MLP Beer City Open 2025 – EOD Musings
5 days of (sort of) double elimination MLP tournament style play gives us a nice reprieve from the standard events we have been seeing and there are points on the line. Apparently Sportscentre is going to be on site and it may be a very exciting midseason event with cash and points up for grabs.
Sunday, July 13th
A very fun event but also quite predictable. The 3 best teams stay the 3 best teams in the order that you had to have them coming into the event. Great theatre in Beer City with a top notch atmosphere.
Maybe the only mild surprise was the Ranchers showing that they belong at the top of that second tier after the trade of Etta. They beat Columbus in the back draw 3-0 and they are looking more dangerous.
Saturday, July 12th
There were a lot of good matches today but we end up in the same place we all expected. Shock and Flash final, with New Jersey hot on their tails and Columbus in the mix to make something happen. The Shock women staved off multiple game points and that was really the difference at the end of the day.
New Jersey clearly does not believe in Meghan Dizon. Going with Mari Humberg in the most important match of the season to date tells you all you need to know and Humberg was very close to pulling it off.
Columbus’s women getting the win should have been the trick as CJ and Andrei are favored in a Augie/JW matchup, but CJ and Andrei haven’t quite gelled as we would have expected this year. They don’t get the men’s or any of the mixed. It has to hurt but Columbus showed they can hang with the best.
Friday, July 11th
The day as a whole wasn’t great but we had two incredible and meaningful matches today. Brooklyn and Columbus played two gender barn burner games with Columbus somehow squeezing both of them out, 12-10 and 14-12 – Brooklyn had game points in both matchups. This match felt like a coin flip on paper, even with Koller in for Dekel Bar, and it was just that. There really isn’t any reason that Columbus, in a single match, can’t unseat the one of the top 3 teams. They have the firepower to do it across the board and it should be a fun matchup between the Sliders and the Flash. Brooklyn is also right there and should be better once they get Dekel Bar back in the line-up, and who knows where this could have gone if they take one of the gender games.
The other highlight of the day was the first match on CC, which was the Challenger finals between the clear two best teams in Challenger, Nashville and Las Vegas. Michelle Esquivel and Pablo Tellez apparently have beef now, which is really something we didn’t expect to see meaningful beef between these two in 2025. Esquivel flipped the bird at Pablo Tellez after their mixed match as they were jawing back and forth towards the end of it. Challenger can be a good product but MLP has chosen not to highlight it at all the past couple of years. It’s also clear that Las Vegas isn’t the truly dominant force they appeared to be on paper. James Delgado is too up and down and none of Las Vegas’s Premier level players have consistency as their calling card.
Dallas won in regulation over Orlando and it is near impossible to take them down without 2 strong women.
The consolation bracket matches were kind of sad. Carolina lost to a Jaume-less Atlanta Bouncers squad. The Hustlers actually won a Dreambreaker of a Loong-less Utah squad. SoCal won a good one in a Dreambreaker over the very disappointing Ignatowich-less Chicago Slice. The Duong-less Mad Drops took down the Sock-less Flames in a Dreambreaker.
Thursday, July 10th
It was anti-replacements day at MLP in Beer City. Keanu Reeves would not be impressed. The New York Hustlers (Stephen Madonia), Carolina Hogs (Liz Truluck), LA Mad Drops (Rafa Hewett), Phoenix Flames (Alex Walker and Pesa Teoni), Atlanta Bouncers (Eric Roddy) and Utah Black Diamonds (Yates Johnson) all had to run with bench players or on-site replacements, and they all lost. To be fair, the only top 8 team to lose were the LA Mad Drops and they lost to a Miami team that had to use a bench player, Yuta Funemizu – the only bench player to win on Thursday. We are not counting Koller as a sub at this point.
It wasn’t much of a day for pickleball as the first round matchups featured not only the bottom 8 teams against the top 8 teams, but it featured the bottom 8 teams featuring their incomplete lineups. We are curious if this is a contract situation as some players that originally signed during the Tour Wars are only contractually required to play a certain number events and the mid-season tournament is an extra tournament on top of the required number of event. Jaume Martinez Vich, Jack Sock and Genie Bouchard were all notable absences who were not injury related. This may be fixed with the updated contract negotiations for a lot of players, but it is far from ideal to have an event ESPN is at with a bunch of dud matches.
The Ranchers vs. Mad Drops match on Grandstand was the best of the day. We got a Dreambreaker that Miami was able to pull out. We can’t glean much from the Ranchers trade just yet but the fact that Etta Tuionetoa missed another match due to injury may have been a significant factor in Texas’s decision to part ways with her.
The SoCal Hard Eights of 2025 may have become what the Utah Black Diamonds were for the 2024 MLP season. After the Connor Garnett trade last year, Utah went from laughing stock to the “bad” team that no one in MLP looked forward to playing. It’s the worst type of matchup because you are supposed to be guaranteed points, but it is a dog fight every step of the way. The Hard Eights men took down Tardio/Patriquin and Campbell/Fu gave a little bit of a scare in the 2nd mixed match to Bright/Patriquin. Electric energy, once again, from the Hard Eights.
Last thought of the day is that the energy at BCO is amazing. The stands are sold out. There are a bunch of people are watching Grandstand matches. They actually have shade for a lot of fans. You can’t ask for much more.
Wednesday, July 9th
All chalk for day one in Challenger. Las Vegas and Nashville have clearly separated themselves as the class of Challenger, even though Las Vegas looks more vulnerable as each event goes on. The Night Owls struggled to get it going against California as they lost both gender matches. Zoey Wang did not play well in the women’s doubles match but was able to gather herself to raise her level enough in mixed. Las Vegas is so tough in a Dreambreaker and they just aren’t going to lose many of them in Challenger over the course of a season.
Boy, what can you say about Nashville? They had a great event in New York and then they go out to beat DC in regulation, 3-1. Clearly, we underestimated this group of players. Most notably, Michelle Esquivel isn’t as washed as we thought she was and Ewa Radzikowska has to be the Challenger GOAT at this point. Rafa Hewett, filling in for Stefan Auvergne, won his men’s match but couldn’t get it done in mixed with Koop to push it to a Dreambreaker. Koop, Hewett and Esquivel. That’s a lot of legacy players on one court.
The college teams being integrated as the 7th and 8th teams in the tournament wasn’t a bad idea at all. The FAU team, featuring two women who get wins on the APP (Bella Nelson and Ava Cavataio), pushed the Florida Smash to the brink of being down 2-0 but they couldn’t quite pull it out in the men’s game.
It would have been more fun if MLP went back to their original idea of including Premier and Challenger in one single bracket that they pulled chute on at the last moment in 2024. Understanding that it makes it very hard for the Challenger teams to be playing for anything more than an upset win, it would have been quite fun this year to see a Challenger team face a team like the NY Hustlers.
With DC trading Mari Humberg after only one event, our Challenger power rankings probably go as follows: Las Vegas, Nashville, California, DC, Bay Area, Florida. The Challenger finals should be a good time on Friday.
