Johns And Waters Both Win Triple Crowns At PPA Season Opener

The first Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) tour event of the 2023 season is in the books, and the two top pro players both picked up right where they left off. Both the Men’s and Women’s current #1 players Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters cruised to take “Triple Crowns” on the weekend, each winning their Pro Singles, Pro Doubles, and then playing together to capture the Mixed Pro Doubles titles.

The 2023 Hyundai Masters was held at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California (outside of Palm Springs), a beautiful facility with 12 dedicated pickleball courts and dozens of tennis courts to support the rest of the 1100+ players entered into this tournament. The tournament’s end was hampered by rain in the Palm Springs area on Sunday, which cancelled some matches and delayed the pro finals until deep into Sunday afternoon.

This tournament marks the dawn of a new era for the PPA, which spent the last two months of 2022 merging with Major League Pickleball (MLP) and then locking up most of the top players in the sport into lucrative exclusive contracts to compete solely in PPA/MLP events. This included poaching a slew of the top pros from their competitor pro tour, making the 2023 Masters draw one of the deepest in the short history of pro pickleball.

One talking point this weekend was the PPA debut of long-time ATP touring player Sam Querrey, who is the highest profile former male tennis pro to make the jump officially to Pro Pickleball. And to say that Querrey has been “confident” about his switch to pickleball would probably be an understatement. On the weekend, #22 seeded Querrey lost 3,3 in the opening round to #11 Alex Neumann, then got a round into the Loser’s bracket before being sent out by #9 Nico Montoya 15-12. He did not fare much better in Pro Mixed Doubles, losing in the 1st round of the qualifiers in a tiebreaker (though he did win the “PPA Points Draw” bracket of qualifying losers with partner Christa Gecheva). So, some work to do for Querrey going forward.

Let’s review the rest of the action on the weekend.

Men’s Pro Singles Recap:

Johns took the first Singles title of 2023 in the talent-laden draw without dropping a game all weekend. Three of the top-4 seeds were upset prior to the semi-finals, with #13 Connor Garnett raising the most eyebrows with his upset of #4 J.W. Johnson and then #5 Ryan Sherry to advance to the semis. Garnett’s run ended though with a dominant victory by #1 Johns, who won 5,3 to reach the final. On the bottom side of the draw, #7 Federico Staksrud topped #6 Dylan Frazier in a tie-breaker (3),6,4 to reach the Sunday Gold Medal Match. In the final, Johns was just too strong, beating Staksrud 6,6 for the win.

Gold: Ben Johns. Silver: Federico Staksrud. Bronze: Dylan Frazier.

Men’s Pro Doubles Recap

Ben Johns teamed with his regular pro doubles partner and brother Collin Johns to capture the Men’s Pro Doubles title together. The two top ranked Men’s Doubles players overcame the #2 seeds Matt Wright & Riley Newman in the final. These two teams are quite familiar with each other, and the final was a back-andforth tiebreaker. Rain issues forced the cancellation of most of the Consolation/Loser’s bracket, so no Bronze medal was awarded.

Gold: Johns/Johns. Silver: Wright/Newman. Bronze: not played

Women’s Pro Singles Recap:

As it often does on the Women’s Pro tour, the cream rises to the top in the Singles draws. The top 3 seeds advanced to the semis with little fanfare, and #5 Irena Tereschenko toppled #4 Salome Devidze in a breaker to reach the semis. There, the dominant #1 player in the world Anna Leigh Waters topped Tereschenko 4,6 to reach the finals. On the bottom side, #3 Lea Jansen came from a game down to beat #2 Catherine Parenteau (7),8,3 to reach Sunday’s Gold Medal Match. In the final, Waters made fast work of Jansen 5,2 to take the title. No pro scored more than 6 points against Anna Leigh this weekend.

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

Women’s Pro Doubles Recap

Waters spent most of 2022 playing pro doubles with her mother, Leigh Waters, and they rose to the top of the rankings together. However, Leigh Waters badly injured her knee playing in US Nationals in November, which has forced world #1 Anna Leigh to find a new regular partner for the 2023 season. She seems to have found one in Anna Bright, as the two Annas cruised to the Women’s Pro Doubles title without being seriously challenged. In the Gold Medal match, they topped the #1 seeded team of Lucy Kovalova & Callie Smith 5,7 to make a statement for the 2023 season. As with the Men’s doubles, the consolation bracket was rained out.

Gold: Waters/Bright. Silver: Kovalova/Smith. Bronze: Not played.

Mixed Pro Doubles Recap

Put the two best players together and you get a pretty unbeatable Mixed Doubles team. Dual #1 players Johns and Waters teamed up as they regularly do to take the Gold Medal. They topped #2 Riley Newman & Jessie Irvin in a well-played tiebreaker final. #11 seeds Vivienne David and Thomas Wilson had an excellent event, beating both the #3 and #6 seeds to advance to the semis, then beating the #4 seeded team of Tyson McGuffin and Catherine Parenteau to win the Consolation bracket and claim Bronze.

Gold: Waters/Johns. Silver: Irvin/Newman. Bronze: David/Wilson

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Senior Pro Competition Quick Recap

The PPA does not emphasize the Senior Pros nearly as much as its competitor tour, but it still does host Senior Pro divisions (in addition to Amateur divisions of course) at its events. We’ll give a brief run through of the winners for each PPA tour event recap.

• Men’s Senior Pro Singles: #1 Mattias Johansson defeated #11 Tom Yeh for the Gold Medal 10,(8),0.
• Men’s Senior Pro Doubles: #1 seeded Dayne Gingrich & Altaf Merchant, both of whom regularly feature on the regular pro tour, trounced #6 Steve Dawson & Todd Murphy 1,3 for Gold.
• Mixed Senior Pro Doubles: a victim of the rain issues, the Gold Medal match between #1 Kris Anderson & Kevin Booth and #2 Natalie Hill & Jamil Atcha was not played.

(No Women’s Senior Pro divisions were played)

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Next up on the PPA Tour? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, the PPA is off until the first weekend of February in Phoenix, but Major League Pickleball (which has many of the top PPA players drafted) has its first event in two weeks’ time in Mesa.