Kevin Booth, WOR Hall of Fame Inductee, Class of 2026

The WOR Hall of Fame this year welcomes Kevin Booth, whose career of dominance at Outdoor Nationals spanned four decades.  He was one of the fiercest and most competitive players of his era at Huntington Beach.  He was known for his all-court game from the left side of the court, winning with shot variety, tactics, and outright confidence on the court. 

Booth is an Orange County native, born and raised.  As a young teenager he got introduced to the sport and dabbled in both outdoor and indoor while growing up.  Just after graduating High school in 1981, he met Mike Genevay (the brother of 3-time champion Dave Genevay) and got introduced to the top level of players competing at Orange Coast College, the mecca of the early outdoor racquetball scene in Southern California.  By the mid-1980s he started competing in Outdoor Nationals and soon began making his mark in the sport. 

Mike Agustin

Booth’s career spanned multiple eras, regularly playing the sport’s legends of the 1980s (Hawkes, Southern, Andrews), the stars of the 90s (Lane, Freeze, Solis), and the modern generation (Carson, De La Rosa, Beltran).   He was an outdoor absolutist, part of the cult of outdoor players who scoffed when “indoor players” would come out and try to bully their way around the court.  Booth has a story about every player who passed through Huntington Beach over the last 50 years, having competed against them all.

He won five Outdoor Nationals Doubles titles in his career:

• 1995 and 1996 with Tim Ring
• 2000 and 2009 with Mike Peters
• 2012 with Greg Solis

While widely recognized for his Doubles dominance, his repeated deep runs in singles confirm he was a complete outdoor player.  He was a 4-time Outdoor Nationals singles semifinalist:

• 1987 (lost to Southern),
• 1989 (lost to Hawkes, but beat Gelhaus for 3^rd)
• 1999 (lost to Greg Solis)
• 2000 (lost to Hawkes)

His last Outdoor Nationals title in 2012 came at the age of 49, a tournament where he also won the CPRT 40+ pro title, and he continued to compete at the sport’s top level well into his 50s before his competitive retirement. 

A master of all racquet sports, Booth also dabbled in tournament squash for a bit before being introduced to competitive Pickleball by Steve Belmonte in 2016.  A year later, Booth was one of the sport’s top senior pros and was winning golds at the sport’s biggest events.  As of this writing, Booth’s Pickleball Accomplishments include

• 2 USA Pickleball National Championship Senior Gold medals (2017 and 2018)
• 5 PPA Senior Golds
• 4 APP Champions and Masters golds
• 3 Tournament of Champions golds
• #1 Ranked Senior Pro at the end of the 2020 season.

Booth retired in 2020 and started Evolve Pickleball soon after, where both he and his wife now work full time as Pickleball instructors in Lake Forest, California.