USA Pickleball Nationals – 5 Takeaways – Progressive Draws a Plus
There are a lot of complaints on the amateur side of nationals. However, a big plus this year has to be the sense that this was back to being the biggest tournament of the year. With the rapidly diminishing importance of US Open and TOC, it is important to still have at least one tournament that feels different from the rest. Despite being at Indian Wells, last yearâs Nationals did not have the larger than life feel that it did for those of us around the game of pickleball prior to COVID. It actually seems anti-climatic to have any tournaments after the biggest one of the year, but thatâs a story for another day. Nationals was back for 2023.
*It is a Gritty only version of the takeaways this week FYI.
1. Progressive Draws Working â A big discussion point coming from Nationals was the implementation of progressive draws for the pros. Instead of playing all the matches of a single bracket on one day, they started the tournament on Wednesday and played one round from all five pro brackets each day. Naturally, it was something I was skeptical of going into the event, but I actually thought the format worked quite well. I wasnât aware going into the event that all the doubles was going to be played best 3 out of 5, and I was a fan of that choice too.
My skepticism going into the event mainly stemmed from the weirdness of switching between different events throughout the day and trying to keep an eye on five different draws during a single day, especially the early rounds. Other questions that I had, and continue to have, is how the pros would deal with this change. The consensus from pros appears to be that they like the progressive draws, but thatâs also coming from the more established players. Starting a tournament on a Wednesday with an unknown finish line for newer players with jobs could be a new barrier to entry if they decide to continue this format.
Sticking to Nationals itself, I found that the early rounds were more interesting because we had an opportunity to focus on teams that you often arenât seeing or thinking much about. That being said, my perspective is skewed by the fact that they had 5 live streams going on Wednesday and only 2 courts going the rest of the week. The 5 courts being streamed on YouTube gives the crazy people a chance to watch people who rarely see the light of day. Most people probably donât care about 5 streams but this is our blog and this is what I care about.
Although, having the main court on the new Pickleball TV sucked, to be perfectly honest. The PPA posted some of those matches in the earlier rounds on their YouTube page but the inability to go back to watch matches during the day isnât ideal when you have 10 plus hours of pickleball on for 5 days. They donât have any of the weekend matches posted at the time of writing this.
But I digress. For me, the most important aspect of this is that the progressive draws made it feel like a bigger tournament. It was different. It was unique. It was Nationals. I wonder how the pros who had to play late into the evening felt about these progressive draws. 3 out of 5 matches take a long time and some had to play well past 10pm local Dallas time. However, as a viewer on the west coast, having 3 out of 5 matches to come home to in the evenings was a nice change of pace.
In terms of whether they should do this going forward, I donât think they should be doing 3 out of 5 progressive draws for standard tournaments. My suggestion would be to keep the progressive draws out of it for the majority of tournaments, bring it out for the bigger events and then save the 3 out of 5 format for only the very biggest events like Nationals. We have discussed doing 3 out of 5s on the blog here before to try to differentiate the standard tour events from the more marquee ones but we had never considered it in the context of daily progressive draws. There is no question that playing 3 out of 5 sets in tennis makes it very clear that this major is more important than the other random tournaments throughout the year.
Progressive draws and/or 3 out of 5 matches could provide that same effect on fans for pro pickleball. They donât need to overuse it like NBC did with when they started putting on âDeal or No Dealâ 5 nights a week back in its heyday. People will come to associate progressive draws with bigger tournaments and thatâs one way that pickleball can start creating its own traditions as some of its limited traditions are already being erased.
Every sport has to start somewhere. The progressive draws were a worthwhile experiment in my eyes and should be used going forward. How it is used will help shape the way the pro sport looks in the near future.
2. Sibling Success â Mary and Maggie Brascia made their first Championship Sunday together, and at the biggest tournament of the year to boot. It should be noted that the womenâs draw at Nationals wasnât the deepest we have seen on the PPA this year. Apparently, Parris Todd was supposed to play with Simone Jardim but that fell apart amidst rumors of some MLP hot stove discussions. Todd ended up playing with Jessie Irvine, which is not an optimal fit for two set up type players. Jade Kawamoto and Anna Bright formed what was the second best team on paper in the draw followed up by Vivienne David/Lacy Schneemann. However, without the likes Lea Jansen, Lucy Kovalova, Simone Jardim, Jackie Kawamoto, Andrea Koop, Jorja Johnson and Etta Wright, the field was open for some upsets to happen.
The Brasciaâs were that upset. Considering the draw, the sisters had about as tough a road as they could have gotten to the finals without facing Anna Leigh/Catherine. Impressively, they beat Rohrabacher/Valdes and Irvine/Todd in straight games, and they were able to pull out the semis win against Bright/Kawamoto in a very tight 5 game match. The Brasciaâs came away with a silver medal after an expected loss to the undefeated Anna Leigh Waters, with the silver showing how far they have come as a pair.
I was hard on the Brasciaâs, especially Maggie, earlier in their careers. I never thought Maggie was going to be very good. She didnât look the part of a pro player to me and didnât have the tennis background of her sister. The Maggie Brascia for Jackie Kawamoto trade that slanted the landscape of the 2022 MLP season was not nearly as bad as I thought it was in the moment (although, it still wasnât a good trade). Every step of the way since that time, Maggie Brascia has proven me wrong and I canât even say I feel like I should have seen it coming.
I still watch Maggie and I donât think she should be as good as she is. However, that is me likley suffering from what I could call Susannah Barr syndrome. A player not fitting into the mold of what you expect they should look like in pickleball, does not necessarily mean they do not have the chops to be a top level player. Thereâs no denying that Mary and Maggie Brascia have made significant strides in their games and play really well together as a womenâs doubles team.
There is something to be said about the sibling effect too. As much as there may be bickering and fighting that siblings can have with each other, the familiarity and comfort is something that cannot be replicated anywhere else. The Kawamotoâs, Newmanâs, Johnsonâs and Brasciaâs have been playing together for a long time. The number of reps they share together compared to just about everyone they face is unmatched. Those reps probably provide a real edge over opponents that serves them well over the course of a calendar year.
Much like the Kawamotoâs, the Brasciaâs remain underrated. I almost didnât pick them with my last womenâs doubles selection over Rohrbacher/Valdes and Barr/Fudge in our fantasy draft preview. Despite the strides they have shown, I still didnât feel great about their upside to get to a podium in this setting, but there they were on Championship Sunday in front of a gigantic Nationals crowd.
The Brasciaâs are not new to the game, but they are another duo of siblings that are having big success in pro pickleball.
3. Kings and Queens Stay Kings and Queens â It is the end of 2023 and here is where we stand. Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters have lost one doubles match together. Anna Leigh Waters has gone undefeated in womenâs doubles and has only lost two matches in womenâs singles, with more close losses in there. Ben Johns and Collin Johns have been virtually unbeatable outside of an aberration here and there, which included Collin Johns trying to play through an injury.
Ben Johns lost to Christopher Haworth in the round of 16 for singles. They played inside. Benâs arch nemesis. He said that he has some issues indoors mainly due to lighting from a childhood eye issue. Regardless of the result, Ben has stayed as the best singles player in pro pickleball for another year.
The singles matches were enjoyable on Sunday but the doubles matches were as snoozey as ever. This is likely the nature of racquet sports and we have seen this in tennis, with the only difference over a good portion of the 2000s being that we had multiple players in contention for the greatest of all-time on the menâs side to make majors more interesting.
Nationals still featured some great matches but they just happened in the earlier rounds. There were a ton of matches that went the distance with a prime example being the Johns brothers getting pushed hard by Loong/Ignatowich in the semi-finals. A plastic ball, Collin Johnsâs arch nemesis, ricocheted off Benâs paddle causing Collin to take a 15-minute medical timeout, which appeared to halt some of the momentum that Loong/Ignatowich had up 2 games to 1 in game 4.
Some are comparing Collin playing through a plastic ball hitting him in the forehead to the Michael Jordan flu game, the Kirk Gibson walk-off home run and Tiger Woods gutting through a torn ACL to win the US Open. It was professional sports warrior mentality at its finest. In all seriousness, if it was someone other than Collin, I would have been more worried it hit him in the eye or that he may have been hurt, but Collin is the boy who cried wolf when it comes to getting hit by a plastic ball. My money would still have been on the Johns brothers to win the match had the forehead hit not happened, but it was an interesting side storyline that complicates an otherwise fantastic match.
There does not appear to be any player or partnership on the horizon that looks like they can take down the King and Queen of pro pickleball anytime soon. Things happen fast in pro pickleball so that could change, but the landscape is essentially the same as last year, except we are no longer wondering whether Riley Newman had the chops to take down Ben Johns as top dog.
4. Staksrud-Koller Altercation â Most of you reading this have probably heard the story by now. Leading big in their group stage match against the Utah Black Diamonds, Federico Staksrud/Tyra Black were playing Anna Leigh Waters/AJ Koller. At one point late in their game that they are losing handily, Anna Leigh Waters says something to Federico Staksrud to the effect of âif you played that well in a PPA maybe you would beat me.â After winning a hand battle against Anna Leigh, Staksrud responded with âtake that bi—â.
It is an objectively terrible thing for Staksrud to say and has no place in the sport â or anywhere, for that matter. It should not be said to a player of any age but that was a situation where your professional opponent being a 16-year-old female does matter. That shouldnât be a hot take. AJ Koller was not happy with Federico immediately after he said it, he was not happy after the match, and he expressed his displeasure on social media.
Apparently, this spilled over to an altercation at Nationals. We want to be very careful on this topic as we have only gotten pieces of information and not enough independent people have been forthcoming about exactly what happened. From the information we have received, Koller went up to Staksrud unprompted, bumped his chest, grabbed him and pushed him back.* The words used by a couple of people were that Koller âmanhandledâ Staksrud and it was not a joke. Whether this description of the incident is fair is still not entirely clear.
Despite pickleballdotcom and the Dink posting, deleting and then only pickleballdotcom re-posting a re-worded story on social media regarding the incident (see above), it appears fairly clear that Koller was disqualified from Nationals by the PPA as a result of the incident. You could see on the live stream someone talking to Koller after the first point of his first-round match and then he walked off with someone after winning the first game against Duong/Teoni, never to return and withdrawing from the match.
This led to a couple of posts on social media from AJ Koller and Pablo Tellez. AJ Koller posted a story on Instagram with a smile emoji and the words âtruth will prevailâ âalways has, always will. Pablo Tellez posted the following later in the evening asking for Koller to be âbanned from the sportâ:
As is often the case in these situations, itâs hard to say if we will ever know the exact truth in all of this is. Koller has not issued a public statement. Itâs a very weird situation for something like this to occur that lingers over the course of multiple days to a random-ish somewhat physical confrontation. It is not a good situation and nothing has really come out as to how the PPA is dealing with it. Shockingly.
Two wrongs do not make a right from Koller and by no means is what Koller did to Staksrud justifiable. Does it warrant a complete banning from the sport? Based on the information we have from those not involved in the incident itself, it doesnât seem that way to me, but thatâs without knowing more. Should there be some kind of penalty to Koller beyond the disqualification from Nationals? Quite possibly.
It is one of the odder stories we have seen in pro pickleball. The incident itself that led to this is completely unacceptable on Staksrudâs part, but an unprompted confrontation isnât really the answer reither. Iâm not sure if this is a situation where a mountain is being made out of a mole hill, and I think this should be on the PPA to be more (ugh, Iâm going to say it again) transparent about what has occurred. Controversial matters continue to be swept under the rug and thatâs no way to handle things either.
Weâll have to see if more information comes out. For the time being, hereâs my take. Donât call a 16-year-old woman a âbi—â and donât carry over beef to some kind of confrontation in an attempt to make a point about it. Seems straightforward enough.
5. JW Johnson Wins Singles â JW is an enigma in his own way. He does not go about his business in the manner many of us expect from a pro athlete. He is reserved, wears cow sweatpants and shows up with literal bed head to center court. As consistent as JW has been in menâs doubles, his singles game has been very hit or miss over the past year. He has the capability to win events, as he showed this weekend, as much as he is capable of losing in the first round to a nobody.
I think one smart thing that the Johnson camp has done for JW in 2023 is limitng his singles events. JW has played a ton of pickleball over the past 3 years and looked like he might have bit off more than he could chew in 2022. JW took a fairly significant hiatus from singles earlier this year and, since that time, has been playing events in a sporadically consistent manner.
Yes, JW had the benefit of top seeds Ben Johns and Tyson McGuffin losing out in earlier rounds, but he had to get through the newcomers like Quang Duong and Gearbox powered Christopher Haworth en route to his eventual win over Jaume Martinez Vich in the finals. While he may not show it, JW seems to get geared up for the bigger events and it probably helps him that heâs not grinding out all 3 brackets for every tournament.
JW is a sneaky big-time competitor. It is still a real question as to whether MLP brings out the best competitive side of JW as he continues to be hit or miss in that setting as well. At the same time, JW was out here at Nationals taking away a podium in all 3 events. He won silver with Dylan Frazier in doubles and took bronze with his sister, Jorja, in mixed.
As it stands, JW is the closest competitor to Ben Johns across all 3 events. The consistency is not always there at every tournament, but he is the 2nd most likely male to find a triple crown at a PPA event as slim as the odds are that he can do it with both ALW and Ben present.
Fantasy Update: An underwhelming 12-12 tie with 6 missing points. Slim missed JW in the draw so we ended up missing all 6 points there in the menâs singles draw. The Brasciaâs reaching Championship Sunday was definitely a surprise, but the rest of the draws went more or less to form. We are still all tied for the year.
*this sentence has been edited to remove the words âand expectedlyâ
Use Code “Ross10” for 10% off on OneShot Pickleball Paddles and Gear: https://oneshotpickleball.com/
Use Code “NMLTEN” for 10% off on Drop Shot District Clothing merchandise: https://dropshotdistrict.com/
Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments below or email us at nmlpickleball@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook. Also, listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify and YouTube!
Would like to hear a recap of the facility overall conditions and playability for 2K plus amateurs? I have played at Indian Wells the last 2 years but did not want to travel to Tx in November this year. Why the move? $$$?
The Pickleball Studio guys were there and provide a fairly comprehensive recap on their most recent podcast episode
I think it was about 3, 400 players
In regard to your comment “rapidly diminishing importance of US Open” don’t sell them short. Last year was great and Anna Leigh has announced she’ll be playing there this year.
This is a good point. It has been taken over by people with deep pockets and the ALW thing is notable. Weâll have to see
One of those deep pockets is Adam Franklin so I’m hoping his pros make a similar announcement as AL’s
It has been pointed out that Leigh Waters is a strategic advisor for Pickle 4 Social
Are there really any independent pickleball accounts? I have no doubt the PPA was the influence behind the dink deleting their post and no other accounts coming forward. The PPA is the least transparent organization and seems to have multiple âcompaniesâ seemingly trying not to get on their bad side.
Media is rarely honest but disappointing to see they wonât even report drama when the PPA throws its stick at them.
Well thereâs just barely any media out there and clearly someone got upset. However, pickleballdotcom is owned by Dundon and PPA so itâs odd they posted something, deleted and reposted. Unclear what happened but the original narrative was not wanted for some reason
Agreed. Seen it now with AJ Koller and with the Jill braverman paddle drama. Itâs very clear the PPA is not an honest organization and more like a mafiaâŚ.
No wonder so many players wanted to leave and go to MLP.PPA is seemingly very corrupt and controls everything pickleball at this point. At least new leadership would have been a fresh start at transparency.
Been saying this for years, that PPA is corrupt, dishonest, and has zero integrity. Thank you.
These type of things did not help at all
Hopefully Jimmy Miller will have and comment on the fracas.
Yes, hopefully they have some more details
I knew you’d come around eventually. Pretty soon we won’t be calling these upsets for the Brascias.
Hah you may be right Adam!
Thank you for your time and posting. The 3/5 games are a PPA thing and have been for a while (and this was basically a PPA event). More games mean more advertisement, with no consideration for players. / Never saw the Staksrud-Koller Altercation because (except for the first day) viewing was basically crap unless you paid for a service. And some of the worst commentators I’ve heard in pickleball. / Why is calling someone a bi*** worse when they are younger? When you are playing with adults, you should be treated as an adult. And by saying something originally, why didn’t ALW get a card? Just as unsportsmanlike. So it’s okay to publicly badmouth your opponent on the court as long as you word it correctly. And she is not exactly a good role model for younger players to emulate.
3/5 in the PPA is usually just the finals, this was every round.
Trash talking in Pickle – what is the limit?
Itâs a grey area on the limit for sure but when you cross that line often times you know it. We are all for lots of trash talk but some stuff isnât needed
And when it comes to the PPA, it isn’t what is said, it is who said it. Is calling someone a bi*** worse than flipping someone off? Which in fact says FU? đ Whatever happened to Tyson?
Yes, it definitely is worse in this context. It wouldnât be worse male to male, but male to female it 100% is
Same as any sport — no slurs, nobody/nothing off the court, nothing legally actionable.
We generally donât think the age thing should be an out for ALW but this is a societal thing in terms of what type of words we are using and to use that towards a 16 year old just cuts differently than a 35 year old.
The take-aways and comments seem to assume the Koller-Staksrud altercation arose out of the ALW putdown at MLP and the Staksrud “take that, brioche” rejoinder. But was that it? Or is there other bad blood between them?
You wrote: ” Koller went up to Staksrud unprompted and expectedly, bumped his chest ….” Is “expectedly” a typo — did you mean “unexpectedly”? Or is Koller a chest-bump kind of guy? Still trying to piece this together. Was AJ defending ALW after the fact, or horsing around, or motivated by anger, in a potentially explosive situation?
Its unclear from the Tellez post whether he was there and witnessed the chestbump/shove. Maybe the story will come out eventually.
Thatâs a typo. Need to amend that. Expectedly should not be in there. Unclear if Pablo was there or not
I forgot. Does anyone know how Sarah Ansboury is doing? I slow mode when she hurt herself and her foot turned 90 degrees inward when she came down on it. Thanks.
Hopefully she is okay but not sure
I liked the 3/5 because somehow it made the matches more competitive with many going to all 5 games. For the progressive draw, I wonder how it could work for players that are a single specialist such as Gabriel Joseph and Salome who’d have to hang around multiple days (though Salome seldom shows up anymore for PPA).
Then there are the players who have full time jobs and are used to not traveling until maybe as late as Thursday night to reduce time off from their “other” job:
Matt Wright, Andrea Koop, Patrick Smith, and possibly Thomas Wilson.
The lack of rewind on pickleballtv dot com video player was a real bummer and would keep me from watching if not rectified. Clearly it has the capability as it is enabled when you looked at the control pop-up. Thankful the archived matches have it working.
PPA/USAP Nationals seems to have done a terrible job on how to watch. Seems like hundreds of posts about not being able to find the stream.
Interesting that USAP has announced they are evaluating their options and it’ll be many months before an announcement of where it’ll be for 2024 (and long term). PPA already playing hardball with scheduling a tournament the same time next November. It seems like Championship Sunday was an outstanding success so that’s a big attraction for it to be back at Brookhaven.
All good points on the progressive draws. The watching has not been ideal and it looks like weâre getting an Amazon and PBTV mix this week so not ideal either for rewinding.
Lots of fans there on Sunday
Any word in why Tyson dropped mixed and left asap?
he wasn’t having a great tournament. and CP and TM are not partnering next year. That appears to be a CM decision. Since they get paid to “appear,” the money was already in the bank. Also mixed teams must get the sense that they are beaten before the game starts against BJ and ALW. There’s no place like home!
this brings up a topic that will probably be gaining more traction. A lot of these players have been incentivized to simply go through the motions for 3 years. not saying ty and cp are that. But surely mid level players who aren’t threats for CHP Sunday have to be considering their incentives.
Who is âCMâ in that sentence? Curious who pulled the plug.
TM and CP got gold together in the tournament they both 3x crowned. Did they have other podiums?
Loong said he was âin talksâ with Iggy for 2024, but thinks Jimmy will be playing with Matt. If true, they could contest for silvers.
I think Tyler and Iggy could be actual contenders – may be a bit of a risk/reward, but they looked great last weekend. The athleticism was off the charts.
They did look great. Any team that can push the Johns that hard is a great frickin’ team.
Having said that, Loong has had a crappy year, and so you have to question if that Nationals performance was just a blip or does that team have real chemistry?
Iggy and Matt will be a really good team, too, and this entire year, Matt has been a much more consistent performer, winning medals all year, including at least one gold.
I think you have to choose Matt (and he obv has). If Loong has a bounce-back year in 2024, or Matt and Iggy don’t work out, then Iggy can re-evaluate.
Tyler mentioned on his pod that he only recently starting doing drills, which I think has lead to his improvement the past couple of weeks.
Also, I think the content for their pods would be better. Plus Tyler is full time Pickle, and Matt isn’t.
Good points here
Itâs a fair question with Loong and weâll have to wait until next year to see. Matt is a good right side fit for Iggy assuming no major drop off in his level
If Tyler is intent on getting better, he has room to grow and may not have maxed out his ceiling despite how long he has been playing
Iggy and Matt will be interesting for sure
could you imagine the following being written about a Female being hit in the face by a ball the way Collin was. In fact I don’t recall “the snark” after jesse got hit by Dylan. doh.
“Some are comparing Collin playing through a plastic ball hitting him in the forehead to the Michael Jordan flu game, the Kirk Gibson walk-off home run and Tiger Woods gutting through a torn ACL to win the US Open. It was professional sports warrior mentality at its finest. In all seriousness, if it was someone other than Collin, I would have been more worried it hit him in the eye or that he may have been hurt, but Collin is the boy who cried wolf when it comes to getting hit by a plastic ball. My money would still have been on the Johns brothers to win the match had the forehead hit not happened, but it was an interesting side storyline that complicates an otherwise fantastic match.”
When thereâs a female that gets hit by a ball and is as dramatic about it on a regular basis as Collin is, they will deserve the same snark. Currently, no one is out there. It takes history into account
RE: Loong – he looked pretty good this weekend.
He definitely did
Are there genuinely any pickleball accounts that operate independently of external influence? The recent removal of the dink’s post raises suspicions of the PPA’s involvement, and it seems other accounts are cautious about expressing dissent. The PPA, known for its lack of transparency, appears to have multiple interconnected “companies” that strive to avoid any disapproval from the organization.
Media outlets, notorious for their occasional lack of candor, disappointingly refrain from covering conflicts involving the PPA. This highlights a concerning trend where issues are swept under the rug when the PPA is involved, hindering open discourse within the pickleball community.