Youssef Bouzidi once again is raising a racket.
OK, so this time it’s a paddle.
But the Roanoke County resident and former Radford University tennis star is making plenty of noise as a professional in a rapidly ascending athletic craze.
Pickleball.
Bouzidi, 51, who works as a senior accountant at Carilion Wellness by day, has been putting up big numbers in his spare time on the Professional Pickleball Association’s 50-over Champions circuit.
The native of Morocco recently won the U.S. Open Senior singles championship in Naples, Florida, while placing third in men’s doubles and adding a bronze medal in the mixed doubles split pro age division.
Bouzidi is currently ranked No. 1 nationally in the AARP/APP men’s pro 50-over singles ratings and is No. 2 in both men’s doubles and mixed doubles.
He has captured pro events in Seattle and Sacramento, with the next tournament scheduled for mid-June in Cincinnati. Bouzidi has a sponsorship deal with Engage Pickleball, and he recently signed on to play in a team format for the Atlantic City Aces in the 4-year-old National Pickleball League’s Champion Series.
Sitting in an office in Southwest Roanoke County, the former three-time All-Big South Conference tennis player at Radford and inaugural Roanoke Regional Tennis Hall of Fame inductee, waxed philosophical on his sudden rise in the world’s fastest-growing sport.
“It’s just crazy how some things are meant to be.”
Morocco is a North African country separated from Spain by a narrow stretch of the Mediterranean Sea. The 99% Muslim nation features a tourism-based financial system that became Africa’s leading industrial economy in 2025, according to the African Development Bank.
“It’s safe there, so it’s a tourist destination,” he said. “Morocco does not have oil, like our neighbors. It’s the Number 1 country in Africa in tourism. The weather is fine. We have four seasons there. You can ski. You can go to the beach.
“The train system there is really nice. You can go from [point] A to B in five, six hours and get [through] the whole country.”
Bouzidi grew up in Rabat, the nation’s capital and the country’s seventh-largest city, where his athletic pursuits were limited to tennis and soccer.
“We were middle class,” he said. “The good thing was I grew up literally 50 yards from the tennis club. I would wake up and just go and play tennis the whole day.”
Bouzidi developed into Morocco’s top-ranked junior player and one of the better 18-under tennis prospects on the African continent. After graduating from high school, he tried his hand in some ATP satellite and challenger events before coming to an important realization.
Professional tennis was a pipe dream.
“I was honest with myself. I knew my limitations,” Bouzidi said. “I had good forehand, good backhand, but I did not have a weapon. The way I played, I was a retriever. I knew I could not play Top 200 [level].”
However, in 1995, Radford men’s tennis coach Bruce Harrison eagerly would take someone of Bouzidi’s ability. Another Moroccan, Rachid Benjelloun, completed his career at RU as the Big South player of the year in 1994.
Harrison, who had strong connections with tennis coaches in Morocco, inquired about other talented young players who might consider coming to the college in the United States.
Bouzidi got on board.
He was an instant success, holding down the No. 1 position on Radford’s team all four years, earning All-Big South honors in 1996, 1998 and 1999.
“A lot of people vouched for me,” Bouzidi said. “He trusted them.”
“We grew up on red clay. I had not played on hard courts until I came to the U.S., so it was a little bit challenging for me when I went to Radford. I had never used a computer until I went to Radford. I did not speak any English.”
Bouzidi did not have the high-level success in singles that Benjelloun displayed, but he made a significant impact with his crafty style that frustrated opponents.
Harrison recalled a match Bouzidi played in a tournament in Norfolk against a much higher-ranked foe. During a changeover, the Radford coach offered some advice.
“I sat down with him and said, ‘Youssef, his backhand’s weaker than his forehand.’ He said, ‘You want me to hit to his backhand?’ I said, ‘Yeah, pick on his backhand.’ I don’t think the guy hit another forehand the whole match. It was an amazing thing to watch.
“He played a different game. He had the drop shot and lob, and he just had incredible hands. His style of play of tennis … he could do so much with the ball.”
Bouzidi has spent the last 26 years working at Carilion Wellness, which is housed in the old Roanoke Athletic Club facility off Starkey Road.
For some time, he stayed on the tennis courts, winning a 35-and-over singles championship at the Central Invitational Tennis Tournament in Lynchburg and playing on a USTA League 5.0-plus team that won a national championship in California in 2013.
The athletic club once had 12 indoor racquetball courts on the property. Bouzidi barely looked up from his ledger sheets at the rubber balls bouncing off the walls.
One day, everything changed.
“I walked by those courts for the first six years and I never thought about playing,” he recalled. “So one day I said, ‘Let me try this sport.’ And I did.”
It did not take long for Bouzidi, who became an American citizen in 2009, to be among the top racquetball players in the country. He won several open tournaments in Virginia and North Carolina.
“I think I was probably top 10 or 15 in the country at one time, but the ranking was changing so fast every week,” he said. “I was [ranked] 2 or 3 in Virginia at one time.
“For me, it was not as hard as somebody who never played tennis before. Within the first year I was top 10 in the nation. I stopped playing a lot of tennis. Racquetball was my thing.”
However, Bouzidi’s racquetball career and much of his normal daily life came to a screeching halt because of COVID-19.
The pandemic forced the club to close for several months. For recreation, Bouzidi and some friends turned to pickleball, a one-time fringe sport that was invented in 1965 in Washington, spread to the other 49 states by the 1990s and exploded in 2020 with the spread of the coronavirus.
“Now, I don’t think I’ll ever play racquetball again,” he said.
Pickleball is played on a 20′ x 44′ court, slightly less than half the size of a tennis court. The net measures 34 inches high in the center and 36 inches at the sidelines.
The ball is made of plastic, perforated with small holes and is slightly larger than a regulation tennis ball. Players strike the ball with a honeycomb-shaped paddle with a surface often made of carbon fiber, graphite or fiberglass. The core of the paddle can be made of a variety of elements, depending on the user’s preference.
The cost of a professional paddle can run close to $300.
It is estimated that there are between approximately 20 million and 48 million people in the United States who play pickleball, which has a 311% average growth rate in the last three years, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
SIFA also estimates that as of 2025, there were 16,289 places to play pickleball in the United States, either on dedicated facilities or on tennis courts modified to accommodate the game that has burst through the seams of the American consciousness.
The sport’s biggest growth is among individuals in the 25-34 age range.
While pickleball has exploded, so have complaints about the noise level in areas where multiple courts are located close to neighborhoods.
The issue arose in the summer of 2025 in Fairfax County, where some residents petitioned local government officials to impose restrictions on what a Facebook site titled “Pickleball Noise Relief” called “well-documented evidence that pickleball noise constitutes a significant nuisance to residential communities.”
“A lot of people complain about that,” Bouzidi said. “I feel bad for the neighborhoods, but people get used to it. To solve the issue, I think they should have courts a little farther from houses, but if you are a player you don’t care about the noise.”
Regardless, it is becoming clear that many tennis players, including some who reached the highest level of the sport, are gravitating toward pickleball.
Tennis legends such as Andre Agassi and Ivan Lendl are now involved with pickleball. Former touring pro Jack Sock competed in a professional tournament in Bristol, Tennessee, in 2024 and 2025.
When Bouzidi teamed with partner Sheri Courter of Ohio in November to win a Senior doubles tournament in Seattle, one of the opponents was Brazilian Jaime Oncins, who reached the men’s doubles semifinals of the French Open tennis championships in 2000.
Bouzidi has not stopped playing tennis, but finding someone who wants to spend several hours playing singles is becoming more difficult.
“I have a feeling that at one time everybody’s going to be playing pickleball,” Bouzidi said. “I tell [tennis players], ‘Don’t be afraid. We can all coexist.’ You can play pickleball and still play tennis. I still play tennis. About two weeks ago I went to Lynchburg and did a clinic there.”
Bouzidi, who is married with a 12-year-old daughter, gives pickleball lessons occasionally when he is not traveling to a tournament.
The professional tour is divided into two camps — the Association of Pickleball Players (APP) and the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA). Bouzidi competes in the Champions Division (50-over) in the APP, which is largely sponsored by the AARP.
“The two tours, they don’t like each other,” Bouzidi laughed. “I can play both, but I play APP because they take care more of seniors. They treat us well. The PPA, for the younger pros, they have better players.”
Bouzidi pays his own expenses to tournaments, including tournament entry fees, transportation, lodging and meals.
At the APP tournament in Sacramento, it cost him $1,800 to enter three divisions. He earned $3,800 in prize money for winning singles and mixed doubles, along with a second-place finish in men’s doubles.
“I go all over the country, and people think, ‘Oh, he’s making money,'” Bouzidi noted. “No, I’m not, because I spend a lot of money traveling. I made $3,800 but I spent $2,220.”
Bouzidi spent eight days competing in Florida at the U.S. Open in April. To help defray some of the cost, he stayed with former Roanoke Valley residents John and Leslie Bernard, who live in Naples. Leslie Bernard is a former head tennis coach at Hollins University, where she was also the tournament director for the Roanoke Valley Invitational Tennis Tournament.
An interested spectator at a recent tournament in Clearwater, Florida, was Mike Anderson, who replaced Harrison as the Radford University men’s tennis coach after Bouzidi’s freshman season.
Anderson, who was named Big South coach of the year five seasons in a row, was in Florida on a golf outing and decided to go watch a pickleball match for the first time.
“I thought, he’s going to go out and jiggle around. Well, I changed my tune,” the former Radford coach said. “At the highest level that Youssef’s at, it is on. It’s a game. I was a snob. I tell you what. He is freaking good.”
Bouzidi is known on the APP tour as the “Moroccan Magician” for the same deft, crafty style of play he employed 30 years ago in college.
“The difference was, when he played college tennis he pissed off all his opponents,” Anderson said. “They didn’t like him. He played such a junky, heavy topspin game. And he beat ’em. They would call him names and make fun of him, and it just rolled off of him.
“He is really liked by all these other pickleball players.”
Anderson had no idea Bouzidi was playing in the tournament until he boarded an Allegiant flight in Roanoke to head to the Sunshine State.
“I’m getting in the plane, I’m walking down the aisle and this guy says, ‘Hey, Coach. What are you doing here?'” Anderson said. “It was Youssef. I hadn’t seen him in 15 years.
“When I got on the plane, I was the last one on. I was standing in the aisle talking to him. I said, ‘Youssef, Allah thinks the world of you. He wanted to do something for you so he invented pickleball.'”
