MLP St. Louis 2025 – EOD Musings

St. Louis is hosting their first ever MLP event and it is one that the Chaifetz family has said would be the “best pro pickleball event, period”. That’s a lot to live up to for a random regular season event, but we love to see the investment that franchise like the Shock have in MLP. We need more of it. 

Sunday, July 20th

The thing to takeaway from today is probably that it’s more certain that we have more teams that can at least knock off a top seed than it felt like before. Columbus proved at the midseason tourney it was close and then went out and knocked off Dallas. Brooklyn beat Columbus and pushed St. Louis deep. And regardless of circumstances, we have LA with Ben and Milan Rane and Etta Tuionetoa make Orlando and Utah semi-interesting.

Heck, even the Slice have shown out a bit. They took Dallas to a Dreambreaker today. The switch up to their mixed pairings seems to have helped. They aren’t great but they are okay.

Saturday, July 19th

We’ll try to get something up on the ridiculous Ben Johns trade by mid-day Monday hopefully.

In the meantime, it was an interesting day because we had some big matches and, along Drew Felios’s efforts to hyperbolize some close regular season matches, there were a couple of timing based near upsets.

Columbus beat Dallas and they did it in a weird way. The women won for the 2nd straight time but their men lost for the 2nd straight time. Andrei/Parris got a W over Augie/Tyra and the Sliders are a very solid Dreambreaker team. Better than Dallas we would have to think. Big confidence boost for Columbus and they are officially in the mix to contend.

St. Louis steamrolled Dallas with the backing of their home crowd, it seems like Dallas didn’t have any juice left after a long couple of weeks and Dallas had all the momentum at home.

Columbus bad to go Dreambreaker against Atlanta and St. Louis had to go Dreambreaker against Chicago. You wonder if timing was right for the near upsets as Columbus was in a big let down spot coming off the biggest win of their season and St. Louis was in a big time look ahead spot waiting for the marquee Dallas matchup later in the day.

Max Freeman and Vivian Glozman looked good. Have to think the Slice will stick with the new mixed pairings.

Florida Smash with a win! And Chefs lose another Dreambreaker…who would have thought?

Friday, July 18th

The best stay the best. Both Dallas and St. Louis’s women’s teams lost, but they were able to still win in regulation against Brooklyn and Columbus respectively. All those teams are 4 strong across the board but the Flash and Shock are just a little stronger. Again, it doesn’t mean they can’t lose but it means they are going to win more often than not. It will be so tough to get them in a best of 3.

This is Columbus’s last regular season event and their men are not playing at an elite level. They lost 11-3 to the Shock and it didn’t look particularly good. Unforced errors galore for CJ Klinger in both his men’s and mixed as it didn’t look right for him. Daescu isn’t at his best either. It’s a real issue potentially.

Brooklyn remains a TBD until they have Dekel, but Riley/Jackie’s lack of power in mixed can be an issue against teams with great defence like Tyra/Augie.

The Chicago Slice’s women are playing well after a tough loss to Atlanta. They have wins against Brooklyn’s women as well as Columbus’s win, which was a comeback from 10-4 down. The Slice just don’t have enough juice in mixed overall it doesn’t seem. Maybe some thought to putting a little more steadiness with Ignatowich and going with Callie Smith? It allows Freeman and Glozman to be a low floor, higher ceiling #2 pairing.

Nashville was 0-2 on the day, losing to Bay Area in a Dreambreaker and Vegas in regulation. Relying on too many Dreambreakers isn’t going to be sustainable and we’ll be curious to see if their good fortune starts turning the other way here.

Thursday, July 17^th

It was a little bit of a sleepy Thursday. The difficulties of these MLP events that don’t coincide with major amateur events, which is basically all of them except Beer City. We’ll be very curious to see what the weekend brings. However, what we posted on X is that a problem with a large number of seats available is that the venue feels kind of dead if it is not filled up at all. It’s better to have 500 people packed tightly than 1,000 people scattered in a 3,000 seat venue. 

The Slice played a couple of good matches. Glozman had a Glozman special down game against Atlanta but she had a better Glozman game against Brooklyn, at least in the women’s match. The talent remains so high for Glozman, and she does some special things on the court. There are just too many not special things that happen as well. Good Dreambreaker win for the Slice after a poor women’s loss against the Bouncers and it’s too bad for the Slice their men couldn’t pull it out against Newman/Koller to guarantee them a Dreambreaker. It was an almost great day for the Slice. 

Brooklyn is fortunate to pull out the win on the backs of their mixed teams. It was a surprising loss for their women, who still haven’t quite found their stride as a pair. Brooklyn continues to tread water to remain in that all-important top 6 seeding position. 

Shock beat the Bouncers. Bouncers go 0-2. Nothing to see here.

Things continue to trend down for Las Vegas. Yes, they didn’t lose today but they had to go Dreambreaker against California and they were really close to having to go Dreambreaker against DC as well. 

2-0 for Bay Area today with Alix Truong’s brother, Jonathan Truong, filling in for their fake 2^nd male, Sam Querrey. Florida is a very sad Challenger team right now, but the Dreambreaker win against California was a good one as Angie Walker took 6 straight points off Layne Sleeth to close the Dreambreaker. Jonathan Truong was 3-1 on the day and was very close to being 4-0.