Mehvish Safdar is a Pakistani-American female born in 1996 and is now residing in Durham, North Carolina. Her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan to work as physicians, with Mehvish being born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio where she grew up playing competitive tennis following the lead of her two older sisters. 

As for her tennis background, she was a former 3x Ohio state champion, top 10 U.S. nationally ranked junior, 5-star college recruit, and a DI college tennis player on a full athletic scholarship at the University of Minnesota. Having started playing pickleball in 2022, Mehvish is now playing pickleball professionally, having signed with the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) Tour and having been selected as the 13th overall draft pick for Major League Pickleball premier level in 2025. She has earned a top 70 doubles and a top 50 singles PPA Tour world ranking, a #1 U.S. collegiate national ranking, two individual collegiate national championships, two first-team All-American honors, and she historically became the first collegiate pickleball player ever to be drafted to a premier-level MLP team. 

Deviating from the rest of her family’s professional path as physicians, outside of pursuing pickleball professionally, Mehvish is a Ph.D. student studying counseling and sport psychology at Indiana University. She possesses a passion for helping athletes optimize their sport performance by improving their mental game, recognizing that an athlete’s mindset greatly impacts their sport performance. Mehvish hopes to continue to play pickleball professionally as well as engage in sport psychology work in the pickleball space.