Winners and Losers of 2025 in Pro Pickleball
Another year of pickleball is in the books. The amount of actual days where pro pickleball is in play is continuing to increase as the PPA has implemented either a progressive or some type of semi-progressive draw for all of its tournaments. We have an unbelievable amount of pro level events across the world as the talent pool continues to grow. Let’s highlight some of the biggest winners and losers from the year that was in 2025.
Winner: GOATs stay GOATs
The amount of times the GOAT acronym is used in modern sports is rather nauseating (understanding we are actively using the phrase here). Nevertheless, the fact remains that the two best players to ever step foot on a pickleball court, Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns, remain the two best players to ever step foot on a pickleball court at the end of 2025.
Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters were both National gender doubles champions in November 2019, at a time when Nationals was the biggest tournament in the sport. It’s 6 years later and both players are somehow still the best players in the sport.
That will change, at some point. It always does in sports. Likely sooner for Ben Johns than Anna Leigh Waters. However, to keep their respective crowns for the past 6 years is a true testament to their greatness.
We’ll have to expect that Ben Johns plays a lot less singles in 2026 as he is no longer a top singles player on tour – whether he has that capability is a different question. Anna Leigh Waters remains the best by a wide margin in all 3 disciplines as she hasn’t lost a singles match in what feels like thousands of days at this point.
Ben keeps evolving his doubles game and his partner switch to Gabe Tardio has allowed him to regain a clear stranglehold as the best tour male in the pro game. Anna Leigh Waters, although not unbeatable in doubles, appears poised to have another stellar year with Anna Bright by her side. And of course, Anna Leigh and Ben were virtually unbeatable in 2025 and, until proven otherwise, we’ll have to expect that to hold true in 2026.
Loser: Breakout Doubles Talent
As much as we have more talent coming into the sport of pickleball, the breakout talent left something to be desired in 2025. We guess it depends on how you define the word “breakout”, but our sense is that we didn’t get to see the breakouts that we have been used to seeing in pro pickleball over the past few years – Parris Todd and Anna Bright (2022), Rachel Rohrabacher, Christian Alshon, CJ Klinger, Jaume Martinez Vich (2023), Augie Ge, Mari Humberg, Kate Fahey (2024). These are players who went from being virtually unknown to Premier level MLP talents by the end of the year.
Is pickleball getting to the point with pro qualifiers, the APP Tour and so many other places where unknown aspiring pros can begin their careers that we don’t get the “breakout” stars like we have been used to seeing?
CJ Klinger and Eric Oncins are two guys who vaulted themselves into the top 10 of the men’s doubles power rankings after beginning to establish themselves as higher end talents in 2024. There were also some newer men who came onto the scene in 2025 and look like they could start to make some noise in 2026 – in no particular order, Max Freeman, James Delgado, John Lucian Goins, Yuta Funemizu, Jonathan Truong, Tama Shimabukuro, Will MacKinnon, Tom Protzek. None of these guys feel like obvious future top 10 players, though. Yes, even the high flying stock of Will MacKinnon.
It felt like even less changed on the women’s side in terms of the top end talent and players who appear as they may be a threat to disrupt the hierarchy in the game. Parris Todd was a breakout of sorts in terms of solidifying her status as an elite doubles player. Otherwise, it was the established hierarchy entrenching themselves further as the best of the best – the Anna’s, Jorja and Tyra, the Kawamoto’s, Rachel Rohrabacher and Catherine Parenteau.
Chao Yi Wang seemed as though she may breakout in 2025, but inconsistent doubles results without ever really showing the ability to threaten the best teams does not give us much hope of a breakout in 2026. Kaitlyn Christian has spent two full years as a pickleball pro following a very legitimate pro tennis career and hasn’t shown anything beyond being solid. Layne Sleeth is a name that gets brought up in these discussions, but she has always struck us as more of a higher floor, low ceiling type of player.
Kate Fahey and Mari Humberg were true breakout talents in 2024 as unknown or lesser known commodities in 2023. Fahey started finding some better doubles results towards the end of the year with Tina Pisnik. She is the best hope for the relatively “new” talent to find a top 10 breakout in 2025 as Mari Humberg seems to have hit a plateau with her unique, albeit somewhat one-dimensional, brand of pickleball.
Amazingly, we didn’t have a single female who wasn’t already in Premier for MLP in 2024 have a true breakout in 2025. A handful of lesser-known women were given opportunities like Victoria DiMuzio and Mya Bui with not all that much to show for it. Bui still presents with a highly talented, but flawed, skill set, and remains intriguing heading into 2026. DiMuzio seems fine.
It is getting harder and harder to break into the top ranks as pro pickleball becomes a more talented and established. However, we’re wondering if 2026 could be a different story.
Sofia Sewing, the APP Tour’s breakout star of 2025, appears to be the best, new female talent to hit the pro scene last year and it will be interesting to monitor her development either inside or outside the UPA. Notably, Sewing’s regular APP partners have not had the same level of success outside of their partnership with Sewing, which historically has been a good indicator of future success for a player.
Cailyn Campbell could be a currently signed UPA female to make a leap in 2026. She and Jalina Ingram showed flashes of high-end ceiling with the SoCal Hard Eights as mid-season pickups, and Campbell appears to at least have the tools to become more than a JAG.
A few other names to keep an eye on are Elsie Hendershot, Ting Chieh “Jamie” Wei and Zoey Weil. Weil’s game doesn’t look fancy, but she has demonstrated the ability to play well against higher end talent in limited opportunities. Jamie Wei just got signed and has had some sneaky solid results towards the end of the year.
The 12-year-old Hendershot is currently pro pickle’s most intriguing case study.
Her athleticism and toolbox, which includes a one-hand backhand flick, is on the higher end for women in the sport, but she has a lot of physical development to do as the raw power and strength simply aren’t there yet. It’s probably a good sign for her that she does not look to be ahead of the curve for her age in terms of physical development.
Not to mention that it is a wild thing to be navigating a professional sports career at 12-years-old. Hopefully Hendershot isn’t starting her pro career too young. It is unchartered territory as Anna Leigh Waters entered the sport “professionally” at a very different time and wasn’t jumping into the deep end in the same manner as Henderson did late in 2025. Nevertheless, we are still very high on Hendershot as a 3-year keeper for an MLP team. Age related upside, you know.
Winner: New UPA Pickleball Schedule
2025 was the first year of a clear split of MLP/PPA seasons. Outside of a couple of PPA events during the summer, the focus was entirely on MLP, which turned out to be a very good decision by the UPA. This is going to continue going forward and it is a clear win from our perspective to keep it this way.
The PPA and MLP togetherness separation is confusing enough as is. It is best for fans to be able to focus on the tour vs. team format for a certain period, and know each year what they have to look forward to on the clanedar.
The only gripe that we have with the current schedule is that having the PPA Tour year end operate more as a fiscal year end in the first half of each year probably makes it harder for fans to follow. Either way, from an individual event focus standpoint, not flip flopping between PPA and MLP events throughout the calendar year has proven to be a good choice and an optimal move for the UPA.
Loser: Anyone Trying to Figure Out the MLP Rules
The offseason provides some of the best content out there in professional sports, and the amount of movement surrounding the MLP offseason creates a lot of different storylines for the league.
Unfortunately, the shifting rules within MLP over the past couple of years has made tracking the happenings of the league a near impossible task.
Our understanding of the keeper rules is that 2 players can be kept for up to 3 years and one player can be kept for up to 2 years. A player’s draft year counts as the first year of their keeper status and they are eligible to be kept so long as they have not been dropped and claimed on waivers by a different team (i.e. traded players are still eligible to be kept).
Frankly, we are still unclear on whether these rules apply to all players drafted in 2025 and whether a player traded in 2025 offseason resets their keeper status (e.g. Parris Todd, CJ Klinger). We had heard that it does but couldn’t find any publicly available documents confirming or denying this. Surely, someone can clear this up for us.
Beyond the lack of understanding of league rules, the choice to run the league through an auction format and expanding the number of teams in Premier has turned out to be an objectively poor choice, in our humble opinions. The auction format of the draft beginning in 2024 is looking more and more like it was done without proper consideration of the potential pitfalls that it could create for the league. It led to a severe parity issue in 2025 that will almost certainly continue through 2026, and it has led to the lack of clear understanding of the rules for just about everyone.
Unfortunately, the league has been far more reactive than proactive in its ability to prevent avoidable problems – as can be seen with the number of changes and additions made to the 2025 MLP Competition Structure. There are numerous factors outside of optimizing league parity that led to past decisions on league rules. However, doubling and tripling down on the auction format feels like we’re watching a poorly run dynasty fantasy football league that won’t entertain other options that would give the league a much better chance at long-term sustainability.
As a side note, it is quite scary if you take the time to look at the list of UPA signed players and realize that MLP will need 57 players of each gender on team rosters for Premier alone. Regardless of the draft format, having 19 teams in Premier makes any semblance of adequate talent distribution and parity a near impossible task.
Winner: The Safety of Established Players
Texas Ranchers GM, Ryan Dawidjan, used the phrase “no one is safe” in one of his December breakfast ball posts on Instagram breaking down the most recent PPA Asia matches, when referencing the fact that the easy wins are getting harder and harder to come by in pro pickleball. And it’s 100% true.
Outside of the top, established partnerships in each gender, the susceptibility of teams to upset losses is higher than it has ever been. Contracted tour pros are finding out quickly that going to Asia is not a walk in the park to scoop up some extra PPA points.
The Malaysia and Vietnam Open’s had some funky results earlier in 2025. Those results were partly chalked up to unfamiliar faces and humid conditions with a slow JOOLA ball. However, the most recent PPA Asia event in China was a cold, indoor venue that featured more standard conditions and still resulted in a bunch of tight matches as well as some upsets.
Unfamiliar players that are getting better all the time combined with unfamiliar partnerships means that the American contracted players are not rolling through draws as we may have expected they would at the beginning of 2025.
You had a guy like Eunggwon Kim, known for playing on the right side in men’s doubles, making the mixed doubles finals after beating Chao Yi Wang/Armaan Bhatia. Ting Chieh “Jamie” Wei (recently PPA signed) and Connor Garnett barely made it past Tama Shimabukuro and Jamie Haas (both American based players). Federico Staksrud and Alix Truong had to play multiple 3-game matches before cruising in their gold medal match.
Most impressively, Quan Do and Hien Truong steamrolled Blaine Hovenier and Connor Garnett en route to a gold medal victory over Federico Staksrud and Armaan Bhatia.
It’s also worth noting that Ryler DeHeart somehow beat Quang Duong in a 3-game battle in India.
No one is safe. Stay hard out there.
Loser: UPA Contract Breaches
Quang Duong, James Ignatowich, Vivian Glozman and Ryan Fu. All had their UPA contracts terminated in 2025. We wrote about both issues separately after they happened, and it is apparent that the UPA is wanting to be clear to its contracted players that they will not tolerate any breaches for players they do not feel are important to their brand (and cost them too much money).
The Ignatowich trio appealed the UPA decision with the assistance of the current “arch nemesis” of the UPA, the World Pickleball Players Association (WPPA). It is unclear how the appeal process worked and appeared to be some kind of Roger Goodell jury, judge and executioner type of situation. We’ll have to see where things go from here, but it is clear that not everyone in the Ignatowich trio were clear on what type of approval they needed from the UPA (see above screenshot).
Also, in a classic PPA move, James Ignatowich pointed out on social media that he and his RPM business partner, Marwan Abaza, were blocked by the PPA on Instagram. Although we had questions about Samin Odhwani’s public response to Ryan Fu on X, we didn’t think the fact that it was done on social media was unprofessional. On the other hand, it is hard for anyone to take the position that blocking James Ignatowich on social media is anything but unprofessional, childish and immature.
Other media outlets reported that Parris Todd was suspended for 2 events and fined $50,000 for her involvement in Japan-gate. After initially presenting Todd’s situation as different from the Ignatowich trio due to prior approval being sought, the UPA might have had to change course after the appeal of the contract terminations and it being made clear by Odhwani publicly that approval of some kind was also sought by the Ignatowich trio.
We suspect that the significant monetary value attached to the punishment was likely much higher because their decision regarding the Ignatowich trio was appealed and the UPA could not be viewed as treating the two sides as differently as they initially presented it to the public given that both sides had sought approval in some fashion.
Winner: Reasonable Paddle Standards
When the UPA-A arm of the UPA was formed in 2024 and part of its mandate was to establish paddle standards for pro pickleball, we were skeptical of how this would go. Everything in the PPA’s past suggested that they would allow the ones cutting the cheques, aka paddle manufacturers, to dictate how paddle technology was regulated. With USA Pickleball ill-equipped to handle the influx of new paddle companies skirting their antiquated standards, the future looked bleak for maintaining the integrity of what has made pickleball so accessible to the masses.
Fast forward to the 2026 and the situation no longer looks bleak from a paddle technology standpoint. The UPA-A, run by Jason Aspes, has done a great job in terms of limiting and dialing back the power of paddles at the pro level. They gave manufacturers until September 1, 2025 to get their stuff together and, after an initial hiccup, everything appears to be in order with the new standards.
The impact of UPA-A’s change to paddle technology for pro pickleball has trickled down to the amateur side. As paddle brands are forced to comply with UPA-A standards if they want the players in UPA pro events using their paddles, it has led to more brands complying with the dialed back standards that the UPA-A has implemented.
Paddle technology has improved so much over the past years, but it feels we are at a point where the power limits are not unreasonable. USA Pickleball is doing better as well but enforcement remains difficult where there are now so many paddle companies in the space. And the ability for something like the Owl quiet paddle to be sanctioned for tournament play, including at the pro level, seems like nothing other than a money grab.
Nonetheless, the paddle situation is in a much better place right now and we finally have confidence going into 2026 that things will continue to improve.
Loser: Independent Content Creation
In a bizarre turn of events, back in November, the UPA put an end to Chris Cali’s use of their footage for his event recaps on the Sorry Not Sorry show. The decision created a decent amount of buzz amongst the small, but wildly passionate, pickleball content community, and it has meant that the Sorry Not Sorry show is no longer available to be viewed on YouTube – Cali is still posting episodes on Rumble and X.
The decision itself didn’t make a lot of sense to us. Look at the YouTube numbers for Sorry Not Sorry and it’s clear that the program provides additional visibility for the UPA. We are not regular watchers of Sorry Not Sorry beyond bits and pieces here and there, but the content is not overly controversial from what we have seen, especially in terms of criticism of UPA activities.
More of this content should be encouraged by the UPA. The NFL has started restricting unapproved content recently, but they are a money-making machine. The MLB and NBA in recent years have walked back more restrictive content approval requirements because of the free exposure their leagues receive.
But as we have seen time after time, UPA is their name and controlling the narrative is their game. That’s how it has always been with the PPA and that continues to this day with the merged UPA entity. Honestly, they are very much succeeding in their efforts to do that.
Even as the sport grows, pickleball content remains limited, which means there is an ability for an entity like the UPA to control the narrative to a much larger extent than it is in other professional sports. For the limited pool of content creators that wish to commentate or report on pro pickleball, it is easier to get close to the sport because of how small the sport still is. When you look around the sport, there is very little independent content creation covering the sport despite the fact that there is more content than ever before.
Zane Navratil is more closely tied to the UPA than he has ever been as the head of their pro player counsel, or whatever his title is. Anna Bright does a fantastic job with her newsletters, but she is also a UPA contracted player. Travis Rettenmaier’s podcast is still entertaining, but his brashness and unfiltered commentary was clearly dialed back in 2025.
Current players of any pro sport are always going to be limited in what they can say publicly, but that is even more the case when an arbitrary fine from the UPA may be looming.
Pickleball.com is owned by the UPA. The “smartest man in pickleball”, Jim Kloss, who used to independently post his thoughts on Facebook, now writes for Pickleball.com and commentates for PickleballTV sometimes at PPA events.
The Kitchen has a long-standing partnership with the PPA Tour and now the UPA.
Josh Gartman, who once upon a time was providing valuable pro pickleball information and takes on social media – RIP Pickleball Takes, remains the GM for the Brooklyn Pickleball Team.
After starting out very hot with takes and insider information in 2023, Jimmy Miller was given the opportunity as Assistant GM with the California Black Bears and is now the President of the team. In addition, the King of the Court podcast has a UPA contracted player as its other co-host, is sponsored by Pickleball Central and provides discount codes for PPA and MLP events.
We spent a year as Co-GMs of the New York Hustlers.
Jillian Braverman seems to have stopped doing podcasts and, even prior to her hiatus, the content had skewed so far in anti-UPA direction that it felt like the authenticity she demonstrated in past reporting was compromised.
The Dink has remained independent, and Erik Tice continues to do a great job as a reporter of information and news on the sport, but they are only one entity. Todd Boss provides event recaps for Forbes online. Matt Klitch (aka. Matty Pickles) focuses his content on MLP events and has a full-time job along with a family.
Nico Valencia (aka Nico the Lefty) came onto the scene in 2025 with a fresh personality and some unique takes. Valencia was just announced as the new co-host of the Pickle Pod with Navratil and we’re excited to see how their dynamic develops for what is actually now probably version 4.0 of the Pickle Pod.
Outside of that, you are looking at underground discord groups, semi-anonymous social media accounts and fans on Facebook and X to find unaffiliated commentary on the sport.
We were surprised and honored to be one of the six nominees up for The Dink Award’s “Best Pickleball Journalist” (you can vote for us here!) especially when we will forever push back against calling ourselves journalists, but the bigger point is that the list is so small of people covering the sport. It’s already hard enough for members of the media to make a comfortable living covering well-established professional sports and there isn’t close to enough money right now in pickleball to sustain a deeper roster of relatively independent content.
As you go down the list, there are limited ways to consume reliable and relatively objective information on pro pickleball. People and companies reporting on news will always have biases, but biases that can compromise reporting on important happenings, good or bad, are problematic when there aren’t competing outlets that you can rely on to provide that information or an alternative perspective.
This is a problem that seemed like it would correct itself over time, but we may be trending in the other direction as a big chunk of the primary news reporting and commentary the public gets are from people affiliated to the organizations they are providing information and perspective about.
Hopefully that trend starts heading in the other direction sooner rather than later.
Winner: UPA Dominance of Pro Pickleball
It’s crazy to think that the conclusion to the final chapter of the infamous (first) Tour Wars of pro pickleball started almost 2.5 years ago in the summer of 2023. Since the merger between MLP and the PPA, the UPA took that momentum and continued to take actions to secure the top talent that the game of pickleball has to offer.
The leverage of having the top talent under one umbrella, the UPA is closer to a monopoly on professional pickleball than it has ever been. Their international expansion, primarily into Asia and Australia, has extended the reach of the UPA as the talent pool grows across the globe. An impressive feat for the UPA.
Once a staunch competitor to the PPA in terms of eyeballs and talent, the APP Tour’s direction remains unclear and disjointed. They have what could mostly be described as Quad-A talent as staples of their tour outside of a couple of players, and their strange decision to move away from streaming consistently on YouTube and their partnership with UTR has created a severe lack of visibility for the pro side of their business.
The APP Tour has partnered up with other organizations heading into 2026 to create the first ever “Global Pickleball Tour”. This includes the European Pickleball Federation, Global Sports (India), NPL (Australia), D-Joy (Vietnam), Pickleball England and CNPL (Canada). We are curious to monitor how the top non-UPA talent chooses to proceed and whether the UPA is able to keep taking away the most intriguing players who have cut their teeth primarily at non-UPA events.
Organizations outside of the UPA continue to struggle with providing fans with easy access and visibility to watch their events. Not to mention that the APP’s first US based pro event in 2026 will not take place until the end of March.
Moreover, the PPA Challenger series has laid the foundation for aspiring pros to compete within the UPA umbrella. It means that tours like the APP have even more competition for the “minor league” level of talent out there.
As the UPA pushes forward with its exclusivity model and transitions back to prize money being a much larger source of pro player income in 2026, it’s hard to see how the APP and other organization are going to compete with the UPA in the foreseeable future. For now, these leagues will serve as places for secondary talent to compete and earn a partial living with the PPA and MLP remaining the pinnacle of competition for the sport of pickleball.
Winner: Rampant Paddle Sponsor Speculation
The end of 2025 into the start of 2026 has felt like the hottest the rumor mill has been when it comes to player sponsorships. Anna Leigh Waters was on the market for both a new paddle and apparel sponsor, which has been the biggest topic amongst other players.
On Monday, ALW was seen wearing Nike apparel and using a Franklin paddle in a since-deleted Instagram video and Thursday morning it was announced that she is indeed going to Franklin. That’s not where the speculation stops, though. Big names such as Gabe Tardio, Rachel Rohrabacher (going to Friday?), the Kawamoto’s, the Johnson’s, Quang Duong and Catherine Parenteau all remain as free agents for the time being. Dekel Bar was recently signed to newer paddle brand 11six24. Eric Oncins has gone back to Engage.
It’s fascinating to see how much people care about which paddle company is going to sponsor a player. With paddle standards more dialed than they have been in the past few years and power finally being capped at a reasonable limit by the UPA-A, it shouldn’t be nearly as big a deal where a player is going to be signing. It used to matter so much more because technology was changing rapidly and a 2-year deal could leave a player in the dust from keeping up with the times.
When Ben Johns initially signed with JOOLA, JOOLA had said they had much better technology coming in the future from the initial signature paddle that was released. That has proven true with JOOLA becoming one of the most paddle brands amongst pros and amateurs. Selkirk, on the other hand, had a bunch of players using incredibly dated technology until the Era and Boomstik paddles were released in 2025. Anna Leigh Waters was allegedly using close to OG pro technology until Paddletek finally released an updated series of paddles.
In 2026, the paddle landscape is so much more competitive, and any brand offering significant money to pros should be able to provide a competitive paddle. In our view, the paddle sponsor speculation has suddenly become a largely irrelevant conversation because players are not having to choose between money and paddle technology in the way they might have felt they had to as recently as last year. The choice made by a player in the not-too-distant past could have a serious impact on their results, but that should not be the case going forward. Even a company like Addidas has recovered after its debacle of a relationship with Federico Staksrud.
While we remain somewhat curious on the decisions of some of the top pros, we are not nearly as excited as much of the nerding out pickleball community is about paddle sponsors simply for the reason that those choices made are unlikely to have nearly the same impact on the landscape of pro pickleball as they once did.
Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com! You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @nmlpickleball
