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Katie Couric (L) joins Matt Manasse on Celebrity Pickleball. Pickleball TV This week, Pickleball TV (PBTV) will branch out from its typical tour-focused programming schedule and launch just its second ever unscripted TV show as the channel expands its offerings. The new series is titled Celebrity Pickleball and will feature PBTV’s star Matt Manasse hosting a combination entertainment and talk show, as he takes a variety of celebrities through a training session in the first half of the show, then sits down with them for some Q&A in the second half. Announced celebrities in the first season include NFL legend (and partial owner of the LA Mad Drops) Drew Brees, former NFL player and media personality Marcellus Wiley, NBA star Trae Young, Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine, and national journalist Katie Couric. These guests will be joined by other celebrities for an eight episode season that kicks off November 5th at 10pm EST/7pm, just following live coverage of this week’s UPA Worlds event going on in Dallas. I first met Manasse at Worlds back in 2023, where he was onsite for the official launch of Pickleball TV. I caught up with him last week to talk about his history of involvement with the channel, his background, and to talk about how this show came around. Many just know him as the coach to stars in Hollywood, but many may not know just how integral he has been in bringing pickleball to the TV screen. Manasse hails from Erie, Pennsylvania, though his junior tennis talents took him to South Florida, where he was a national recruit from the Boca Prep School in Boca Raton. He played collegiate tennis first at USC, then at Purdue University, where he graduated with a BA in 2011. After college, he began coaching at the collegiate level and spent most of the 2010s moving around schools, eventually reaching Duke University as the assistant head coach of their Tennis Program. Despite his coaching success, he always wanted to do something in the commentary field. Manasse recalls, “Growing up, I loved watching Johnny Mac, P Mac, and Gilbert on ESPN [That would be, John McEnroe, Patrick McEnroe, and Brad Gilbert, who have broadcast tennis for decades on ESPN and the Tennis Channel]. I remember leaving Duke in 2019 and I called Steve Weissman [current on-air Tennis Channel personality]. And I was like, ‘Steve, I really want to do something in commentary with the Tennis Channel.’” Weissman let him down easy at the time, noting that all commentators on the channel were former top 10 players, but the phone call would be an interesting precursor of things to come. MORE FOR YOU After idolizing John McEnroe growing up, Manasse got to work with him (and Maria Sharapova) at the Pickleball Slam event in 2024. Pickleball Slam 2 Manasse got started in Pickleball like many of us, thanks to the 2020 Covid Pandemic. “I was back home in Erie. I had just finished coaching on the WTA tour. I found pickleball and started playing professionally. My first pro event was in August 2020 at the PPA event in Newport Beach. I played with Ryan Sherry, and in my first few events he was my partner. I ended up playing with A.J. Koller at some point and I also played with Hayden Patriquin when he was young; Hayden’s first pro level win was actually with me.” During the Newport Beach event, something happened that ended up reshaping Manasse’s life. “While in LA for that event, I met Doug Ellin, the creator of Entourage. We hit it off, and we played with Sam Querrey and Wes Burrows and all these other guys. And it opened up my mind of like, holy cow, Pickleball is this networking sport that tennis wasn’t for me. Yes. I knew a lot of people in the tennis world and I had done some cool things there, but to meet the screenwriter of your favorite show because of pickleball and then to develop a friendship because of that? I was like, LA is different. Pickleball is different. I’m going to move out and see if I can use Pickleball to do something that I’ve always wanted to do in media entertainment. That was a pretty big moment.” Manasse moved to LA just two months after the Newport Beach event. He picked up a coaching job at the famous Riviera Country Club, where he fully earned his moniker “Celebrity Coach to the Stars” and built up a growing student repertoire of celebrities, athletes, and most importantly, Hollywood insiders. Despite working full-time in pickleball and dabbling on the pro tours (Manasse played in MLP in the spring of 2023 and was a regular in pro draws in the early years of the sport), he still yearned for a commentary job, not unlike his childhood idols. Soon, an opportunity presented itself. Recalls Manasse, “I met Adam Friedman [Director of Operations at the Tennis Channel] at the public parks in L.A. One day he was like, 'I’m trying to convince Tennis Channel to take a stake in pickleball, to show live pickleball. It’s growing. It’s huge. But no one wants to do it yet.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I’m at the Riviera Country Club. Why don’t you invite the C-level team out to the club to do a clinic?’ Friedman got the executive team at the Tennis Channel out, including among others then-CEO Ken Solomon, current President Bill Simon, and programming head Bob Whyley. Manasse led the executives and their wives through a fun, two-hour session. They loved it. Says Manasse, ”Who knows if they were already talking to Connor [Pardoe] about adding pickleball at that point, but a couple of months later, pickleball was on the Tennis Channel." Pickleball TV's onsite desk features mainstay hosts Kamryn Blackwood (L) and Matt Manasse (center), seen here interviewing Anna Leigh Waters (R) post-match. Pickleball TV One of the Tennis Channel’s first calls to find on-air talent was to Manasse. “They called and were like, hey, do you want to come in and try this out? I was one of the early voices on a headset. I had never done it before. I remember people telling me, 'more energy, more energy. Stop talking during points.’ But Pickleball TV became a reality. We debuted in November 2023 at Worlds: that was the first time we were going to have a desk. We were going to be on camera. We were opening after Sports Center on ESPN for the celebrity event. And it was Kamryn Blackwood and myself that we're going to be the faces of that opening.” The only surprising thing about that quote, for anyone who knows Matt, is the part about needing to show "more energy." Manasse’s enthusiasm for promoting the sport exudes in everything he does. He’s one of the most passionate voices in the sport, and he’s normally a ball of energy when it comes to talking Pickleball. Since that debut in Nov 2023, Manasse has been a fixture on the channel, co-hosting the recap show Pickleball TV Weekly. “Every Friday in studio in Santa Monica, we host Pickleball TV Weekly. It’s Steve Weissman as the host and then Kamryn Blackwood and myself as the commentators. We break down what happened the week prior in Pickleball, whether it be highlights of the pro events, interesting stories going on in the world of Pickleball, pop culture that intersects with Pickleball, anything that we think is relevant and entertaining to an audience. We touch on everything that’s going on in the world of Pickleball." With the success of Pickleball TV and the weekly show (the channel just announced a deal to be included in YouTube TV’s broadcast level of service, drastically increasing the potential audience for the sport), the network is now starting to pursue some original programming and its own intellectual property that it can eventually use for syndication and for time-filling during off-hours. They approached their burgeoning star to see what ideas he could pitch. Says Manasse, “Well, I’m the ‘Coach of the Stars.’ Let’s do Celebrity Pickleball, where we get celebrities on a court and talk about their love for pickleball. We will get into their daily lives, talk about what they have going on in their world, and just show the love of the sport that everyone has. With some really well known celebrities on the channel showing the audience how much they love the sport, it just gives everyone a chance to relate to it and see how much fun we’re having. And hopefully, it spreads the sport to a wider audience.” The show is part on-court pickleball, then scripted questions in a more formal seated setting. There’s also a third segment each week where the guests engage in a challenge against their host, a fun wrinkle that shows off the competitive nature of the stars and Manasse himself. They shot the show in a multi-cam format, which will enable the producers and showrunners to have voice overs and seamless editing. Without spoiling too much of the first season, Manasse said his two biggest highlights filming were with Drew Brees and with Katie Couric. “Brees was the first guest we had, the first big name that said yes. And the episode with Drew was just really fun. We had really good competition, and it was just a really fun episode.” He was the most nervous interviewing Katie Couric, since she had been a fixture with his east-coast upbringing [Couric was a local news media personality out of Washington DC for years before moving into the National NBC News media], but the two hit it off and he considers the Couric episode to be one of his favorites of the first season. Manasse is excited for fans to see the new show. ‘I think the audience is just really going to enjoy seeing people’s guard down, right? Pickleball allows them to be themselves and open up. You see them sweat. You see them fail." As Us Weekly likes to say, “they’re just like us" on the court. Tune in on November 5th to see the debut of the first season, and follow along weekly as Celebrity Pickleball airs its first season. Note: this article has been updated since publishing to clarify the unscripted nature of the show, correct spelling of names, and to standardize “Pickleball TV” as a moniker. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
