MLP Dallas 2026 – 6 Takeaways – Balance Restored
The MLP season is going to fly by this year, with a lot of back-to-back weekends a little time to decompress between events. Weâll interested to monitor if that leads to viewer fatigue or greater viewer engagement in the product. We wrote earlier in the year about the saturation of pickleball content, but MLP is a different beast and it may be more important to have consistency in the scheduling, so the viewer does not forget about the product. How much can one person handle when summers are filled with weekend days where normal people sometimes want to do an activity other than have pickleball on for 8 hours straight in a given day?
That will be a question the viewership numbers will answer. For now, we really enjoyed the first event and the energy that the new event winner style format brought to the table.
1. Balance Restored â We noted in our Preseason Power Rankings that the league, on paper, appeared to be significantly more balanced in 2026 compared to 2025, where the matchups were about as predictable as an Anna Leigh Waters singles match, outside of the playoffs. Tiers and imbalance are inevitable in any pro sports league. However, 2025 was a season that dragged on because so much of it felt predetermined. It was so predetermined that Matty Pickles had to alter the format of his pick âem challenge due to how easy it was to get the picks right each week.
Following the 2026 draft, there was renewed hope that this would be a new year and the gap between the haves and have nots would not be so large. Some teams were removed, the league moved away from the Challenger/Premier distinction and more teams were fully invested in putting together a competitive roster. If the results from Dallas are any indication, that renewed hope was warranted and it seems as though balance has been restored in MLP.
The preseason consensus was that the Shock and the 5âs were in a tier of their own, much like the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA right now. While we ended up getting a Sunday matchup between those teams, it was a matchup to decide 3rd place. Instead, it was the Sliders and Mad Drop facing off in the final.
There were other results that further confirmed the sentiment that there will be more balance in 2026. Utahâs men beat LAâs men and gave the Shock everything they could handle in separate 3-1 losses. The Orlando Squeeze beat the Sliders and pushed the 5âs to a Dreambreaker. The Phoenix Flames men toppled the Dallas Flash men, and had a good battle in their first mixed match. The Bay Area Breakers somehow won a mixed match against Ben Johns and Jade Kawamoto. The Carolina Hurricanes did not come in last place.
The teams attending the Columbus event starting tomorrow are not as appetizing of a group from a viewer standpoint. Nonetheless, the opening event of the season provides a lot of optimism that the 2026 season will be far more enjoyable than 2025.
2. Columbus Joins the Top Tier of MLP â It didnât take very long for the defending champs to assert their championship pedigree. CJ Klinger spent part of the weekend wearing an MLP âCHAMPSâ hat. The sideline was dancing. Andrei Daescu was posting inspirational quotes. The Sliders did not win the weekend, but they still came away as one of the winners of the weekend.
Although Alix Truong was filling in for a suspended Parris Todd, somehow Columbus looked more dangerous than they looked at any point in 2025 prior to the playoffs. It was a little bit grim for the Sliders after getting slaughtered in a Dreambreaker by the Orlando Squeeze with a much weaker singles roster than they featured in 2025. However, the rest of the weekend demonstrated that the Sliders are firmly in the top tier of championship contenders for 2026 following the addition of Danni-Elle Townsend.
Townsend was taken third overall in the 2026 draft. We thought it was a great choice for the Sliders, who rightly understood that their 2025 run was more fluky than sustainable. They needed more upside out of their #2 female spot, particularly in mixed, and Townsend was worth the swing. We really liked her game but, without the reps against top tier competition, it was unclear how her game would translate to start out the 2026 MLP season. Those concerns would appear to be without merit after a weekend where Townsend proved not only that she belongs on the MLP stage, but that she may already be one of the better female players in the sport.
She finished the weekend with a 7-3 record, including only one loss in womenâs to ALW and Jorja Johnson. It wasnât just the results; it was the how of the results for Townsend. She possesses a confidence and bravado that few players in the sport have, and she was taking court against Jade Kawamoto/Catherine Parenteau the way one would expect a man to take the court in mixed.
Undoubtedly, the field will begin getting used to Townsendâs game. But she plays the game in a way we havenât seen any female play it at such a high level â holding the line, one-hand backhand counters and flicks/rolls, and ability to take extra court. She misses more than the top women currently, but we expect she will clean that up over time, especially as she gets used to playing the top players in the sport. We are not sure how hot this take is, but one of us is taking the stand that she will be a top 3 female in the sport one year from now.
No matter where Townsendâs trajectory as a player goes, what her ability means for Columbus is that they are a top tier MLP team immediately. They donât have any holes in their doubles pairings. It sounds like Todd and Townsend are going to start by playing straight up, but we really wonder if long-term their greatest upside is letting Townsend cook on the left and let Parris be the beast she is on the right.
The one issue this team has is that they are no longer a Dreambreaker juggernaut. They have 3 capable, but middling singles players (Daescu, Klinger and Townsend) and one elite singles player who is not playing singles regularly anymore (Parris Todd). Despite the change in scoring format, MLP is still a doubles game and you usually canât rely on Dreambreakers to solve your doubles woes. If push comes to shove, though, it will be tough for Columbus to hang with the better Dreambreaker teams the way they are constructed. Having both Jansen and Todd masked having two average to below average menâs singles players in 2025.
Nevertheless, the Sliders announced in Dallas that they are back, and they might very well be better than ever.
3. Engaged Ben â As amusing as it can be to poke fun at Ben Johns when he is moping around the court like a child instead of a being paid 7 figures to hit a wiffle ball, that amusement is usually short-lived. Ben Johns is the best player in pickleball and it has really been a travesty that the czar of the whole goddamn UPA sucked the fun out of MLP for his golden child by refusing to spend a little extra money to put a decent roster around him.
The trade to the Mad Drops at the trade deadline last year provided some optimism that we would get a more engaged Ben. One who cared about MLP. Though we got some of that from Ben, it was clear he had not fully bought back in to being the best player in the world in the MLP format. The worst version of Ben is the partially engaged version. The one who takes a bunch of extra court, but is doing so without giving 100% effort. Almost giving the illusion that he is engaged, without actually being engaged.
Fast forward to 2026. The Mad Drops traded Hunter Johnson for Max Freeman, which surely was okayed by Ben Johns prior to the trade being completed. After one event, the Mad Drops are officially top tier title contenders, a place they always should have been going into the season, but for the questions around whether Ben Johns cares to give a full effort.
On Sunday and Monday, Ben Johns gave us a glimpse into what he is capable of as the best player in the world â giving what their GM, Chris Cantino described as âtwo penultimate mixed performancesâ. Ben went peak Ben mode by taking a whole bunch of court in a must-win mixed match against the Shockâs #1 pairing of Bright/Patriquin and he did the same thing against Parris Todd and Alix Truong. He was smiling, laughing and, most importantly, fully engaged. He led the Mad Drops to the first event win of the 2026 MLP season and reminded everyone what he can do for a team.
The question is whether he will keep it up. Notably, Ben wasnât the best version of Ben for the entire weekend. He lost a mixed match that wasnât completely meaningless to Pablo Tellez and Genie Erokhina. He lost menâs matches to Garnett/Shimabukuro and Patriquin/Tardio. That wouldnât be cause for concern for a typical player. However, Ben has checked in and out of MLP so many times over the past 3 plus years that you never know how the season will play out.
The event format should help Ben stay focused. When thereâs nothing to play for at each regular season event other than standings points, it feels like it is easier to check out. The problem is that we havenât seen consistent effort from Ben in MLP since he won with the Seattle Pioneers in the first season of 2023. He spent part of the second 2023 season moping around with Erik Lange before winning the season ending Super Final for the Chicago Slice. He eventually gave up on the 2024 season with his brother, and he started out 2025 checked out with a roster that he knew couldnât win, even though there were some upgrades made in 2024 and during the 2025 season. Finally, he was clearly moping around Hunter Johnson as he pushed Hunter farther and farther off the court with the Mad Drops in 2025. .
The LA Mad Drops are one of the best and most invested teams in MLP and have the ability to win a title, but the skepticism will remain until Ben shows that he is willing to be the best version of Ben Johns (almost) every time he steps onto an MLP court.
p.s. the lighting didnât seem to be an issue indoors for Ben in DallasâŚjust sayinâ.
4. Do the 5âs Have a Menâs Problem? It was another weekend of the New Jersey 5âs men falling short. This is an issue that the 5âs have been trying to solve since the drafted Anna Leigh Waters. In 2024, ALW went for less money than many people anticipated, but she still went for a hefty amount. The 5âs selected Zane Navratil for their first guy and then hit pretty big on their 2nd guy selection in Will Howells.
Unfortunately for the 5âs, they didnât have quite enough juice with the Zane and Will pairing to get them over the hump. Knowing this, they brought in Noe Khlif last year to replace Captain Zane, to okay by championship standards results. The 5âs were a real contender for the title, but their men lost every matchup they had with the Sliders in the playoffs.
It was not a banner performance in Dallas for the two of them to start the season. Khlif and Howells lost again to the Sliders men, got smoked by JW and Augie and fell short against the Squeeze and Shock duos. They started with Howells on the left against the Sliders and went with Khlif the rest of the way on the left. It didnât make enough of a difference.
There are already questions as to whether the 5âs are going to make a trade to fix this âproblemâ, if it even is a âproblemâ. We had thought the 5âs might be looking to do something in the offseason, but they had bigger plans that led to them stealing Jorja Johnson from the Flash in the draft. It makes sense that they want to give more time to see if their men can sort it out and become a higher end MLP pairing, now that they have a second top 5 female player on their roster.
This season is going to be fast and furious, so they donât have a ton of time to decide. It is always that balance between overreacting to the first weekend and figuring out whether this trend dating back to last season is a big enough sample size to warrant change.
The other aspect of this for the 5âs is that they went with a 1A/1B pairing situation by going Howells with Jorja Johnson and Khlif with Anna Leigh Waters. Howells spent 2024 and 2025 playing with ALW, and the 5âs couldnât get it done with them as their top pariing. But an underrated aspect of Will Howells is his confidence â a confidence that allows him to play without fear with the one and only Anna Leigh Waters. We were surprised to see them move away from that pairing and will be curious if they continue to stick with it.
The first week was a let down for the New Jersey men and their decision-makers need to determine quickly whether they want to stay status quo or risk it for the biscuit.
5. Make it or Dream Break It â The Dreambreaker has always been the biggest differentiator for MLP that has vaulted the product into a stratosphere of its own. The brainchild of MLP founder, Steve Kuhn, the Dreambreaker is everything you could ask for when it comes to sports drama. We have had some amazing moments over the years, but have some trepidation about the new formatâs increased emphasis on the Dreambreaker.
With the new round robin format, MLP has moved away from itâs 3/2/1 system of 3 points for an outright win, 2 points for a Dreambreaker win and 1 point for a Dreambreaker loss. Instead, there is no longer a differentiation between a regulation win and a Dreambreaker win. You only credit you get for a Dreambreaker loss is in the net games category, which serves as a tiebreaker after head-to-head results. Erik Tice gave a breakdown of the change for the folks on X.
The changes from MLP have mostly been positive this year. However, this one is an odd decision, in our opinon. If you want the standings at each individual event and, therefore, throughout the year to reflect the quality of the teams, the 3/2/1 point system would seem to make more sense. Jack Sock made some comments after their 7th place finish after going 3-2 on the weekend, that their team felt their finish did not reflect how well their team played. Given their results and the quality of their pool, we tend to agree.
Although the nature of the round robin event format is going to result in some schedule and pool imbalances, MLP is doubling down on randomness by putting greater emphasis on the Dreambreaker. The better Dreambreaker teams win out more often than the lesser Dreambreaker teams, but we are suddenly placing an unnecessarily increased importance on this random singles 4-rally thing.
As surprised as we were at how much fun it was to have the bench players rise to the occasion in the Dreambreaker, the kicker analogy is more apropos than ever for the singles specialist considering the extra importance that the Dreambreaker now represents. Considering this shift, itâs particularly puzzling that some contending teams have opted against having singles specialists ready off the bench in certain spots.
We really wonder if MLP will make a midseason adjustment on the round robin point allocation. They made a big change to the rules in 2024 after the first event showed clearly that winning a match on a side out was bad for business. It wouldnât affect any standings to make the shift back to the 3/2/1 point system immediately.
We love the Dreambreaker as much as anyone out there. But we donât need it to be more important than it already is.
6. MLP Website Gripe â What is going on with the website and finding scores? Maybe we are idiots and canât figure it out, but neither of us could figure out how to find the actual matchups for live scoring updates or post match updates on the MLP website. You can only see the scores at the top, which doesnât show you the players who are on court and matched up against one another.
We had a similar issue with the Canadian National Pickleball League (CNPL) over the weekend. Itâs one thing to have an issue finding CNPL results. It shouldnât be this hard for MLP to make their results readily available to consumers.
