Major League Pickleball Delivers the Action In San Clemente

The third event of the 2023 Major League Pickleball (MLP) season is in the books. MLP San Clemente by Margaritaville was held at the Lifetime Fitness facility in San Clemente, California just a week after the PPA tour held a regular stop there, giving the bulk of the touring pros two events for their traveling dollar.

This is the final event of 2023’s first mini-season, and marks the half-way point of the 2023 season in total. Thanks to a newly signed TV Broadcast deal with ESPN2, the “super finals” of the mini-season will be broadcast live on ESPN2 on the Monday after the conventional MLP event finishes up, with the best performing teams across all three of the MLP events so far competing for the title. Heading into this event, Seattle and the LA Mad Drops were in position for the Premier League Super Final, while the Bay Area Breakers and the Chicago Slice were in pole position for the Challenger super final, and only a complete collapse in Southern California would prevent these two from playing for the mid-season title in their respective divisions.

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Let’s recap the San Clemente event. Here’s some helpful links to follow along with the action.

Premier Division Recap

• The Milwaukee Mashers (comprised of Matt Wright, Andrei Daescu, Lucy Kovalova, and Callie Jo Smith) had their best group stage yet, going 3-0 and earning the top seed in the playoffs. Ben Johns’ led Seattle Pioneers (comprised of Ben Johns, Tyler Loong, Etta Wright, and Megan Dizon) and the ATX Pickleballers (JW Johnson, Gabriel Tardio, Jackie Kawamoto, and Jade Kawamoto) also finished 3-0 to top their groups.
• The California BLQK Bears saw a huge reversal of fortune, going from the best group-stage team in Daytona to the absolute worst here in San Clemente.
• It is back to the drawing board for the SoCal Hard Eights, who finished 1-2 in each of the three MLP events and failed to qualify for any playoffs. Same with the Las Vegas Night Owls. However, no team (Premier or Challenger) did as badly in this season as the Frisco Pandas (formerly the Frisco Clean Cause), who managed to go winless in all three MLP group stages and finish dead last in the standings. It will be incredibly hard for them to make the cut for the 2024 premier league at this point.
• In the playoffs, the Anna Leigh Waters-led New Jersey 5’s (comprised of Waters, Lea Jansen, James Ignatowich, and Hayden Patriquin) took out the #1 seeded Milwaukee team to reach the finals. From the other side of the draw, Seattle held serve against ATX and advanced to the finals for the second straight event.
• The finals seemed fitting: the #1 female player versus the #1 male player. Despite having two of the top ranked ladies on tour, the Ben Johns led Seattle team ground out a Dreambreaker win by dominating the singles competition and took their second straight title.

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Challenger Division Recap

• For the third straight MLP event, the Bay Area Breakers team (comprised of Pablo Tellez, Christian Alshon, Ewa Radzikowska, and Vivian Glozman)went 3-0 in group play and earned a playoff bye. They have yet to be beaten in 2023, having won the first two MLP Challenger events, and guaranteed their spot in the Super Finals with ease.
• For the second straight MLP event, the Dallas Pickleball Club team (comprised of Ben Newell, Daniel De La Rosa, Christa Gecheva, and Jill Braverman) qualified as the #2 playoff seed, further cementing the success of their player moves after a disappointing 10th place finish in Mesa. However, it won’t be enough to claim the second Super Final spot, which Chicago cemented by making the playoff semis.
• In the playoff quarterfinals, #4 Chicago downed #5 Miami, and the surprising DC team (which had failed to qualify for the playoffs in the first two events) upset the #3 seeded AZ Drive to advance to the semis. Chicago (comprised of Connor Garrett, Ryler DeHeart, Susannah Barr, and Emily Ackerman) became the first team to beat the Breakers in the semis, downing them 3-1 by sweeping the Mixed Doubles. Dallas held serve against DC to advance to the finals.
• In the finals, Dallas’ Men’s doubles team got spanked to open the match, but then their women and mixed teams ran the table against Chicago to take the San Clemente crown 3-1.

Season Super Finals Recap:

Based on the results this weekend, and through the first three events of the year, the two teams in the lead for the super finals held serve and made it to the nationally televised Monday night finals. In those matches, broadcast live on ESPN2:

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• In the Premier Super Finals, The LA Mad Drops, who won the season opening event and were one of just three teams that made the playoffs in all three MLP events so far, took it to the #1 seeded Seattle Pioneers and crushed them for the Super Finals title and the massive $240k paycheck. Led by MVP Julian Arnold, the Mad Drops (also comprised of Thomas Wilson, Catherine Parenteau, and Irena Tereschenko) swept Seattle by crushing in women’s doubles 21-6, then earning a come-back win in Men’s Doubles 21-19, and then with Arnold teaming with Parenteau to cruise to a 21-16 mixed win for the big paycheck.
• In the Challenger Super Finals, The Chicago Slice made up for three straight MLP events of playoff disappointment by toppling the Bay Area Breakers for the second time in as many days to take the Super Finals title in a dream-breaker.

Other Observations from the weekend:

• MLP continues to do rule tweaks to help improve the end product, and the rule changes implemented for San Clemente seemed to have an excellent impact. A new, better video review system was in place that helped a number of times make the correct call on the court. They also made some changes related to which end the teams line up on, after some complaints about wind/sun issues.
• Each of the 12 Challenger division teams managed to make the playoffs at least once in the three events, though on the whole of the first half of results, it is hard not to look at the three least-performing teams (DC, Brooklyn, and Orlando) and say they have a very uphill climb to be in the Premier division in 2024.

This wraps up the third MLP event of the year. The next MLP event will be in September at the Peachtree Corners Life Time facility, which just held the PPA Atlanta Open to rave reviews from players and fans alike.

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After this event, the Premier teams will switch places with the Challenger teams, everyone will re-draft all 96 players, and we’ll play the rest of 2023 to determine the league that each of the 24 teams will play in starting in January of 2024. We’ll cover the re-draft with roster observations, surprises, and snubs.

Next up on the Pro Pickleball Calendar, we get a break in the action for the last weekend in June. The first weekend of July will see the APP return to action in Newport Beach, the NPL will hold its second senior team event in Overland Park, and the PPA takes a month-long break, returning to action in Denver in mid-July.