Federico Staksrud Topples The GOAT At The Carvana Arizona Grand Slam Professional Pickleball Association Event

Event #3 of the 2023 season of the Carvana Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) tour revisited a busy site for professional pickleball; the Bell Bank Park in Mesa, Arizona. Bell Bank Park is a massive sports facility that sprawls across more than 300 acres, and has no less than 41 pickleball courts to go with a 2,000 seat pickleball stadium court. This was the same site that hosted the MLP’s first event a few weeks ago, it is hosting an APP Event later in the season, and it was the host of this past weekend’s Carvana Arizona Grand Slam.

Let’s recap the action, because it was not “business as usual” on the PPA tour this past weekend.

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Men’s Pro Singles Recap:

Despite the Grand Slam prize money in Mesa, a number of top 10 Men missed the event. #2 McGuffin remains out with a slight injury, but the draw in Arizona was also missing #5 J.W. Johnson, #7 Frazier, and #9 Hunter Johnson from the top 10. This greatly opened up the draw for some lower-ranked pros, and some took advantage.

For the second tournament running, Travis Rettenmaier upset two higher seeded players to advance to the quarters. He fell at that juncture to last week’s finalist #4 Federico Staksrud. #1 Ben Johns, in search of his third straight Triple Crown to open the season, was pressed to a breaker twice en route to the semis, where he met up with Staksrud in a rematch of Scottsdale’s final. He could not prevail in a third straight breaker, losing his first singles match of the new season to Staksrud 12-10 in the third. Staksrud came back from 3-8 down in the tiebreaker and saved a match point against to advance in a fantastic comeback. No triple crown for Johns this weekend.

The bottom half of the draw went more chalk, though an early upset of #3 Ryan Sherry at the hands of #14 Gabriel Joseph opened the door for #6 James Ignatowich to advance to the semis. There he met the steady #2 French-man Jay Devilliers, who gave out three donuts en route to his semifinals appearance. Devilliers topped Ignatowich in a streaky tiebreaker to advance to the final. Ignatowich salvaged his weekend with a walk-over bronze medal victory, when Johns no-showed.

Johns’ withdrawal out of the consolation bracket made for nine total forfeits out of the loser’s bracket on the weekend by Men’s singles pros, a very bad look for the PPA. We touched on this last weekend and posted at length on social media the reasons behind it (simply; the incentives to play a ton of loser’s bracket singles matches are just not there), but the issue is becoming more significant when your #1 player bails on a chance at a Medal. Players and fans pay fees to watch the pros play, and there’s a lot of matches not being played that fans are paying for. The PPA probably needs to address this structure sooner than later, because each week the optics grow worse.

In the gold medal match … the players split the match’s first four points, and then Staksrud rolled off 20 straight unanswered points take the match in an unanticipated blowout 2,0. Staksrud kept Devilliers off-balance with staggered attacks, excellent ball control, and unwavering pressure. Jay had no counter on the day.

Gold: Federico Staksrud. Silver: Jay Devilliers. Bronze: James Ignatowich

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Women’s Pro Singles Recap:

#7 Mary Brascia made the biggest news on Singles Thursday, upsetting #2 Catherine Parenteau in the quarters and eliminating the silver medalist from Scottsdale early. Otherwise the Women’s Singles draw went mostly to seeds, with #1 Anna Leigh Waters topping #4 Salome Devidze in one semi, and #3 Lea Jansen topping the upset minded Brascia in the other.

Devidze, the silver medalist last week on the APP, took out Brascia for the bronze medal 6,11. The loser’s bracket was taken by #23 Lacy Schneemann and saw some of the same withdrawal issues that the Men’s draw saw (four withdrawals by singles players in the 5th place bracket).

In the gold medal match, the final match of the event, Waters out baselined her MLP teammate Jansen to win with relative ease 5,5. Waters finishes off her 8th gold medal in 9 tries on the season and extends her lead at the top of the standings.

Gold: Anna Leigh Waters. Silver: Lea Jansen. Bronze: Salome Devidze

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Mixed Pro Doubles Recap:7

Upsets were the name of the game this weekend in Mixed Pro. The dominant #1 seeded team of Johns & Waters was shockingly upset in the quarters by the brother-sister team of J.W. & Jorja Johnson in a tie-breaker (4),8,9. The Johnson duo did not let up and advanced to the gold medal match. In the semis, they topped the veteran pair of #5 seeds Wilson & David, who went on to take the bronze medal a couple of hours later.

The #2 seeds Wright & Kovalova (the silver medalists two weeks ago) were upended even earlier at the hands of the #18 seeded team of Bar & Megan Fudge. The event also saw the 4th, 6th, and 7th seeds get upset earlier than expected, and the seeds of the four semi-finalists were 3,5,8, and 18.

Part of the reason for these early upsets is the fact that many of these lower seeded teams are comprised of top talents who just do not have the rankings points to be seeded higher. For example, the 7th seeded team of Julian Arnold & Catherine Parenteau was upset by the 26th seeded team in the first round, which sounds like a huge upset, but that 26th seeded team was Zane Navratil & Jade Kawamoto. So, suffice it to say there’s plenty of depth in the Mixed doubles draws right now.

One top seed that managed to avoid upset was the #3 team of Newman and Bright, the bronze medalists from two weeks ago, who navigated the landmines of the bottom half of the draw to advance to the gold medal match. In the gold medal match, Anna Bright & Riley Newman came from 2 games to 1 down to take a grueling 5-game match versus the Johnson siblings.

Gold: Bright/Newman Silver: Johnson/Johnson. Bronze: David/Wilson

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Men’s Pro Doubles

The cream is starting to rise to the top of the Men’s pro doubles game, as exhibited in this weekend’s draw. The top eight seeded teams all advanced to the quarters, and even the earlier rounds saw little in the way of significant upsets. Just one upset-by-seed occurred in the quarter finals, with the #5 seeded team of A.J. Koller & Dekel Bar taking out #4 Tyler Loong & Callan Dawson 14-12 in the third.

The #1 seeded Johns brothers advanced to the gold medal match from the top half of the draw by topping the Koller & Bar in a breaker in the semis. From the bottom half, #2 seeded Riley Newman & Matt Wright held serve to make the gold medal match with a dominant 3,6 win over #3 J.W. Johnson & Dylan Frazier. Johnson & Frazier took the bronze medal match for their second straight 3rd place performance on tour.

In the gold medal match, we have the third straight finals meeting between the two top seeded teams. The two teams traded game wins back and forth, and Wright/Newman squandered game points in game 4 to extend the match to a decisive fifth game before the Johns brothers took the fourth game and the match. Final score: 7,(7),4,12. Three in a row for Ben and Collin Johns to start the 2023 PPA season and the podium exactly matched the Desert Ridge podium from two weeks ago.

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

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Women’s Pro Doubles Recap:

The jumbling of partners amongst the top players on the Women’s Pro Doubles tour continues, but each tournament this season has yielded the same winner. #1 Anna Leigh Waters took back Anna Bright as her partner in Mesa, the same partner with whom she won the season opener with in Rancho Mirage. They ground out a semi-finals win over #4 seeds Lea Jansen/Allyce Jones (the silver medalists in Scottsdale) to make the gold medal match from the top half. Jansen & Jones salvaged a podium spot with a win in the bronze medal match.

Catherine Parenteau, who teamed with Waters to earn gold two weeks ago, teamed up this week with the young pro Jorja Johnson to form the #3 seeds, but they were upset by #6 Jessie Irvine & Jackie Kawamoto in a breaker. Irvine & Kawamoto then blitzed the #2 seeds Lucy Kovalova/Callie Smith, the silver medalists in the season’s first event), to make the final.

In the gold medal match, the two teams split the first two games before Waters & Bright went on a tear by giving different positional looks and attacking balls, which seemed to flummox Irvine & Kawamoto. The #1 seeds cruised through games three and four to win 7,(7),1,3 to take gold. It is Waters’ third women’s doubles gold medal in as many tries this season, and she’s taken Bright along for the ride twice.

Gold: Waters/Bright. Silver: Irvine/Kawamoto Bronze: Jansen/Jones

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Senior Pro Competition Quick Recap

· Men’s Senior Pro Singles: #1 Mattias Johansson takes his 3rd straight PPA Men’s senior singles title of 2023.

· Men’s Senior Pro Doubles: Dayne Gingrich continues to dominate the Men’s Senior pro doubles circuit on the PPA, winning his 3rd straight title. He teamed with Scott Crandall in Mesa for the gold Medal.

· Mixed Senior Pro Doubles: Gingrich did the senior double, taking the Mixed Senior pro doubles division with partner Kara Williams by outlasting four other teams in a round robin competition.

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Next up on the PPA Tour? According to the PPA’s schedule, the next event sees the tour moving to Minnesota for the Indoor National championships in two weeks’ time.