Pickleball is no longer just that recreational pastime your neighbours play on weekends. It is has moved way past that. Now, it is a global phenomenon, volleying into the mainstream at a speed no one predicted. It’s younger, it’s faster, and it is getting more cutthroat by the second.
But while we’ve seen the highlights and the trophies, we’ve never truly seen the scars.
That changes on 5 May 2026.
Enter PARTNERS, a six-part docuseries premiering on Prime Video, the PPA Tour YouTube channel, and PickleballTV. This isn’t just a sports highlight reel; it’s a crossover dive into the fervour, the feuds, and the fallout of a tour often described as a “travelling high school.”
The Curse of the Partnership
In pickleball, “love” isn’t even a score. In the world of PARTNERS, it seems to be in short supply.
The series pulls back the curtain on a locker room culture where players train together, party together, and date each other—only to show up at the same hotel the morning after a brutal loss or a public breakup. Everyone knows everyone’s business. Then they step onto the court, and it’s war. They don’t just play to win; they play to destroy.
At the epicentre of this storm is 18-year-old Anna Leigh Waters. The undisputed queen of the court is currently outearning the stars of the WNBA, and she wields that power with clinical precision. With a single phone call, she dismantles the most dominant women’s doubles team on tour, proving that in the PPA, choosing a partner is a high-stakes game of rumours and social maneuvering.
Watch the trailer of PARTNERS:
A Holster Full of Stories
PARTNERS follows a roster of athletes who are all emptying out their holsters to prove they belong at the top:
- The Challengers: Anna Bright is fierce enough to dissolve a beloved pairing just to close the gap on ALW. Meanwhile, Catherine Parenteau and Rachel Rohrabacher, both left in the lurch by Waters’ roster moves, form an alliance that nobody saw coming.
- The Gamblers: Ben Johns, the sport’s most decorated icon in the men’s side, makes the shocking move of walking away from a winning partnership with his own brother to bet it all on 19-year-old Bolivian sensation Gabe Tardio.
- The Heartbreak Kids: Former sweethearts Parris Todd and Hunter Johnson navigate a very public breakup, channeling their personal ache into the performances of their lives.
- The Grinders: From Federico Staksrud writing “I am the best” on a piece of paper every day, to 48-year-old Matt Wright battling a bad back alongside Spanish charmer Jaume Martinez-Vich,the series highlights the physical and mental toll of the grind.
A League Racing Against Time
“People underestimate what these athletes sacrifice,” says PPA CEO Connor Pardoe. “Pickleball is everything to them—their identities, their social lives, their livelihoods.”
Filmed across the PPA Tour’s most defining season, PARTNERS captures a league less than five years old that is racing to build its own mythology. It’s a referendum on the sport’s legitimacy. Whether it’s the unfiltered aggression of Christian Alshon or the “Hurricane” Tyra Black looking to de-throne the queen, the drama is something you could never script.
Come 5 May 2026, we’ll see if these stars can handle the heat when the cameras are as relentless as a volley at the net. In this game, the magic isn’t just in the paddle—it’s in the partners you keep, and the ones you leave behind.
