Catherine Parenteau is not unfamiliar with winning. In fact, she’s used to it.
A veteran player on the PPA Tour, Parenteau has seen plenty of success, from mixed doubles to singles to women’s doubles, too.
Truthfully, Parenteau might be playing the best pickleball of her career. She’s coming off a double gold medal effort after winning mixed doubles and singles last time out at the Indoor National Championships in Minnesota, and she arrived in Florida this week for the PPA’s Florida Open as the No. 4 seed in the women’s singles draw.
But Thursday—yes, Thursday, and not a Championship Sunday, not a gold medal match, or a nationals final, or anything in between—Parenteau said she had the best win of her career.
That’s what you say when you beat a No. 1 seed. That’s what you say when you beat the unbeatable. That’s how you feel when you take down the best women’s player in the world, Anna Leigh Waters, in just two consecutive games, 11-7, 11-9.
“Yes, this is my biggest win,” Parenteau said with a gigantic smile. “Yes it was.”
It was, and it should be. Parenteau is just 3-12 overall against Waters in career match-ups, but more significantly, Waters’ arc has been trending upward. The 16 year-old phenom has been unbeatable. Waters hadn’t lost…
