Andrew West/The News-Press / USA TODAY NETWORK
Anna Leigh Waters of the New Jersey 5s looked like she wanted to take someone’s head off after her team’s win during a recent Major League Pickeball match. The reason for that is because as she and her partner were shaking hands with their opponents on the St. Louis Shock, she thought one of their players called her the “b” word.
After their pickleball match at the USTA National Campus, Waters got very heated at Hayden Patriquin of the Shock and went after him with a vengeance. “I’m a b—?!” Waters shouted at Patriquin as she tried to walk him down. “You just call me a b—?!”
Unfortunately, St. Louis Chief Operating Officer Andrew Haines bodied up Anna Leigh Waters like he was setting a pick for LeBron and she couldn’t get to him. Of course, that only redirected everyone on the 5s’ anger at the guy for “touching her.”
If you read lips towards the end, Leigh may be saying to ALW “you can’t go over there”. Wild sequence of events in the final MLP match of the weekend! pic.twitter.com/OamPFwwAj8
— NML Pickleball (@NmlPickleball) April 27, 2025
It was later confirmed that Hayden Patriquin had indeed called Waters the “b” word, multiple times, according to one reporter.
“Some words were said that should not have been said. It is what it is, it is the heat of the moment,” Times Now News reports he admitted. “…I am sorry, I should not have done it.”
Caught in 8k🫣 who knew Waters had that DAWGGG in her ?👀🤬 pic.twitter.com/hwQJjkJpzi
— pickleball.com (@pickleball_com) April 28, 2025
Apologies and hurt feelings aside, if there were more confrontations like this I might actually tune in to watch pickleball, which to me barely, if at all, qualifies as a sport. There may be 3,500 competitors from all 50 states and 40 countries at this week’s U.S. Open Pickleball Championships, but who is actually watching it other than people with a vested interest like team owners, staff and friends and family members of the competitors?
Pickleball did pay its female players the highest salary on average out of all of the professional sports leagues in 2024, and Andre Agassi will be making his pro pickleball debut alongside Anna Leigh Waters this week, but the fact that Agassi is 55-years-old doesn’t really help to legitimize the game as a real sport.