How a cocktail server became Australia’s No.1 pickleball player

After a long shift as the beverage manager at Magic Mike Live, Lara Giltinan leaves the Sahara Hotel and Casino. She takes the freeway to avoid the limousines and parties on the strip, reaching her home in south-west Las Vegas by 3am.

By midday, the 39-year-old is at an indoor pickleball facility with just a few hours to play and train before clocking in for another shift at Magic Mike. Although she doesn’t have a coach, has played for only 10 months and competes against full-time athletes, Giltinan is the highest-ranked Australian on the Professional Pickleball Association Tour.

“I just love going out there and being able to compete with the best girls in the world, knowing I don’t train anywhere near as much as that, but it’s a shame because I think, ‘gosh, if I was just, you know seven years younger or something, this could be great’,” she said.

Greatness is something Giltinan once thought was within her grasp in a different sport. While her life in Las Vegas is a far cry from her childhood in the northern beaches suburb of Manly, being on the PPA tour has similarities to her teenage years, which were spent competing for trophies on the ITF junior tennis world tour.

The daughter of Davis Cup champion Bob Giltinan, Lara played in the Australian Open and Wimbledon junior championships, among other tournaments. That led her to travel across the world and play against the likes of future world No.1s Ana Ivanovic and Caroline Wozniacki.

But at 18, during a Challenger event in South Australia, Giltinan leant over to pick up a tennis ball and felt a twinge in her lower back. That twinge was a bulging disc, which, exacerbated by her scoliosis, began a series of injuries, ending her competitive tennis career.

“It was awful because that was my whole life and everything that I knew,” she said. “It was pretty depressing to be honest because ... life as you know, it just kind of stops.”

For a few years, Giltinan remained in the sport, working as Tennis NSW’s tournaments and operations manager. In 2013, she planned a brief hiatus to traverse the US with some friends. Making the same pilgrimage as many others, Giltinan stopped in Las Vegas and was drawn to the lifestyle of being a poolside, bikini-clad, cocktail server. She inquired about a job, planned to stay for a year, but never left, leaving tennis behind her.

When a friend in Las Vegas began playing pickleball, Giltinan thought it was an embarrassing pseudo-sport.

“We just teased him because it had that nerdy vibe about it back then,” Giltinan said, adding with a laugh, “I don’t think the name pickleball is very appealing. I think they could have come up with a better name for the sport.”

For months, the friend pestered Giltinan to try the paddle sport, knowing she’d played tennis. Finally, she joined the sport’s cult-like following in the US.

“I made an Instagram story one day ... I was like, here I am pulling up to the pickleball court for the third time this week, remembering how much shit talk I used to do with my roommate playing this sport. Now I’m obsessed too.”

Giltinan first picked up a paddle in October, and by May she’d been invited to join the PPA Tour, considered the most competitive pickleball tour in the world. Now ranked 28th, Giltinan is the highest-ranked Australian.

“It’s not like a nerdy game any more. It’s become trendy, and I think it is just because every single person can go out there and actually enjoy it because it’s not too hard to play for a social player who’s never played a racquet sport.”

With 25 tour events each year in various cities across the US, pickleball has become more time-consuming for Giltinan than a typical hobby sport.

“If I was 10 years younger, I would absolutely move to Florida, which is where most of the training bases are, and I would 100 per cent go for it and then make a good living off it for a few years. But I’m 39 and know my body’s limitations,” she said.

“I guess my goal, because of my age, is more to have fun with it, gain credibility in the sport and then, now that I’m so passionate about it, go into it in another way. Make a career of it, whether it’s running venues or whatever, in a different capacity.”

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