Kelly
Goodnow

Long before pickleball, there was tennis. Goodnow picked up a racquet at age 4 and competed through the end of 2024, closing that chapter the only way a future champion would — by winning her final junior tennis tournament before walking away on top. The fundamentals she built there never left her. "Tennis gave me the fundamentals with footwork and swing," she told the Arizona Republic.

And tennis was never the whole story. Goodnow is a multi-sport athlete in the old-fashioned sense — she carries a 6 handicap in golf, and a video of her hole-in-one was featured on ESPN SportsCenter Next, racking up more than a million views. Her father once watched her dominate softball under a nickname that still makes the family laugh: "Kelly the Crusher."

The origin of every great rivalry needs a villain, and for a while, pickleball was hers. Her mother, Erin, was the believer. "She was obsessed with it," Goodnow recalled. "She was like, 'Kelly, you need to try this.' I was very anti-pickleball, because I was a big tennis player."

The resistance had a logic to it. "I was annoyed that they were taking over the tennis courts," she admitted — until the first time she actually played. The conversion was instant. "Then when I first played, I thought, 'Oh shoot, this is actually fun.'"

Once she committed, the learning curve looked less like a curve than a launch. Within roughly a year and a half of picking up a paddle, Goodnow closed out 2025 as the world's No. 1-ranked junior in 14U singles and captured two PPA World Championship titles in 14U singles and doubles. The PPA Tour now lists her as a two-time PPA Junior World Champion and 26-time PPA medalist.

Her defining junior performance came in Dallas. Down 2-8 in the third game of the singles final at the Carvana PPA World Championships, she refused to fold. "I had to tell myself to keep fighting, keep digging, keep going for it," she said. Point by point, she clawed back and stole the title from the top seed — a comeback that left her father in tears courtside.

Crucially, she wasn't just beating other kids. As a junior she qualified into pro main draws, defeated signed pros, and won gold in 5.0 events across singles, mixed, and doubles.

In late February 2026, the inevitable happened. At just 13 years old, Goodnow became one of the youngest signed PPA players in the sport's history, inking her first pro contract before turning 14 weeks later. Her debut left no doubt she belonged: her father reported she "pickled" her opponent in the first game of her very first pro match.

The momentum carried into the spring. Goodnow reached the singles semifinals at the Newport PPA Challenger, rocketing to World #88 on the PPA Tour in just her first month as a professional — now trading games with women in their twenties. She hasn't stopped climbing since: she now sits inside the world's top 70 in women's singles, a remarkable position for a player barely a year removed from the junior ranks.

Her coach is Ashlee Candelaria, a former collegiate tennis player at Arizona State who played pro pickleball for about a year before turning to coaching. Candelaria's read on her student is as much about temperament as talent: "Mentally, she's very much level. Even if she's down, she's not giving up."

She has drawn notice from the sport's establishment, too. Veteran pro Catherine Parenteau has offered her tips and greets her at tournaments — "Not many juniors have had that, so it's really cool," Goodnow said. And PPA commentator Lea Jansen has compared Goodnow's singles game to tennis star turned pickleballer Genie Bouchard.

Going pro at 14 reshaped daily life off the court. With a tour schedule that no classroom can accommodate, the family made the decision to switch to online school — homework now gets done on airplanes between tournaments.

Already backed by brands betting on her trajectory, Goodnow's bag and kit reflect a pro setup despite her age:

The ambitions are global. With tour stops in Australia, Malaysia, Italy, China, Japan and Canada on the international calendar, Goodnow is eager to start testing herself abroad — and her ranking suggests she's earning the right to. Having entered the pro ranks at World #88, she's already pushed into the world's top 70 in women's singles, the kind of climb that turns a curiosity into a contender.

For a player who's been a pro for a matter of months, the verdict from those around her is unanimous: this is the floor, not the ceiling. As Candelaria put it, "She's an athlete. It doesn't matter. Golf, tennis, pickleball — you could be like, 'Try this sport that I just invented,' and she'd be good at it."