Waters Wins her 36th Career Triple Crown At The Pro Pickleball Association 2025 Virginia Beach Cup

Anna Leigh Waters repeated as the Virginia Beach triple crown winner, her 36th on tour.

PPA

After a hectic month or so on the PPA tour, which has bounced all over the globe since its last “regular” event in Cincinnati back in mid September, the whole Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) tour was together once again for the 2025 Fasenra Virginia Beach Cup presented by Joola.

The host site was Pickleball Virginia Beach, a massive 40+ court public park just south of the Virginia Beach Boardwalk area and nestled in-between Camp Pendleton’s National Guard air support station (which launches helicopters all day) and the massive Oceana Naval Air base (which launches fighter jets all day), which gives both fans and players alike a constant stream of low-altitude fly-bys from some of the more impressive military equipment you’ll see.

This site is also within a few hours drive of yours truly, which gave me the opportunity to attend on quarterfinal-Friday and do a bit of hand-shaking with the pros. When asked about this venue in particular, Lucy Kovalova had an interesting observation, pointing out that the courts “reminded her of the roots of pickleball, when all the pro events were held at public parks like this, with all the courts filled and amateurs playing alongside of the pros.” Indeed, the grandstand court was situated directly next to courts that had active amateur singles matches all day, from 12-yr old juniors battling it out on the PPA Junior circuit to 3.5 60+ grinding out results next door. As Pickleball continues to grow, we’ll continue to see pickleball-centric facilities or major tennis facilities converted to host week-long events, but the roots of the sport will always remain at the public parks where things got started.

While the weather early in the week was fantastic (upper 60s and sunny), the weekend was plagued with rain, which caused Saturday’s matches to have to be crammed in early, Sunday’s Bronze medal matches cancelled, and Sunday’s finals squeezed in-between sporadic rain storms all afternoon or outright delayed to Monday morning (giving some of the players an extra night to hang out on the Virginia Beach Boardwalk).

Click here for the PickleballBrackets.com home page for the event, where you can get tournament details, draw sheets, and results.

With that said, let’s recap the action.

Men’s Pro Singles Recap

It seems like it was just a matter of time before Christopher Haworth made his mark on the singles draw on tour; after several notable appearances last year, then months without appearances prior to signing a contract, he remained well known as perhaps the best player this side of Will Howells not touring on the PPA fulltime. In Virginia Beach, he put it all together, topping a slew of the sport’s best singles players to get to the final. As the No. 15 seed, he beat Chaffin in the opener, then Devilliers, then a dominant win over No. 2 Staksrud 10,2 to pave the way forward. He ground out a really solid come-from-behind win over Goins in the quarters, a match I watched court-side, which was marked by Haworth’s penetrating ground strokes from the baseline that just wore down the teenager. In the semis he topped the resurgent No. 6 Jack Sock, who himself had a heck of a run here (with wins over Berryman, Crum, Bellamy, and Garnett just to get to the semis). There are no easy matches in Men’s singles.

Notable runs this week inclued No. 43 Eric Oncins, fresh off of two golds in Asia and a great interview on Zane’s podcast, who beat Goldin and Alhouni to make the 16s. Also, a shout-out to Richmond-native David Bieger, who wasn’t quite able to replicate his performance in Bristol (where he qualified then topped Tyson McGuffin), but did qualify again and then took the first game off of finalist No. 4 Christian Alshon before losing.

In the final, Hayworth ground out a game one win, got up big in game two, then withstood a furious comeback from fellow finalist Christian Alshon before taking the title 8,10. With the win, Haworth nets 1,500 ranking points and likely jumps Ben Johns for No. 6 on tour heading into the LT Open.

Gold: Christopher Haworth. Silver: Christian Alshon. Bronze: No Bronze – Rain.

Women’s Pro Singles Recap

The back-end of the PPA Women’s singles draw remains as predictable as ever. The semi finalists in Virginia Beach were the top four seeds: Waters, Christian, Todd, and Buckner. When you add in the missing Fahey (who got married last weekend and presumably on her Honeymoon), these five women combined have won every single PPA Singles title dating to last June (27 straight events).

I had a conversation with a PPA tour official over the weekend, asking why we see new names making deep runs in Men’s Singles on a nearly weekly basis but we have a hegemony on tour on the ladies side, and he was at as much of a loss for an explanation as i was.

In the semis, No. 1 Anna Leigh Waters topped No. 3 Parris Todd 3,4, while No. 4 Brooke Buckner got an upset over no. 2 Kaitlyn Christian in the bottom half to setup their 11th career meeting. In the final, ALW made it 11 for 11 head to head against Buckner, winning 10,6 to secure her 54th career singles title.

Gold: Anna Leigh Waters. Silver: Brooke Buckner. Bronze: No Bronze – Rain.

Mixed Pro Doubles Recap

The Mixed Doubles draw had some fireworks early (no surprise: line call issues), but settled down later in the week to feature the oft-repeated final of No. 1 Anna Leigh Waters & Ben Johns versus No. 2 Jorja Johnson and brother JW Johnson. These two pairs both advanced to the final without dropping a game, moving past upset-minded teams with little fanfare.

In the final, the two pairs met for gold for the fifth time since March, and the top pair extended their run of dominance by winning in three straight game 7,3,6. The Johnson duo got the better of Waters & Johns back in North Carolina on the rollout courts in Cary, but since then Waters & Johns have doubled down on their dominance and really show no end in sight to owning the top spot.

Gold: Waters & Johns. Silver: Johnson & Johnson. Bronze: No Bronze – Rain.

Men’s Pro Doubles Recap

Whatever doubt there may have been about the Johns-Tardio pairing that may have existed back in May, when the newly formed pair were upset in the final of the Atlanta Slam, has officially been answered as the No. 1 seeds won their fifth straight tournament together in about as dominant a fashion as you can see. The pair secured the gold medal without dropping a game all weekend, and dominated the up-and-coming pair of JW Johnson & CJ Klinger 3,10,6 in the final. The last match of the event got pushed to Monday morning, where the pairs returned to play out the remaining few points in a laughable situation that all involved probably would have just rather have played out in the pouring rain late Sunday afternoon.

A fun shout-out to pro old-schoolers Jay Devilliers & Matt Wright, who dinked their way into the semis as the No. 8 seed, shocking last fall’s heir apparent team Staksrud & Patriquin along the way. Who says pickleball is all about power? Wright gets just his second medal of 2025 and Devilliers his 4th, as both players struggle to compete against the rising tide of the youngsters pouring into the sport.

Gold: Johns & Tardio. Silver: Johnson & Klinger. Bronze: No Bronze – Rain.

Women’s Pro Doubles Recap

Not for the first time in recent PPA events, the top four seeds in Women’s Pro Doubles all advanced into the semis with relative ease, despite some jumbling of the regular partnerships we’ve seen from earlier this season getting a bit jumbled here in Virginia. The Cincinnati-winning Kawamoto sisters split up for Virginia and ended up playing each other in the quarters. The two high-profile dropped partners involved with the Waters/Bright reunion (Rohrabacher & Parenteau) parted ways for this event, but both ended up in the semis or better. Jorja & Hurricane, who took out Waters/Bright in Vegas on their way to a title, split up as Black reunited with long-time partner Todd, and both also made semis runs. Are these precursors to new teams going forward?

From the semis on, the top pair Waters & Bright trounced the No. 3 seeds Kawamoto & Parenteau while the No. 2 pair Rohrabacher & Johnson got a walkover against Black & Todd to make the final and put a test to the big-dogs. Waters & Bright had other plans, trouncing the No. 2 seeds 3,1,3 for the title.

With the win. Anna Leigh Waters secures her 36th career Triple Crown on tour, a pretty unbelievable feat that we often gloss over. To put this into context, there’s only three players in the history of the sport who even have 36 career golds (Johns, Waters, and Parenteau, who earned 31 of her career 53 golds as ALW’s partner). Here’s another amazing fact: if you removed all of Waters’ career gold medals won via Triple Crowns, she would STILL be in 2nd place in the history of the tour behind her Mixed Partner Ben (she has 162 in total, 108 earned via her 36 triple crowns).

Gold: Waters & Bright. Silver: Johnson & Rohrabacher. Bronze: No Bronze – Rain.

Senior Open Competition Quick Recap

• Men’s Senior Open Singles: Josh Cooperman got the double for the weekend, taking the senior singles draw.
• Men’s Senior Open Doubles: In a very Virginia-heavy draw, regular PPA senior pro Josh Cooperman teamed with Tomer Grazini to top Karl Vinson, playing with local Robert Vinson. Fun fact: I played against Vinson in my first ever pickleball tournament, back in the 2019-2020 timeframe, in a local event in Smith Mountain Lake, where Vinson and his partner trounced us in the opening round of a combined 4.0/4.5 division. The bronze medalists were two top Virginia-based senior pros Carlos Rodriguez & Michael Cao.

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, the leading singles players on tour head to Atlanta for the 2025 Life Time Open at the fantastic facility in Peachtree Corners. Life Time is embarking on a strategy of focusing on singles as a focus area, banking on a theory that (like in Tennis) singles Pickleball will become the more dominant fan interest area. This event is tacitly sanctioned by the PPA, meaning its players are “allowed” to enter the event, but the tournament is open to all players irrespective of any contracts they have in place.

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: