‘Now I’m gonna get my own love story’: Trista Sutter invites Joey Graziadei to be the the lead of ‘The Bachelor’ during a ‘Golden Bachelor’ deleted scene

If you caught episode four of The Golden Bachelor, you may have seen a few familiar faces join 71-year-old Gerry Turner for the group date.

Connecting on the pickleball court, Gerry Turner himself, host and former Bachelor Jesse Palmer, and former Bachelorette Trista Sutter served as the judges for the first-ever The Golden Bachelor pickleball tournament. In addition to this, future Bachelor Joey Graziadei (who works as a tennis pro) was there, teaching the ladies how to play — how sweet is that?

Filmed back in August, Joey received some life-changing news from Trista in a deleted scene, which announced that he will be the lead of The Bachelor next season. Keep scrolling to see how it all went down…

After revealing that she is “such a big fan of Joey,” the 28-year-old spilled to Trista what he has been up to since filming for The Bachelorette wrapped: “Life’s good. I’m back teaching tennis, you know, trying to stay as busy as I can.”

To follow, the oh-so handsome Joey Graziadei proceeded to elaborate on how he has been doing emotionally since his love story ended with Charity Lawson, ultimately gushing, “I’m doing well. I think that for me, I’m just more leaving it with gratitude. Like, I couldn’t ask for anything else, because I met an amazing woman that had me open up and learn how to love how I want to again, and I’m just happy for her and Dotun. That’s truthfully how I feel. It was her story [and] she chose it how she wanted to, and I was lucky to be a part of it.”

Looking back at his experience fondly, and wishing Charity and Dotun nothing but the best, Joey is ready to find love again, this time as the lead of season 28 of The Bachelor.

“I’m not just here to play pickleball though. I have a very serious question,” Trista explained, garnering a nervous reaction from Joey. “Will you be our next bachelor?”

“Of course,” he responded with a beaming smile, and we can’t wait to watch his journey unfold.

Until season 28 of The Bachelor begins, tune into new episodes of The Golden Bachelor at 8pm ET/PT, as well as new episodes of Bachelor In Paradise at 9pm ET/PT every Thursday on ABC — you will not want to miss them!