MLP Columbus 2025 – Live-ish Random Thoughts

It’s a weird feeling having an MLP event on back-to-back weeks. We did have this last year when the first playoff weekend in Dallas was the weekend following the last regular season event. However, it’s unique to have a regular season event back-to-back. There will be a big Atlanta PPA event that will be followed up immediately by the MLP Austin event. So it’s going to be a fast and furious month of professional pickleball, highlighted primarily by MLP events.

Sunday, May 4th

3:15 pm EST – Miami has had a good event. They benefit from a C squad Hogs team but get the regulation win. Orlando, Miami and Atlanta are proving to be some of the friskier teams in MLP.

1:51 pm EST – It’s clear that the bottom teams are going to be close with one another. Miami and Atlanta went 2-2 and played a very close Dreambreaker with some controversy around an in/out call by Milan Rane of Miami. Mya Bui seems to be doing well as she won both her matches but it wasn’t enough for Miami.

Coach for the Flames, Brant Weiss, brought some funny gags poking fun at Hayden Patriquin and the St. Louis Shock’s recent antics, but those jokes fall flat when your team loses 1, 2, 1 and 0. The Flames have good vibes but are proving to be no threat to better teams. The Shock are also blowing out the Hustlers currently in similar fashion.

The energy that Federico is bringing to the Squeeze is a complete 180 from last year when he was literally tanking matches in their team’s final event. It’s good to see he has that in him and maybe all the criticism has lit a fire under him. The Squeeze are a better Dreambreaker team than the Slice and it is really tough to expect to win Dreambreakers building a team where 3 of the 4 players do not play singles on tour. The Slice actually came back to 16-16 being down 14-6 but Fed made James look like a child out there. Unclear why James is playing the number 1 role over Max Freeman.

Saturday, May 3rd

10:37 pm EST – Busy regular life day for us so this is all you get. Miami has looked good so far this season as they got wins today over Phoenix and Chicago. They have two men that are quite capable in Premier and it allows them to be in every match as Mya Bui continues to get reps.

Chicago, on the other hand, looks like they need some work. Almost losing to a decimated Carolina team in a Dreambreaker is concerning and to follow that up with a Dreambreaker loss to Miami is not ideal by any stretch.

The NY Hustlers have moved out of laughing stock territory. They benefit from an up and down Phoenix team yesterday and then a let down match from Carolina’s C team today. A win is a win and you know they will take it.

The Squeeze have been playing well but we’re still not sold. They barely beat Atlanta and then went down 4-0 to the Shock. It looks like Kate Fahey called Federico Staksrud a bitch after they had to replay match point following a hindrance call. Fed laughed it off and he better do that considering he called Anna Leigh a bitch as a teenager two years ago.

Notably, CJ Klinger missed another day due to illness and that put the Sliders in a very difficult spot versus the Shock. MLP changed the schedule before the event so that Columbus only played 5 matches but a 4-0 loss to the Shock today along with a 4-0 loss to the Squeeze yesterday puts them behind the 8 ball. Parris Todd and Andrei Daescu are not winning like a number 1 mixed team needs to right now.

Friday, May 2nd

6:56 pm EST – What a wild day with all the Ben stuff going on. Go over to X if you want to keep up with all that’s going on. We’ll likely have a separate larger post about all of this as we did with the ALW situation. Ben is defending his position. 

St. Louis beat Miami in regulation after Miami’s men beat St. Louis’s men 11-6. Miami is frisky and we thought they could be as their mixed duo of Rane/Khlif pushed Fahey/Tardio to 12-10. 

Carolina’s B squad lost 4 straight to Orlando. Chicago beat Atlanta in regulation. And the Hustlers get their first win of the season in a Dreambreaker over the vibey Phoenix Flames. 

3:03 pm EST – We wish we were talking about MLP results but instead we have the Johns brothers. After an embarrassing performance this morning, Ben and Collin have pulled out of the rest of their MLP matches this weekend due to “lighting”. Ben is famous for having issues with lighting, although not Collin, but the venue in Columbus is supposed to be very well lit. Regardless, it is a sorry move from the Johns brothers and there will have to be some action on UPA’s end if they want to show that they are serious about MLP as a product. It’s also hard to believe that the Johns brothers could pull out for lighting issues and still get paid whatever their hefty appearance fee is for showing up to Columbus. 

The media release sent out by MLP states that “due to an eye issue related to lighting, which is being treated as an injury situation”. Martin Emmrich and Ross Whitaker will be playing in place of the Johns brothers. Tom Dundon, one of the UPA executives, owns the Carolina Hogs so the next steps taken here could be very telling as to how the entire UPA sees MLP. What a debacle.

In other news, Columbus pulled out a regulation win over Chicago despite having Roscoe Bellamy fill-in for CJ Klinger. That’s a good win for them as Chicago is solid across the board. Jansen/Todd almost blew a big lead and getting that win can carry the team through the rest of the match

The Hustlers got steamrolled in their first 3 games by Miami, getting no more than 5 points in any of the matches. Helena Spiridis and Dominique Schaefer are the women playing this weekend for NY. Spiridis/Young actually got their second win in the meaningless 4^th game over Khlif and Rane. Crummy for Miami they have to play a back-to-back against St. Louis right after but they probably were never going to win that one anyway… 

12:24 pm EST – It’s a tough day for the litter of Hogs fans out there. Liz Truluck and Tammy Emmrich beat the Bouncers women only to see mopey Ben play like his mopiest self. The Johns brothers were up 5-0, only to end up losing to the Bouncers men. Ben proceeded to classic Ben zombie walk his way through a mixed loss, which led to a possibly sadder effort from Collin Johns. Carolina loses 3-1 after getting a women’s win is the worst type of loss for the Hogs. This is an incredibly bad sign for Carolina and might end up being the worst storyline to follow for the 2025 MLP season. 

CJ Klinger is out again for Columbus with an illness. He must be very sick to be missing two days of his hometown event. Columbus plays one-quarter of their season this weekend so they better hope CJ gets healthy for tomorrow. Roscoe Bellamy is filling in once again.

Thursday, May 1st

7:33 pm EST – Phoenix is a vibey team, but they are very flawed. Genie Bouchard remains the most glaring issue on the team. She had one good women’s win in Orlando but, for the most part, she’s a black hole for Phoenix for half of their matches. Sock/McGuffin got a solid win over Bellamy/Daescu as Bellamy was filling in for the ill, CJ Klinger. The Phoenix men should be able to come away with wins against teams without two strong men’s players and Jessie/Tyson are a solid #1 mixed team, but the Bouchard stuff might be too much to overcome. 3 points on the day still has to feel pretty good. 

A Dreambreaker win for Columbus is important with Bellamy subbing in, especially after their #1 mixed team lost. We’ll have to see if Klinger is back tomorrow because matches against the Slice and Squeeze tomorrow need to be wins for them. 

5:20 pm EST – Shock win in regulation over the Bouncers. The women’s game in the Atlanta-St. Louis match is a prime example of the issue with side out scoring. Atlanta’s women came out hot with an early 5-1 lead while St. Louis was having trouble scoring. Eventually, St. Louis kept getting enough side outs and the walls came crashing in on DiMuzio/Glozman. In a rally scoring scenario, this might have been a much dicier finish for Bright/Fahey, but they ended up rattling off 10 straight points to win 11-5 win. Pulling anecdotal evidence is not going to be the best argument for rally versus side out scoring, but it is an example that we want to highlight as more food for thought on this subject.

We actually may see more upsets with side out scoring for teams that are relatively close in talent level to one another based purely on volatility compared to rally scoring to 25. The men’s game in this Atlanta-St. Louis match is an example of that as the Shock barely pulled it out, 12-10.

At least for now, the Shock have gone back to their old mixed pairings. Kate/Gabe get a good win over Glozman/Martinez Vich. We’ll be surprised if they toy around with these pairings much more as the season goes along. 

Also, Shock COO, Andrew Haines, was wearing a Shock t-shirt that said “Security”. Considering Haines was the most well behaved of anyone involved in the incident, this is pretty funny. 

3:40 pm EST – Phoenix squeaks out its first win of the season in a tight Dreambreaker over Carolina. Tammy Emmrich missed a sitter at 17-12 and it seemed like that was the turning point. Carolina somehow almost won this match despite Ben losing his mixed and Kaitlyn Christian being out. These teams both kind of are what they are but it’s really hard to see either team beating any of the better teams unless Ben is on a heater. Sock/Bouchard have looked poor together in mixed.

Columbus is not as heavy hitting a weekend overall when it comes to the top teams. St. Louis will be in action as well as Columbus. Outside of that, we have a number of middling to bottom of the barrel teams – Orlando, Carolina, Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, Miami, New York. It should be fun to see these middling to lower end teams square off against one another early in the season.