Is This New Anna Leigh Waters Serve Legal? Should It Be?

This weekend's PPA Tour event – the Mesa Arizona Cup – had plenty of drama worth chatting about with your pickleball-watching friends.

But, perhaps the most overlooked piece of the tournament – and the most controversial, was the debut of a new serve by Anna Leigh Waters.

While the commentators jokingly compared it to something you might see in Adam Sandler's 1996 comedy Happy Gilmore -- where a hockey-turned-golf pro would take a few steps before hitting his drive off the tee – it had other spectators wondering about its legality.

In the Pickleball Forum group on Facebook, a poster took a screenshot of pickleball serve rules that state, "It is also illegal for a player to take more than one step when making a serve."

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Others responded in kind, saying that the USAPA rules are pretty clear. Yet, others called into question whether or not the PPA followed the same rules.

No fault was called for any of her running serve attempts. She even said that she asked the refs ahead of time if it was legal. They said it was, so she performed the serve several times throughout her singles matches.

It will be interesting to talk to ALW about this serve and where it came from in a few weeks when she's on the PicklePod.

Until then, what do you think? Was it legal? Should it be?