅ More space = more time. An extra split second can make all the difference in your ability to react to a heavy attack. So go ahead—take a big step back. Still too hot? Make it two or three.

✅ Flip the script. This extra space opens up the court, giving you the chance to turn defense into offense. Instead of a lopsided firefight, you only need one solid reset and you’re right back in the point.

✅ Mind games. You’ve regained control, but your opponent doesn’t know it yet. This could force a drop shot (which you’ve totally got covered) or an overcooked speed-up. You’ve now got plenty of time to react or—better yet, move over and watch it sail long.

Have You Seen Selkirk’s New Essentials Drop?

They make the paddles you love—now they’ve cracked the code on what to wear with ’em. Selkirk’s new Essentials Collection just dropped, and yes, Dink fam, it’s that good. Built for play, made for everything else too.

For the women: The Flare Pickleball Dress is a one-and-done outfit—comfortable, flattering, and made to move. Want options? The Pleated Skort and Crossback Tank are a killer combo for court days or coffee runs.

For the guys: The 1/4 Zip Pullover? Clean. The 7" Shorts? Lightweight and ready to move.

🤔 Newsletter getting clipped? Click ‘view entire message’ or click here to read online

The ‘Unexpected’ Split of Pickleball’s Fiercest Duo

The Beatles. Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. Ross and Rachel (sort of) … all good things must come to an end, as they say.

The pickleball world lost one of its most enduring and potent partnerships Monday, when news broke—via Catherine Parenteau’s Instagram page—that her prolific partnership with Anna Leigh Waters was coming to an end.

The pair played 155 matches together, 31 resulting in gold medals. Their winning percentage? A ridiculous 96%. At one point, they won 41 matches … in a row.

And then—on the heels of a one-sided finals loss to Tyra Black and Jorja Johnson in North Carolina—it was all over. Without even knowing it, the world had watched ALW and CP’s final dance. 

If it felt sudden for you, imagine how Catherine must have felt. Turns out, she was as surprised as anyone—”unexpected” is the word used by a source very close to the situation—hearing the news for the first time when Anna Leigh called her to break it.

The intrigue goes deeper: word is, ALW is teaming up with the second-strongest player in the women’s field, Anna Bright, for the remainder of the 2025 season.

It’s a shocking end to one of pickleball’s greatest partnerships. And it leaves more questions than answers:

  • How long has Anna Leigh known she’d be moving on?

  • Was the loss in North Carolina the final straw?

  • Who will Catherine partner with now?

  • Where does all of this leave Bright’s former partner, Rachel Rohrabacher?

  • Will ALW & AB lose a match in 2025?

The Dink MiLP is Going Global (And Bringing $100K With It)

Puerto Rico just got a taste of The Dink Minor League Pickleball—and that’s just the start.

We’re taking The Dink MiLP worldwide: Mexico, Italy, Australia, Canada, China... and that list? Still growing.

And yeah, all these squads will be bringing their A-game to the 2025 The Dink MiLP U.S. National Championships—where they’ll be battling for a $100,000 prize purse (yep, double last year’s).

So International Dink fam, want in on the fun? Rally your crew and sign up here.

Report: Pickleball’s Explosive Paddle Market

We won’t bore you with the tired anecdote about pickleball’s meteoric rise. Been there, heard that.

But anytime a report can put some numbers to the sport’s growth, we’re paying attention. One such trend analysis has done just that, and the dollar figures are juicy to say the least.

According to Research and Markets, the pickleball equipment market—that’s paddles, balls, nets, apparel, you name it—was valued at $457 million in 2024 and is expected to reach $736 million by 2034.

The paddle segment alone is projected to hit $381 million by 2034, up from $229 million last year.

That’s fueled largely by the relentless wave of new paddle brands flooding the industry for a piece of the pie—and our insatiable appetite for the latest and greatest tech the market has to offer.

So far this year, for example, nearly 400 different paddles have been granted USA Pickleball approval.

And that is merely the tip of the iceberg compared to the vast quantity of brands that forgo any official certifications and sell direct-to-consumer on sites like Amazon, Temu and Alibaba.

At this rate, what do we think: Will the paddle bubble ever burst?

Pickleball Scores Are Lying to You

Pickleball is a game of momentum swings. One match can ebb and flow like the tide—one minute a team is on a five-point heater, the next they’re facing game point. It’s one of the things that makes playing—and watching—so addictive.

The way we score it is kind of lame, though. A final score of 11-7 indicates who won, but says nothing about how—was it close all the way through, or did one team grab a lead and never give it back?

Block scoring presents a novel approach to how we present pickleball scores. Essentially, it tracks points in "blocks"—consecutive streaks of points earned by a team—instead of just listing the final score. It tells the story behind the game.

As an example, let’s look at a single game laid out in block scoring in the image above: Anna Bright and JW Johnson vs. Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns in the finals at the PPA Cape Coral Open.

In Game 2, Waters and Johns won 13-11. It was a great game, but the score alone doesn't tell the full story.

From the block score, you can see there were five different lead changes:

  • A: Bright/Johnson – 2

  • B: Waters/Johns – 4

  • C: Bright/Johnson – 5

  • D: Waters/Johns – 5

  • E: Bright/Johnson – 1

  • F: Waters/Johns – 1

  • G: Bright/Johnson – 3

  • H: Waters/Johns – 3

This shows an incredibly close game with momentum swings throughout. In fact, if not for a strong start from Waters/Johns, this one could easily have gone the other way.

This may not trickle down to rec play, but it could add a layer of depth and analysis to professional broadcasts. Flash a block score during a timeout or at the end of each game and match, and just like that, the viewer understands how we got there.

We know change is hard. But learning the scoring of pickleball was tricky enough the first time around—why not try this, too?

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