‘Team Emmrich’ Is Turning Their Pro Tennis Backgrounds Into A Pickleball Passion

By Joanne C. Gerstner
Red Line Editorial

Martin and Tammy Emmrich traveled the world for two decades as elite junior, then professional, tennis players. The couple met through pro tennis, married and collectively decided it was time to retire from the sport and start a family.

They settled into a quiet life in Bradenton, Florida, with Tammy selling real estate and Martin working as a tennis teaching pro. After a hard journey to conceive and miscarriages, their daughter Gabriella (Gabi) was born on June 20, 2020.

All was normal. Until … pickleball happened.

Tammy decided one day, in October 2022, to try pickleball. She wanted to get in better shape after the combination of pregnancy, too much sedentary time at work and the COVID-19 shutdowns. She saw some older people having a ton of fun playing pickleball at a local court facility and figured if they could do it, it should be more than OK for somebody half their age.

“I tried it and was like, ‘Wow!’ I had so much fun, even though I had no idea what I was doing,” said Tammy, who as Tammy Hendler had been a top junior tennis player for her native Belgium. “It was like tennis, but definitely totally different. I told Martin to come by; he had to try it too because I thought he would also like it. I ended up signing up for a beginning group of like 65-year-old people; it wasn’t a great workout, but it was really fun. I was hooked.”

Then Martin tried it and really became hooked. He couldn’t stop playing.

“It is my obsession now, truly,” Martin, a 38-year-old native of Germany, said. “I cannot get enough. I am having so much fun; it’s the only thing I really want to do right now. I am all in.”

So in less than a year, Martin and Tammy went from curious newbies to now practicing daily, competing in pro tournaments and, yes, looking to reach the top of pickleball’s pro rankings.

Tammy plays with former WTA doubles specialist and friend Tina Pisnik, who also happens to be teaching tennis alongside Martin. He’s playing with the 2023 Boca Raton APP NYC Open men’s singles champion William Sobek, and Pisnik for mixed.

The couple is not playing singles — yet — because they cannot commit to the extra time away from his job. They hope to pick up sponsors, and then Martin plans to transition away from the long hours of teaching tennis to doing pickleball as full-time as possible.

They are just starting to gain traction and experience and, more importantly, results.

Their new love, pickleball, changed their lives, reigniting old passions and adding new lessons. Tammy has lost 40 pounds and said she is enjoying the challenge of learning from the top pros in pickleball. Martin is working out more than he did at the end of his tennis career, leading his former ATP doubles partner to tell him he is in better shape — with stronger motivation — than when on the tour.

“Getting into pickleball was so fast, because it just connected with me,” he said. “But there is so much I don’t know. I have to not think like a tennis player, because it is different. But what I love is how fast pickleball is. It’s very intense, and I am an intense person on court. It’s so hype, like a beach volleyball atmosphere with the loud music and the DJs.

“For me, it is like tennis because I love having crowds watching me. The bigger the crowd, the better I play. I’m just riding the wave of it all right now.”

Both said their elite tennis careers made transitioning to pickleball quite smooth, because they already have some high-level, deeply ingrained instincts. Additionally, Martin was a strong doubles player in tennis, making playing at the pickleball net seem like second nature.

However, unlearning a big swing, the feel of spinning the tennis ball off the strings, and playing with a bouncier ball are still works in progress. New strategies need to be learned too.

Tammy rediscovered her competitive side, which was somewhat lost by being burned out on the pro tennis circuit. After reaching the top as a junior, she felt burdened by high expectations for what she would do as a pro. She reached 160 in the world but didn’t win big tournaments. She quit the game in her early 20s, going back to Belgium to work in sales for her father’s company.

She decided to resume tennis after a few years and retired on her own terms with the sport.

“I did everything I wanted to do in tennis, and I moved on to what I wanted — having a family and life with Martin,” Tammy, 30, said. “But now I want to really see what I, what we, can accomplish within pickleball. There is so much opportunity and it is very exciting right now. We are doing this as a family. We’re both very competitive people, we hate to lose, so this is all feeling like fun for us.”

Martin admits he does not take losing well. Tammy is a little more objective.

Which means, no, they are not playing mixed together — on purpose. That experiment ran a few times, and failed. They play in the same events, making a fun road-trip adventure with Gabi, but playing mixed doubles is not good for their marriage.

“He’s so competitive that it was pretty awful for me,” Tammy said. “No thanks.”

Martin added, “I love my wife and want to stay married, so we’re not going to go there again. It made for a quiet car ride on the way home after we played together. I learned my lesson. We can cheer each other on. We want this pickleball life to be fun.”

Joanne C. Gerstner has covered two Olympic Games and writes about sports regularly for the New York Times and other outlets. She is a freelance contributor to USA Pickleball on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.