The ‘Super Bowl of Pickleball’ Looks to Grow the Sport

A world championship in Texas is flush with cash and star players as the Professional Pickleball Association tries to turn amateur interest into long-term fandom.

Anna Leigh Waters, a 17-year-old from Delray Beach, Fla., is the world’s top-ranked pickleball player and is widely considered to be the face of America’s fastest-growing sport. But from where she stands, she is still relatively unknown, even among a majority of the racket sport’s fans.

“Pickleball has gotten a lot bigger, and there are millions of people playing it,” Ms. Waters said last week. “They go to a local park and play, but most of them have no idea there’s a professional side of it.”

This week, Ms. Waters is at Brookhaven Country Club in Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas, to compete in the Pickleball World Championships, one of the sport’s largest tournaments in the world. She is trying to defend her multiple titles — Ms. Waters is ranked No. 1 in women’s singles, doubles and mixed doubles in the Pro Tour of Pickleball, according to the Professional Pickleball Association — in a competition that includes all of the game’s marquee stars, including the top-ranked male players, Federico Staksrud and Ben Johns.

The tournament, which began on Monday and will run for a week, is being treated by its organizers as a coming-out party for the pro game — a way to seize some of pickleball’s popularity as a casual pastime and direct it toward the highest levels of the sport.

“This is a statement tournament,” said Bryce Morgan, the president of the P.P.A. “Financially, we may lose a dollar or we may make a dollar. But this is where we see pickleball going and what it can become, and this is us standing behind it.”