Kawamoto Sisters Claim First Women’s Pro Doubles Gold At Pro Pickleball Association Cincinnati Slam

Jade (L) and Jackie (R) Kawamoto broke through for their first Pro Women’s doubles title.

PPA Tour

This past weekend, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) held its third Grand Slam event of the 2025 season, the Veolia Cincinnati Showcase, held on the grounds of the newly remodeled and upgraded Lindner Family Tennis Center (host of the WTA/ATP Masters 1000 tennis events) in the northern suburbs of Cincinnati. This event slowly got upgraded from an Open to a Cup to a Slam over the course of the year, befitting the awesome facilities.

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

Here’s a quick recap of notable news items of import to the tour or this event:

• 9/1/25: UPA-A’s “provisional approval” of paddles has now ended, and going forward only fully approved paddles are permitted at its events. The fully approved list must now go through UPA-A’s new more stringent testing,
  which includes (for the first time) destructive testing. Most of the leading manufacturers now have models that have not met the testing guidelines, including Franklin, Joola, Paddletek, ProXR, Protons, Pikkl, and Selkirk.
• 9/9/25: PPA announces that PPA Futures betting is now available on Kalshi. Futures for Carvana PPA Tour events are now available in the U.S. on Kalshi,
  a regulated exchange and prediction market where you can trade on the outcome of real-world events. The United Pickleball Association is using this
  opportunity to continue to formulate strategic plans around futures markets and sports wagering this year and beyond.
• 9/10/25: The PPA releases its 2026 schedule and announces a major shift in its “season” structure going forward. The tour will now operate on a fall-to-spring schedule, with its “season” ending in May, which then leads into its summer-based MLP season. We’re going to publish a far more comprehensive look at the new schedule next week.

With that said, let’s recap the action.

Men’s Pro Singles Recap

Here’s some of the storylines and highlights from Men’s Singles, which continues to be the most compelling division of the PPA to cover.

New No. 1 Hunter Johnson took the court as the top-seeded player in singles for the first time, and immediately got a glimpse of the future, as he had to face 14-yr old Hawaiian phenom Tama Shimabukor (singles DUPR: 5.820), who had qualified into the main draw after competing in the PPA Asia events the last couple of weeks. Hunter won, but Tama competed, losing 2,8.

Social media was abuzz with renewed conversations on line calls as No. 10 Tyson McGuffin and No. 19 Mohaned Alhouni had a slightly less-than-cordial round of 32 match, where Alhouni made at least 5 questionable line calls in their match, one which McGuffin survived 14-12. Let’s just say that the replays did not flatter Mohaned in this situation. McGuffin ended up falling to a surprise run from No. 28 Marshall Brown, not really known for his singles exploits, as he ran to the quarters before falling.

There will be no three-peat; the winner of the last two events, teen-ager John Lucian Goins, was taken out by the veteran Jay Devilliers in three games in the round of 32. Goins had ascended all the way to No. 8 on the backs of the two wins, but gets ousted early as he learns the hard way there’s a dozen ways to lose on tour.

New PPA signee Chris Haworth, laughably seeded No. 57, played his second event after inking a new deal and had an interesting go of it. When the draw was initially announced, Haworth was set to play the one and only Ben Johns … who then withdrew. Johns didn’t withdraw from his doubles draws, lending one to assume he had no interest in the possibility of losing to Haworth again. Instead, Haworth trounced a lucky loser, cruised past both Navratil and Sock, then ousted No. 2 Staksrud in the quarters. This is precisely what the tour’s top singles players were afraid of when Haworth came over, and he’s a threat to win every time he plays. Haworth eventually fell in the bronze medal match, but will jump from being outside the top 100 in singles to around 30th on tour with this result, which should help him avoid the top players in the early rounds going forward.

Meanwhile, after winning nine singles golds in 2024, Staksrud has just one title in 2025, and it was in January. He remains No. 2 in the rolling rankings but has to be wondering what has happened to his dominant form.

The semis were solid: No. 1 Johnson versus No. 6 Alshon from the top, and Haworth versus No. 3 Garnett from the bottom. Alshon cruised past Johnson 3,7 in a surprise, while Garnett destroyed Haworth 4,1 to set up a very solid final. There, Alshon put on his typical athletic clinic of court coverage to cruise to a 7,1 win for the gold.

Gold: Christian Alshon. Silver: Connor Garnett. Bronze: Hunter Johnson

Women’s Pro Singles Recap

Anna Leigh Waters cruised into the final of a PPA Women’s Pro Singles event for the 56th time in her career with her typical show of dominance. No. 14 Trulock pushed her in the 16s, but otherwise she blasted her way to Sunday. She took out Cailyn Campbell 1,0 in the opening round, No. 11 Castillo 1,1 in the quarters, and then ran off 20 straight points in her semifinal match versus Parenteau on the way to a 3,2 win.

We had a couple of qualifiers made some noise this weekend: No. 52 Shannon Pretorious, who won an APP pro singles medal in Oct 2024 and hails from Ohio, took out No. 13 Dominique Shaefer and went another round before falling to Parris Todd. Similarly, No. 50 Isabella Dunlap, who’s been making the rounds on the PPA Challenger circuit, took out Angie Walker & Ava Ignatowich before falling to No. 2 Kate Fahey in the 16s.

By the time the quarter finals rolled around, it was business as usual for the tour. Seven of the top eight seeds made the quarters, with Lea Jansen fighting off the always-tough No. 10 Salome Devidze and No. 3 Kaitlyn Christina downing the improving No. 16 Jorja Johnson in especially tough round of 16 matches.

By Sunday though, it was the two top seeds: Waters versus Fahey. This was the 11th time they’ve met on tour, but the first time since the May Atlanta slam, where Fahey took a game before falling in the final. This time around, Fahey kept it close, pushing into extra time in game two, but still fell in straight games 7,11 to give Waters her 53rd career singles title.

Gold: Anna Leigh Waters. Silver: Kate Fahey. Bronze: Catherine Parenteau

Mixed Pro Doubles Recap

By this point in 2025, the Mixed pro doubles pairings are relatively well established at the top of the leaderboards, and that hegemony continues to show out in the back of the pro draws. Seven of the eight quarterfinalists in Cincinnati were top seeds, and there was little in the way of upsets along the way. Only No. 21 Millie Rane & Connor Garnett were interlopers to the last 8, having arrived there with a comprehensive defeat of the No. 3 Alshon/Parenteau pairing in the round of 16.

From there, nothing could stop No. 1 Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns from winning yet another title. The crushed Rohrabacher & Khlif in the quarters 2,5, blasted Irvine & Tardio 1,2 in the semis, then ground out a close but always secure gold medal over No. 4 Anna Bright & Andrei Daescu in the final. They win their 53rd Pro Mixed title, their 5th in a row, and their 9th this year.

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

Men’s Pro Doubles Recap

Men’s Doubles is starting to become as predictable as Mixed Doubles on tour, with well-established partnerships now rising to the top of the ranks and making for a very small boys club playing Saturday and Sunday of PPA event weekends. There were no real upsets into the quarters (with all due respect to No. 6 Collin Johns & James Delgado, losers to No. 12 Hewett & Khlif, who maintain their lofty rankings on the back of Johns’ accumulated but quickly expiring 2024 points), and only a No 3 over No. 2 win in the semis prevented a completely chalk back end of this event.

No. 1 Ben Johns & Gabe Tardio, who have now made the final in all 8 tournaments in which they’ve played, cruised to a 2,6,9 straight-game win for the gold medal, their fourth in a row. They defeated Daescu & Alshon in a rematch of the Las Vegas final, and despite social media love for Daescu in particular in the wake of his MLP title run, there clearly remains a gulf from the top pair to the next tier of players. Johnson & Klinger took the bronze over No. 2 Staksrud & Patriquin as they continue to develop as a team.

Gold: Johns & Tardio. Silver: Alshon & Daescu. Bronze: Johnson & Klinger.

Women’s Pro Doubles Recap

When Anna Leigh Waters dropped long-time partner Catherine Parenteau earlier this year after an uneven run of form, the pickleball world sighed in resignation as she picked up the player who had clearly risen to be the “2nd best player in the world” at the time in Anna Bright. Pundits predicted they’d go undefeated for the rest of the year, that nobody was close. And for a time, it seemed like they would do so, ripping off three quick titles in a row and extending their career unbeaten streak playing together to 42 matches. Then the tour landed in Cincinnati, and we got quite a surprise in the Women’s doubles draw.

The Kawamoto sisters, either playing together or with other partners, have medaled a no fewer than 18 times in Women’s doubles in their playing history. They’ve been fixtures on tour for years, and mainstays in the medal rounds for much of it. They took a bronze medal in North Carolina (where I chatted with them briefly between matches as they hung out on a couch inside the Cary tennis center with my son to escape the heat), and they made a r run to the silver last November in Milwaukee playing together, but they had never won gold in Women’s doubles. Until this weekend.

Jackie & Jade Kawamoto had a fantastic run; they topped two MLP players Castillo & DiMuzio in the opening round, then topped another all-sister duo in the Brascia’s in the round of 16. As the No. 6 seed, their run was expected to end in the quarters, but they crushed the No. 3 seeds Jansen & Rohrabacher 1,8 to set up a semi versus the unstoppable top pair. There, the Kawamoto’s played their trademark defense-first style, playing clean, error-free pickleball and absorbing the power and offense from the top pair, winning ((7),6,9 to get to the final. However, the job wasn’t done; not unlike the 1980 USA Hockey team, they may have beaten Russia, but they still had to win the gold. And win they did, coming from behind to topple the previous vanquishers of Waters & Bright (that being Hurricane Tyra Black & Jorja Johnson, who beat the top pair in Vegas) in a 5-game thriller for their first pro gold medal.

I’m sure there’s naysayers who claim Waters & Bright were impacted by the rollout courts in Vegas, or the paddle testing nonsense in Cincinnati, but a loss is a loss, and suddenly it seems we may have a bit more parity in Women’s doubles than we thought we’d be having at this point in the season.

Gold: Kawamoto & Kawamoto. Silver: Black & Johnson. Bronze: Waters & Bright.

Senior Open Competition Quick Recap

There was just one “senior pro” competition even held in Cincinnati, and it drew just four players.

• Men’s Senior Open Singles: Frequent medalist Josh Cooperman took the 4-man round robin for his 7th senior pro singles gold medal in the last 8 PPA events.

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, there’s a PPA Challenger event in Evansville and competing Senior pro league events for the 9/21 weekend, then the PPA is back in action with a super interesting event in Sacramento the 9/28 weekend where the pros will be playing with wood in the 2025 Pickleball Central Vintage Wood Paddle Open. For those not willing to set their game back a decade, there’s also a PPA Asia event that weekend in Malaysia.

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: