Retired tennis legend Andre Agassi has taken up pickleball over the past few years, with the American becoming so involved in the sport that he has highlighted ESPN's Pickleball Slam exhibition event.
With pickleball becoming a more prominent sport over the past year, it comes as no surprise that the sport is being recognized on a global stage. Agassi was on hand to help launch pickleball's PWR DUPR India League in Mumbai on Friday, alongside former doubles No.1 Rohan Bopanna.
Pickleball is more mentally taxing than tennis, according to Agassi
In an interview during the event, the former World No.1 spoke on the benefits of pickleball. In addition to losing weight while playing the sport, Agassi spoke on the level of exhaustion he experienced after playing pickleball versus playing tennis.
"If I go play tennis now with my wife or friends, I spend a lot of energy and I can do it for a period of time until I am exhausted," began the eight-time Grand Slam champion. "And then I come home and I take a shower and I’m ready to do anything – okay, I’ve got a meeting, a business meeting, I’ve got this, I’ve got that.
"When I play pickleball, the same exhaustion happens but when I get home – I’ve just realized this over the past few months, I can’t go from a pickleball court to a meeting. Because I’m so tired mentally, too. Tennis, physically, no question, and you’re concentrating, but you get these breaks. Pickleball, you don’t get it.
"So I get home and I just lay on the couch. In the beginning when, Stef, my wife wasn’t playing… she looked at me like, ‘You just played pickleball, what’s the matter with you?’ But I promise I am honestly as tired mentally as I am physically. And it was like I just came out of the swimming pool. That’s how much I sweated.
"It helped me lose 40 pounds! I mean, I shouldn’t ever have had the 40 pounds in the first place."
"When I play pickleball, the same exhaustion happens but when I get home – I’ve just realized this over the past few months, I can’t go from a pickleball court to a meeting. Because I’m so tired mentally, too. Tennis, physically, no question, and you’re concentrating, but you get these breaks. Pickleball, you don’t get it.
"So I get home and I just lay on the couch. In the beginning when, Stef, my wife wasn’t playing… she looked at me like, ‘You just played pickleball, what’s the matter with you?’ But I promise I am honestly as tired mentally as I am physically. And it was like I just came out of the swimming pool. That’s how much I sweated.
"It helped me lose 40 pounds! I mean, I shouldn’t ever have had the 40 pounds in the first place."
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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