The GOATs Win Double Golds And Goins A First Time Winner At Pro Pickleball Association Bristol Open

Anna Bright with a swinging forehand volley on her way with partner Anna Leigh Waters to another Women’s Doubles title.

PPA

With Major League Pickleball finally at the end of its 10-week mid-summer schedule, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) took advantage of a small window between the regular season and the playoffs to fit in a return to one of the more unique events on its regular calendar; the 2025 Veolia Bristol Open, held at the Bristol Sportsplex in tiny Bristol, Tennessee (population, 27,867).

Bristol is perhaps best known for being a twinned city to Bristol, Virginia just across the state line, and the main route through town has a slew of brass state line markers embedded in the middle of State street. Or perhaps more likely, it’s home to an annual NASCAR race, held at a speedway quite close to the facility that played host to this event. However, this past weekend it was home to more than 1,000 players, drastically increasing the town’s population for the weekend, for the first PPA tournament in weeks.

Thanks to the proximity of this event to the MLP events, we saw a slew of players enter singles draws who do not normally do so, in order to get some DreamBreaker practice for next week’s MLP playoffs. Bristol is also a bit of a challenge to get to, which led to some absences and experimental partnerships for this 1,000-level PPA event.

As a non-cup/non-slam event, The Bristol Open will revert to its one-event-per-day format, with Singles, Doubles, and Mixed being competed Thurs/Fri/Sat, and then hold semis on Saturday and Finals on Sunday in a format that forces qualifiers to the event nearly a week ahead of time, but which allows for the TV broadcasting highlights for its semis and finals. It also makes “covering” the event much easier for journalists, as we can essentially summarize huge chunks of the recaps as the event goes and not get stuck writing an entire recap on Sunday night.

Click here for the PickleballBrackets.com home page for the event, where you can get tournament details, draw sheets, and results.

News and Noteworthy ahead of the Event

Since the PPA was last in action in mid-June, here’s news relevant to the tour that’s occurred:

• 6/21/25: Federico Staksrud, who signed a very high-profile agreement with Adidas to play their equipment earlier this year, has apparently terminated the entire representation contract and gone back with Joola. For months he had been playing his old Joola paddle, but in San Clemente he was no longer sporting any Adidas gear whatsoever, leading to is IG post confirming the separation. Adidas and their OEM can’t be happy with the way this all went down.
• 6/24/25: PPA’s parent UPA officially began renegotiating player contracts starting next month, according to a memo sent out to players this week. The period is open to those who signed initially in Aug 2023 during the Tour Wars. The benefits
  apparently will include a minimum annual guaranteed compensation, access to an enhanced prize pool (Gold Contract Grid) and a clause ensuring that “No other player will receive access to a higher prize money structure during the term of their agreement.”
• 7/2/25: PPA commissioner Connor Pardoe announces that they’ve signed a binding agreement with a group to bring automated line calls to pro pickleball,
  using the same technology that Tennis uses.
• 7/12/25: UPA announces in the midst of the mid-season Beer City MLP tournament that they have terminated the contract of Quang Duong, effective immediately. I covered this news in this space at the time, and continue to pursue Duong for a follow-up.
• 7/25/25: at essentially the same time, the UPA announces a Player’s Council has been formed with Zane Navratil at the head, while a group of veterans have formed an external player group called the World Pickleball Player’s Association. I discussed this interesting set of moves and the timing of the new association’s creation with contract negotiations in this space.
• 8/1/25: Just ahead of the Bristol event, the PPA tour announces that the Life Time-manufactured ball the LT Pro 48 will become the official ball of the pro tour. The tour announced it was moving to this ball in May at all Life Time hosted tournaments, but now expands the use of the ball to be at all PPA events. Notably, the LT 48 (which is so named because it has 48 holes instead of the USAP approved 40) is not USAP certified, representing another break between the UPA and USAP. The LT 48 ball is known for its beveled holes which assist with its flight and truer bounce.

Interestingly, as play got underway in Bristol, PPA veteran and popular podcast host Tyler Loong posted an interesting tweet on X, saying “Might be early, but going off many results from Bristol Singles thus far…with LT ball, I think even more upsets will be in play at least for near future. Fast ball = more upsets.”

The PPA tour has now changed balls several times, starting with the Franklin X-40 (a very soft ball), moving to the Onix Dura fast-40 (an incredibly hard ball that helped bring power to the game), then moving to the Vulcan vPro (which after some mods played in-between the Dura and the Franklin), and now going with the LT Pro 48, which per Loong and others is a faster ball than Vulcan.

Personal experience: Life Time sent me a ball sample a few weeks back, and I took it out to the courts last weekend to play. I had a couple of solid 5.0 players on the court with me trying it out. The ball is incredibly hard and fast, harder than a Dura. It jumps off the face of the paddle as you hit it, not unlike the first time you play with a super-poppy new paddle. Once play started, it was like hitting with a marble, comparatively speaking to the rest of open play (who generally uses Franklins). I tend to agree with Loong here, and I suspect this ball will only continue the move to power players on tour.

With that said, let’s recap the action.

Men’s Pro Singles Recap

Tyler Loong turned out to be quite prophetic, because the Men’s singles draw was a bloodbath for the top seeds. Only one of the top four seeds even made it to the quarter-final round; No. 1 Staksrud, No. 3 Garnett, and No. 4 Vich all exited in the round of 16, albeit to dangerous singles players No. 15 Gabriel Joseph, No. 14 Noe Khlif, and No. 19 John Lucian Goins respectively.

Normally this dearth of seeds would pave the way for another Ben Johns win; not this time; the No. 5 seed (forced into the round of 64 for perhaps the first time in his career) was upset in the round of 32 by lefty No. 32 seed Max Freeman. This continues a weird year for Johns in singles on tour: this is the 11th event of the season: Johns has skipped or missed five of them, won two Golds (at the Mesa Cup and the Atlanta slam), then has four upset losses before the medal rounds (to Goins, Ford, Lenhard, and now Freeman). He maintains the #5 spot on the rolling rankings, and the 3,500 points he earned from his two golds will go a long ways towards qualification for the Tour Finals, but he needs to get some more results to get closer to around the 5,000 point mark to ensure he makes the year end tournament.

Veteran No. 15 Gabriel Joseph, who won a silver medal in the second ever PPA event in August of 2020, built upon his 12-10 game three win over Staksrud to cruise past No. 21 Grayson Goldin in the quarters and No. 14 Khlif in the semis to ensure just his third career pro final. There, he met the precocious No. 19 seed Goins, who survived an early round match against the challenging Funemizu, upset No. 3 Garnett in the 16s, eased past the underrated No. 18 Adam Harvey in the quarters, and then outlasted No. 7 Christian Alshon in a brutal three-game semifinal.

Goins first made waves on tour as a 16yr old in late 2024 with a couple of notable wins, then got an upset win over Ben Johns in March 2025 before settling for the Bronze. There was no settling this weekend for Goins, who split two achingly tough games with Joseph in the final before running away with game three 11-2 for the gold. In a sport filled with teenage sensations winning golds, Goins puts his name on a trophy at the tender age of 17.

Gold: John Lucian Goins. Silver: Gabriel Joseph. Bronze: Christian Alshon.

Women’s Pro Singles Recap

The Women’s singles draw was missing its two top-ranked players in Waters & Fahey, giving Kaitlyn Christian a No. 1 seed and generally opening up the field for a rare non-ALW winner. As noted earlier, lots of non-regular singles players poured into the draw, and thus we had a slew of top-ranked doubles players playing bright and early on Wednesday morning sporting seeds in the 30s and 40s.

No. 49 Callie Smith, No. 18 Jessie Irvine and No. 32 Allyce Jones all suffered early round defeats in their rare singles appearances, though No. 40 Anna Bright reminded the tour of what they could be dealing with week-in and week-out were she playing regularly. She made a run to the quarters with wins over Frantova, Jansen, and Jorja Johnson before falling to No. 9 Judit Castillo in the quarters. No. 1 Kaitlyn Christian stayed above the fray, working through the draw she faced with relative ease to earn the gold medal match spot from the top side of the draw with a 4,9 win over Castillo in the Saturday Semis.

Meanwhile, the bottom half of the draw remained relatively chalk, without a single upset from the round of 64 all the way into the finals. No. 2 Parris Todd cruised into the semis without dropping a game, then topped No. 3 Brooke Buckner in a back-and-forth baselining affair 11-8 in the third to earn her fourth gold medal game of the 2025 season.

In the final, Todd won her third career PPA gold medal in singles with a tight 12-10, 12-10 win over the top seed Christian.

Gold: Parris Todd. Silver: Kaitlyn Christian. Bronze: Brooke Buckner.

Mixed Pro Doubles Recap

For as much craziness we saw in the Men’s singles draw, Mixed continues to be the land of the expected. Seven of the top Eight seeds advanced to the quarters as expected (the only exception was No. 24 Garnett & Rane, who earned their spot in the quarters thanks in part to the withdrawal of the No. 7 seeds Black & Ignatowich), who played into the top seeds and lost fast 6,2 to Anna Leigh Waters & Ben Johns. Waters & Johns, who have a couple of rare losses this year despite their career success together, held serve from the top-half to earn their 53rd career gold medal match appearance together (they were 50-2 heading into this final).

Meanwhile, the beasts from Boynton Beach JW and Jorja Johnson, fresh off a 27-2 regular season playing Mixed together in MLP, made their way to the final to set up another No. 1 vs No. 2 showdown for the Mixed title. These two teams have met for gold in three of the last four PPA events, and are beginning to really separate themselves from the pack. The pairs traded the first for games back and forth, each side showing dominance and defense, before the top seeds pulled away in game five to take the title. It’s the 51st career gold for Waters & Johns in Mixed.

Gold: Waters & Johns. Silver: Johnson & Johnson. Bronze: Bright & Daescu.

Men’s Pro Doubles Recap

When Ben Johns famously split with his brother last winter and picked up the teenage sensation Gabe Tardio as his new partner, there were naysayers. Indeed, the Johns brothers went from winning 11 golds in 2023 to losing prior to the medal rounds for most of 2024 (albeit still winning another 7 golds along the way) before calling it quits as a team in late December 2024. Many said that doubles was passing Ben by, similarly to how singles was passing him by.

Well, we’re now six tournaments into the Johns-Tardio partnership, and the results are starting to take shape firmly. In a sport where it often takes months for partnerships to gel, for players to define patterns of play with each other and to carve out the spacing and shot selection on the court, Johns & Tardio have seemingly solved it. The pair held off all comers to get to their 6th straight gold medal match in as many tries, and then dominated the final 1,6,2 over No. 6 Vich & Wright. It’s their fourth gold medal together and the two players now sit ranked No. 1 and No. 2 on tour by a fair margin.

Despite the Johns & Tardio success, the storyline of this event was the huge run of the No. 6 team Jaume Martinez Vich & Matt Wright. The players, individually ranked no. 14 and No. 16 in the Men’s Doubles standings, have found success hard to come by in gender doubles this year. Vich has not medaled since a crazy run to the silver in September alongside Tyson McGuffin, a partnership some thought could be one that benefitted both parties. Meanwhile, Matt had a couple of bronze medals with Staksrud last fall, but has been watching his ranking erode as he pushes towards 50 and the game pushes well past the era in which he formerly dominated. Thus it was fantastic to see Wright with his tactical acumen and sharp tongue cruise through the draw to the final.

Ironically, Wright’s long-time partner Riley Newman also found some rare success at this event, earning the bronze with fellow veteran Devilliers in a throw-back weekend leaderboard that looked more like 2021 than 2025.

Gold: Johns & Tardio. Silver: Vich & Wright. Bronze: Newman & Devilliers.

Women’s Pro Doubles Recap

Anna Leigh Waters and Catherine Parenteau had an amazing run together, winning 31 golds on tour and going a combined 155-6 together along the way. But, despite this amazing run of success, Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright together are even better. The pair improved to 43-0 together as a team and won their 10th title by cruising through the draw without dropping a game and beating the No. 2 team Jorja Johnson & Rachel Rohrabacher 6,3,1 in the final.

Not only are Waters & Bright undefeated in matches, they rarely drop a game. According to my eyeballing Picklewave’s match database, the pair are 93-4 in GAMES as a partnership on tour, with all four of those games dropped occurring within their first couple of tournaments played together in the spring of 2023. Their dual spurned partners Rohrabacher & Parenteau have proven to be capable competition with a couple of finals runs together post break-up, but the next team to seriously challenge Waters & Bright’s place atop the tour has not yet really presented itself. Hurricane Tyra Black has now medaled in 10 of the last 12 doubles events and sits ranked 5th by a fair margin to the rest of the tour (deservedly so) but can’t seem to get past the hump of the two top teams right now with regular partner Parris Todd (the pair won their third straight Bronze medal in Bristol). It should be interesting to see how long this run lasts.

Gold: Waters & Bright. Silver: Johnson & Rohrabacher. Bronze: Todd & Black.

Senior Pro Competition Quick Recap

• Men’s Senior Open Singles: Joshua Cooperman won his 5th Senior Pro singles title in the last six PPA events by topping his doubles partner McDaniel in the final.
• Men’s Senior Open Doubles: Altaf Merchant/Steve Deakin won their 7th PPA Senior pro doubles title of the season, cruising past Granot & Hull in the final.
• Mixed Senior Pro Doubles: Julie Johnson/Steve Deakin took time away from coaching duties and won their 3rd straight Mixed Senior pro title.

The Pro Pickleball Medal Tracker has now been updated with these results; check out this link online for a complete pro medal history for all tours and all pro events dating to the beginnings of all the major pro tours, plus pro events that predated 2020.

Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule the MLP playoffs start up next weekend in San Diego, then continue into the 8/24/25 weekend in NYC for the finals. The PPA has a couple of international events the rest of this month, then their next big event is the Cincinnati Cup in mid-September.

Any Head to Head or career match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 22,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours.

Other resources I use frequently to cover Pickleball include: