Orlando Puts The Squeeze On The Competition At Major League Pickleball Atlanta

It feels like years since we last saw Major League Pickleball (MLP) in action, given the busy pro pickleball schedule this summer, events of the past few weeks and the three month gap since MLP 2023 Season 1 finished up in San Clemente in late June. But the sport’s most exciting format was back in action at the amazing Life Time tennis facility in Peachtree Gardens outside of Atlanta for the first event of the 2023 Season 2. The teams have redrafted from the first half, there’s new partnerships and new lineups, and the event was at near full-strength in terms of talent across the pro landscape.

For the two weeks between “tour wars 2023” and “re-merger” the buzz of pickleball world was possible mass boycotts of this MLP event. Those worries largely dissipated once the two tours came back together, but there were some rumblings earlier in the week that two players in particular (Julian Arnold and Lauren Stratman) were planning on boycotting the event, on the advice of counsel. Then just ahead of the event, Stratman took to social media on behalf of herself and her beau Julian to announce that whatever issues they had, were resolved, leaving the MLP premier division basically full strength.

Just two challenger players were initially called up to replace premier players for this event: Allison Phillips was called up by Miami to cover for the ill Mary Brascia, and Kyle Yates was called up by Utah to cover for AJ Koller (who has a family wedding). Midway through the event, Megan Dizon fell ill and was replaced by the resurgent Tina Pisnik, while an injury to one teenager (Hayden Patriquin) led to another teenager (Gabriel Tardio) subbing in.

Key Links for tracking the event this weekend, which featured livestreams of all four concurrent courts on MLP’s YouTube channel and its semis and finals broadcast on ESPN2 on Sunday 9/25/23.

Premier League Recap

• The only team to survive the group stage undefeated was the Orlando Squeeze, comprised of Anna Bright, Zane Navratil, Andrei Daescu, and Rachel Rohrabacher. They went 10-2 in the group stage and their players finished 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 17th out of the 51 players who participated in the Premier competition in Atlanta. Rohrabacher was probably the most impressive player of the group, going 6-0 in the group stage as a 4th round pick. They easily secured the #1 playoff seed. Navratil redeems himself after being part of the 0-3/dead last Frisco team in the spring, while questions surrounding Bright’s drafting strategy were answered with authority.

• The DC Pickleball Team (Riley Newman, the Kawamoto twins, and Christina Alshon) came out on top of the “Group of Death” in Atlanta; Group B featured the teams led by the sport’s three top players (and the top three draft picks) in Ben Johns (Chicago), Riley Newman (DC), and Anna Leigh Waters (Utah). DC took out Utah 3-1 and then swept group also-ran Dallas 4-0 to secure a playoff spot before losing in a Dreambreaker to Johns’ Chicago team.
• The third group winning team was the AZ Drive, led by the MLP superstar Julian Arnold and his team of Vivienne David, Dekel Bar, and Vivian Glozman. They went 2-1 (losing a Dreambreaker after already securing the top seed in the group) but played balanced pickleball all weekend.
• It was little surprise that Ben Johns was the #1 performing player statistically of the group stage; he’s been part of three MLP winners so far in his career and he’s made the playoffs four straight times in 2023. Also not surprising was the #2 overall performing player: Julian Arnold. Arnold was in jeopardy of missing this event earlier in the week as noted above, and his absence as a 1st round pick would have decimated this team. Other surprise top 10 players include #3 Rohrabacher, #5 Staksrud, #8 Brascia, and #10 Garnett.
• On the other end of the Premier league spectrum was the Atlanta Bouncers, widely panned post-draft for drafting essentially an APP all-star team, and their performance showed. They were the sole team to finish winless in the group stage and went just 2-10 in games played. Their four players (Parris Todd, Simone Jardim, Hunter Johnson, and Pablo Tellez) finished 36th, 43rd, 44th, and 51st statistically of the 51 premier league players, with Tellez going winless on the weekend. I had hoped, honestly, that this team would compete to prove the (often arrogant) naysayers wrong in the pickle-sphere, but Jardim looked really overmatched when compared to their opponents and they were on the wrong end of a slew of 2-point losses in doubles.
• A couple of surprising poor individual performers on the day include Lauren Stratman (#49 of 51), Collin Johns (#50 of 51), and 1st rounder James Ignatowich, who was ranked #47 of 51 players and went just 1-6 as his Dallas team finished as the 2nd worst team of the event.
• In the playoffs, the top two seeds Orlando and DC advanced to the final, where they came from an 0-2 deficit after gender doubles to take both mixed matches and force a Dreambreaker. the Orlando team had shown all weekend that they had a massive advantage in the singles-format: Orlando’s team includes three excellent singles players in Bright, Navratil, and Rohrabacher, and their dominance showed, taking the Dreambreaker final 21-10 in a route to win the title. Anna Bright was named the MVP, but most observers think it should have gone to Rohrabacher, who really impressed this weekend after many questions were raised about her drafting into Premier.
• How did the teams fare as compared to my “Instant Analysis” on draft day? At the time I liked Utah (3rd place in the group of Death), Dallas (11th of 12), Bay Area (2nd place in Group A, lost in qtrs), and Chicago (#3 seed but upset in quarters). I did not highlight a single group winner back in July. How did I miss on Orlando? I completely underrated Rohrabacher and discounted Navratil’s capabilities based on his team’s poor showing in Season 1. How did I miss on DC? I probably underrated Newman after he missed the playoffs in 3 straight spring events, but I did, to my credit, label them a “sleeper.”

Challenger League Recap

• The class of the group stage was the SoCal Hard Eights, who went 10-2 in the round robin and swept their entire Mixed Doubles slate to easily secure the top seed in the playoffs. The team is comprised of Ewa Radzikowska, Yana Newell, CJ Klinger, and Todd Fought; these four players were so dominant they finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th of all 48 challenger level players in terms of point differential for the group stage.
• The Las Vegas Night Owls (comprised of Susannah Barr, Emily Ackerman, Spencer Smith, and Yates Johnson) also went undefeated in group play, again validating the F-F-M-M drafting strategy. Each of the four players on this team went 5-2 in the group stage, and they survived a kerfuffle against the ATX Pickleballers and Daniel De la Rosa.

• Wesley Burrows of Seattle was the best performing player in the group stage, individually going 6-1 and leading his team into the playoffs. Other top performing individuals not already mentioned include Jaume Martinez Vich of the NY Hustlers (5-1 in the group stage), Tina Pisnik (5-2) of the BLQK Bears, Rianna Valdes (5-2) of Milwaukee, and De La Rosa of ATX (4-2).
• The Frisco Pandas continue their year-long ineptitude by going 0-3 in the group stage for the fourth straight event. Their draft strategy included two players with little to no prior MLP experience in Frantova & Mick, plus a doubles specialist in DeHeart who would provide little help in DreamBreakers (indeed, they lost one Dreambreaker 21-9 on Thursday. While their plight is mitigated by the elimination of promotion/relegation in the league for 2024, they do probably want to improve their strategy on draft day.
• The Florida Smash are probably going back to the drawing board with their team, gambling on three players with no prior MLP experience and resulting in an 0-3 record with two players in the bottom four of scoring. Collin Schick went winless on the day, Dominique Schaefer didn’t do much better, and their women’s doubles team lost one game 21-5 …. in rally scoring.
• In the playoffs, the #5 and #6 seeds got upsets in the opening round, but the semis and final went completely according to seeds. #1 SoCal topped #6 Seattle in one semi and #2 Las Vegas topped #5 New Jersey in the other semi. In the final #1 SoCal went to the DreamBreaker to win the title, but finished the event undefeated. Teenager C.J. Klinger was named the event MVP for the Hard Eights, who failed to even make the playoffs in the first half of the 2023 MLP season but walk out of Atlanta with a title.
• How did the teams fare as compared to my “Instant Analysis” on draft day? At the time I liked Las Vegas (2nd best team in group stage, lost in finals), LA Mad Drops (12th and last in group stage), NY Hustlers (won their group, upset in playoffs), and Seattle (lost in semis). So, that’s hitting on three out of four. How did I miss on SoCal? They went F-F-M-M draft strategy, which I like. They have a couple of males who don’t get a ton of limelight. In the end, they drafted really solid pros and didn’t miss. How did I miss on the Mad Drops, who were dead last in the first event? Tardio just did not play well (38th of 48) for a 1st rounder, Buckner showed her mobility issues (she amazingly played this event quite pregnant), and the other two players (McMillan and Kinney) just played poorly at the event (ranked 46th and 47th out of 48 players). Look for some shakeups on this team.

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Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, … next weekend the APP is back in action right here in Atlanta. Also next weekend is the next Senior Pro Tour event in San Diego as well as the APP-affiliated Australian Pickleball Championships in Sydney.

Next up for the MLP? Their next event is the first week of November in La Quinta, California.