Johns And Waters Repeat Their Triple Crowns In Phoenix’s Professional Pickleball Association Desert Ridge Open

The second event on the 2023 Carvana Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) calendar is in the books. The Desert Ridge Open was held on the grounds of the JW Marriot Desert Ridge Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Arizona. The Five-star resort has golf, a pool, a lazy river, and 17 pickleball courts, and played host to the tour and dozens of top PPA players this weekend.

The big news from the PPA this weekend was some competition rule changes. First, the tour has tweaked the bracket formats in the pro divisions. Pickleball tournaments are generally double elimination, which normally would give an early round loser the opportunity to work their way back out of the “back draw” to get another chance at the title. The PPA pivoted to a “Championship Sunday” format mid last year, which meant the loser’s bracket winner could only do as good as 3rd place/Bronze. This weekend though, another competition modification means that the Loser’s bracket players are now playing for 5th place. The two Winner’s bracket semi-final losers will now compete directly for the Bronze Medal.

We suspected the impact of this change, and the loss of the ability to even complete for a Bronze medal, will result in losers more frequently forfeiting out of the consolation bracket, and the results this weekend confirmed this concern. A 5th place finish is only worth as many points as advancing to the round of 16 in the winner’s bracket, so there’s little incentive to play several more grueling matches for the same points and prize money. Thus, there were seven withdrawals in the Men’s singles consolation bracket, as players chose to conserve their energy for the doubles competitions on Friday and Saturday. Perhaps the tour should just abandon the consolation bracket altogether, given that players generally are entering multiple divisions and are getting appearance fees anyway.

The PPA has also changed the scoring format of the Pro Doubles finals. Whereas the non-finals doubles matches were played by conventional Best of 3 games to 11, it has been announced that Doubles finals will now played best of 5 games to 11. This is an odd choice, to change the match format of just the final, unless there’s a TV-driven purpose.

With that opining past us, let’s recap the action.

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Men’s Pro Singles Recap:

#2 ranked Tyson McGuffin missed the event with a slight injury, which opened up the bottom half of the bracket for opportunistic players. #1 Ben Johns advanced to the Gold Medal match as expected, but the surprise from the top half was the energetic 7th seeded Julian Arnold, fresh off his MLP win last weekend. Arnold topped the #3 seed J.W. Johnson to advance to the semis, then topped #2 Jay Devilliers for the Bronze medal.

The big story from the bottom half of the draw was #22 Travis Rettenmaier, who got two upsets over higher seeds to advance to the winner’s bracket quarters. He fell to #3 Federico Staksrud, who then upset Devilliers to advance to the Gold Medal match on Sunday.

In that final, the two players played a streaky match where the players took turns dominating each other. Johns took the first game 11-5, then Staksrud shocked the #1 11-4 in the second. However, the Maryland native Johns regrouped and blew out the Argentine 11-3 for his second singles title in as many tries in 2023.

Gold: Ben Johns. Silver: Federico Staksrud. Bronze: Julian Arnold.

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Women’s Pro Singles Recap:

#1 player Anna Leigh Waters, who spent last week turning 16 and getting surprised by PPA title sponsor Carvana with a new car, continues to run roughshod over the Women’s pro pickleball tour. She advanced to the Gold Medal round with relative ease, topping #4 Lea Jansen in the Winner’s bracket semis. Jansen salvaged the weekend, getting a slight upset over #3 Tereschenko in the Bronze medal match to earn some hardware on the weekend.

From the bottom half of this chalk-y draw, the #2 and #3 seeds and MLP Los Angeles Mad Drops teammates Catherine Parenteau and Irena Tereschenko advanced to the semis. Canadian Parenteau topped Russian Tereschenko to advance to the Gold Medal game on Sunday.

In the Gold Medal match, the two players played an eerily similar game to the Men’s singles final, with the two players splitting relative blow-out games before the dominant #1 Florida native Waters cruised to an 11-6 tiebreaker win over Parenteau. Waters remains undefeated for the season.

Gold: Anna Leigh Waters. Silver: Catherine Parenteau. Bronze: Lea Jansen.

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Mixed Pro Doubles Recap:

The Mixed Doubles draw in Phoenix was perfectly chalk from the Quarter finals onward, but there were still some compelling story lines to discuss.

The #8 seeded sibling team of J.W. & Jorja Johnson pressed the #1 seeds Johns & Waters in the quarter finals like they are not normally pressed, eventually losing by a score-line of 8,11. The #2 Seeded team of Matt Wright & Lucy Kovalova had to survive three straight tie-breakers, including a tense (10),11,9 win over the #3 seeded team of Riley Newman & Anna Bright to advance to the Gold Medal match. Bright & Newman recovered from that close loss to secure the Bronze medal over #4 seeds Jesse Irvine & A.J. Koller in another breaker.

In the Final, the dual #1 team of Johns and Waters ground out another title together, taking the championship 2,8,9 over Wright & Kovalova.

Gold: Johns/Waters. Silver: Wright/Kovalova. Bronze: Ana Bright/Newman.

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Men’s Pro Doubles

Seven of the top eight seeds advanced into the quarters, something we’re seeing more and more of on tour as the players play more regularly. The outlier was the #23 seeded team of Staksrud and Pablo Tellez, who took out two teams with relative ease to get into the quarters. Staksrud is a top-5 singles player but is outside the top 20 in doubles; perhaps this will jump his ranking a bit.

From the Quarters on though, it was chalk, as the top seeded Johns brothers and the #2 team of Matt Wright & Riley Newman advanced to the Sunday final with ease. #4 JW Johnson/Dylan Frazier earned the Bronze on the weekend by crushing fellow semi-final losers Tyler Loong/Callan Dawson 7,2 to take home some metal.

In the final, the two top ranked Men’s Doubles players held off the ever-dangerous pairing of Wright and Newman by the score line 3,10,8 to win the title and extend their collective lead at the top of the Pro Ranks.

Gold: Johns/Johns. Silver: Wright/Newman. Bronze: Johnson/Frazier.

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Women’s Pro Doubles Recap:

The PPA saw one of its bigger upsets-by-seed in some time, as the #1 seeds Lucy Kovalova & Callie Smith were taken out by Myrtle Beach-based teaching pro Sarah Ansboury & up-and-coming pro Bobbi Oshiro in the round of 16. The duo made it to the semis, but ran out of gas and was blown out in the Bronze Medal match by the #3 seeds Anna Bright & Vivienne David.

Consensus #1 player Anna Leigh Waters played this event with a new partner in Parenteau (she played the first event of 2023 with Anna Bright), and the new partnership seemed to work out pretty well. The team dominated their way to the final, where they met the #4 seeds Lea Jansen & Allyce Jones. Unlike other doubles finals on the day, the favorites were pushed, dropping the second game and working their way to a tough 4-game win 3,(7),9,7.

Gold: Waters/Parenteau. Silver: Jansen/Jones. Bronze: Bright/David.

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Senior Pro Competition Quick Recap

· Men’s Senior Pro Singles: #1 Mattias Johansson, after having flight issues and driving overnight to get to the event, cruised to his 2nd straight Senior pro singles title without dropping a game.

· Men’s Senior Pro Doubles: Dayne Gingrich & Altaf Merchant also won their second straight PPA Senior Pro Doubles draw with a wire-to-wire win as the #1 seeds.

· Women’s Senior Pro Doubles: #1 seeds Mary Kozak & Raegan Ferguson took the 6-team draw in straight games.

· Mixed Senior Pro Doubles: #2 Seeds Seyhan Hunter & Dave Johnson took the final.

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Next up on the PPA Tour? According to the PPA’s schedule, the next event sees the tour staying in Arizona for the Carvana Arizona Grand Slam, presented by Hyundai.

Next up in the larger Pickleball world? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, this coming weekend is the APP’s Daytona Beach Open, a Golden Ticket qualifier for USAP Nationals.