Why Andre Agassi Is All in on Pickleball
Taking Pickleball international, selling out arenas overseas, and riding the wave of America’s fastest-growing sport.
Andre Agassi discovered pickleball the way millions of Americans did: they were looking for something new to do during the pandemic. His son, Jaden, was home from college, marooned by lockdown. His wife, tennis superstar Stefanie Graf, was game to try something new. They picked up paddles, set up a court, and decided to see what the sport sweeping the country was all about. “Everybody put their phones down for a couple hours—and had a blast,” Agassi said.
Agassi, however, didn’t become a pickleball evangelist overnight. The eight-time Grand Slam champion had devoted his life to a sport of punishing baseline rallies and solitary combat—tennis is you against an opponent, separated by 78 feet of court. Pickleball is the opposite: tight quarters and soft volleys. “I wouldn’t say I fell in love with it at that time,” Agassi said.
But the same things that have hooked millions of Americans kept pulling him back: tactical depth, a genuine workout, and a team element that made it more fun than it had any right to be.
What began as a pandemic diversion for Agassi has become something larger. Today, pickleball is far more than his pastime—he’s one of the faces of the sport. Not only is he a three-time champion at the Pickleball Slam, the sport’s crown jewel event, he’s also invested in equipment, infrastructure, and technology through his publicly traded company, Agassi Sports Entertainment (“ASE”). He and Graf have become global ambassadors for the game, taking it international, selling out arenas overseas, and riding the wave of America’s fastest-growing sport.
“I can’t think of any other sport that has ever taken the world by storm quite as quickly as this one,” he said.
The Long Game
Agassi is one of the most decorated champions in the history of tennis. He became the first player ever to win a Career Grand Slam on all surfaces and an Olympic gold medal. He arrived on tour in the ’80s as a teenager with a mullet, denim shorts, and a game built upon flair and ferocity—a punk rocker in a country club sport. He was also a student of the game who watched filmed matches of his opponents and always seemed to know what was coming. He was a crossover star who made tennis must-watch TV, the kind of player who made non-tennis fans tune in.
Andre Agassi playing Grand Slams in the 80s.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Andre Agassi.
Behind the spectacle, Agassi was quietly building something else: a second act that extended beyond the court. While competing, Agassi launched the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education, personally taking out a $40 million mortgage to build a K–12 charter school in one of Las Vegas’s most underserved neighborhoods. The school enrolled 1,200 students. Three thousand more were on the waiting list.
The experience was transformative—and clarifying. In the years following his 2006 retirement from tennis, he worked with an inner-city development expert to create a private-sector real estate fund that builds facilities for top-performing charter school operators, then helps those schools refinance and buy back the buildings at favorable terms. Agassi doesn’t call himself an educator or an operator. “I’m a facilitator,” he said, noting that the fund has deployed roughly $1.3 billion, built 130 schools, and created approximately 80,000 seats for students annually.
Agassi brought that same builder’s mentality to pickleball. At first, the game was just family time. Then, in 2023, Agassi was invited to compete in the inaugural Pickleball Slam—a made-for-TV, million-dollar showdown alongside tennis stars John McEnroe, Andy Roddick, and Michael Chang. Something shifted. He became interested in learning the nuances of the game.
“You kind of have to unlearn a few things,” he said, of transitioning from tennis to pickleball. The instincts that won him eight Grand Slam titles—the explosive groundstrokes, the impulse to overwhelm and impose yourself on an opponent—could be liabilities on a pickleball court, where touch and placement matter more than power. By the second Slam, he was, in his words, “hell-bent” on getting better. He sought out stronger players, studied patterns, and demanded more reps. “I’m always processing,” he said. “I need more data and more time on task.”
Agassi has now won the Pickleball Slam three years running. As his game sharpened, Agassi started seeing pickleball’s potential beyond the court. Here was a sport with millions of passionate participants and an infrastructure trying to catch up—rating systems in flux, technology underdeveloped, a professional scene still finding its footing. To Agassi, the dynamic felt familiar: surging demand, supply that hadn’t kept pace.
So, Agassi did what Agassi does—he got in the game. Through ASE, he invested in Duper, a player-rating system he views as essential plumbing for the participation economy. He signed a lifetime deal with paddle manufacturer JOOLA to help expand the sport globally.
Most recently, ASE announced a multi-year collaboration with IBM to build an AI-powered digital platform for racquet sports—branded “Agassi Intelligence”—that uses IBM’s technology to analyze athletic movement from everyday video footage and deliver professional-grade coaching directly to players’ mobile devices.
The tech is part of his effort to help make the game more accessible, democratic—and more global.
“It breaks cultural barriers, brings people together, and I think it’s healthy for people’s bodies and minds,” Agassi said.
A Team Effort
Agassi spent his tennis career in one of the loneliest places in sports: a court with no coach in his ear, no partner to share the weight. “Only boxers can understand the loneliness of tennis players,” he wrote in his memoir Open, “and yet boxers have corner men. Tennis forbids even a whisper.”
Pickleball offered the opposite.
On the pickleball court, you hear everything—your partner’s call, your opponent’s trash talk, the laughter between points. Pickleball is a game built on collaboration and partnership. And Agassi’s most important partner in pickleball also happens to be his most important partner in life: his wife Stefanie, another tennis great, with 22 Grand Slam titles to her name. “They say [pickleball] can ruin a marriage or build a marriage,” Agassi said. “In our case, it’s only built it.”
Graf hasn’t just tagged along for the ride. She was Andre’s partner as they won the last two Pickleball Slams. She’s become consumed by the game in her own right, not just disappearing for hours to play with friends, but also launching her own line of signature paddles with equipment brand JOOLA. When they traveled together to Vietnam and China for the JOOLA Pickleball Legends Tour last year, Graf was on the court every chance she got. It’s been a blessing, Agassi said, “to be able to do stuff that we both enjoy. She authentically loves playing the game.”
They’re building pickleball together the way they’ve built everything else—as partners. Graf serves as a JOOLA ambassador alongside Agassi. They cocaptain teams at the Pickleball Slam. They’vetaken the sport international together, drawing massive crowds from Shanghai to Ho Chi Minh City.
“They say [pickleball] can ruin a marriage or build a marriage,” Agassi said. “In our case, it’s only built it.”
Photo credit:
Courtesy of Andre Agassi.
The sport has also expanded their world in unexpected ways. “I’m fifty-five years old, and the older you get, you have less friends in your life,” Agassi said. “Pickleball has actually added a great deal of new friends to our life.”
On April 15, 2026, in Hollywood, Florida, Agassi is set to defend his Pickleball Slam title for a fourth consecutive year, partnering with former tennis star James Blake. They’ll take on Anna Leigh Waters, currently ranked No. 1 in the world in pickleball, and former Wimbledon finalist Genie Bouchard with another million-dollar purse on the line in an event that will be broadcast on ESPN. “Me and James will just be probably sweating a lot more than they are,” said Agassi.
Don’t be fooled: Agassi’s competitive fire hasn’t dimmed. And his approach to pickleball is no different from his approach to tennis: “To be incredibly focused and incredibly present is crucial,” he said. “Not getting hung up in the past, not future tripping. Being really present in the moment.”
It’s the same discipline that drove Agassi to invest in a school and go all in on a sport that many people still underestimate. “Sports are a metaphor for life in a lot of different ways,” he said. “You can only deal with what’s in front of you in order to get to the finish line.”
But Agassi’s second act has reinforced that you don’t have to get to the destination alone. You need someone beside you, covering the gaps, calling the shots, and trusting you to do the same, whether on the court, in the classroom, in the boardroom, or on a 20-by-44-foot rectangle with a paddle in your hand.
