PPA Tour Atlanta Pickleball Championships – 5 Takeaways – Summer of Tama
The PPA fiscal year type of schedule remains a mystery to us. It might be too late now, but we really think they should reconsider revamping their schedule to have points accumulate over a calendar year rather than have the year conclude at the end of April/Start of May. It is weird for our simple human brains to comprehend the year end happening in May, and we think it would be more straightforward for all fans to keep track of when the PPA wants to do this race to the PPA finals thing that people may or may not care about. It is not a major thing by any stretch, but it is a tweak that we would be happy to say rather than have the new year begin in the late summer.
1. Weekend at Tama’s – Atlanta was the coming out party for the 15-year-old, Tama Shimabukuro. Ever since Tama balled out as part of the MLP Junior All-Star team in 2025, people have been keeping a close eye on the youngster. He ended up going #9 overall in the 2026 MLP Free Agency Draft to the Utah Black Diamonds, and the pick is currently on track to be the steal of the draft. Tama ended the weekend with a very impressive silver medal in men’s singles and 4th place finish in men’s doubles* along with a quality run to the round of 16 in mixed with the Australian, Sahra Dennehy.
It wasn’t only the results themselves that were impressive. It was the way in which the results were achieved for Tama. He went through a gauntlet in singles, beating Jaume Martinez Vich, Federico Staksrud, Noe Khlif and Hunter Johnson before dropping the gold medal match to Chris Haworth. That’s quite the week for a far from physically developed teenager, whose run feels different than Cam Chaffin’s big week in Minnesota earlier in the year. Tama’s singles results have been consistently improving in 2026. A Sunday appearance was kind of out of nowhere, but not completely out of nowhere.
Shimabukro’s doubles game remains fascinating. While we have seen the movies before of players with unconventional styles taking the pickleball world by storm for a stretch before the field adjusts to their style, Tama appears to bring a higher floor simply because he does the necessary things to be great at a high level already. He gets to the kitchen at a high rate and makes unforced errors at a relatively low rate. His game is not highly volatile, which is often the recipe for upsets against the established top teams like Patriquin/Alshon.
The demeanor of Tama on court is also fascinating for such a young person. His game has been compared to Patriquin many times over the past year, but he brings more of a quiet swagger to the court. He’s calm under pressure and does not get too high or too low. A stark contrast to his doubles partner, Yuta Funemizu.
It will be fascinating to see how the tour adjusts to Tama. He is bringing an unconventional style of offence that is unique to him, and him alone, and opponents still haven’t seen a lot of it. He has tricky off the bounce stuff and takes a ton of balls off the short hop with his twoey backhand. We’re still a little skeptical that this is a sustainable way to create offence against the very best teams in the world, so part of this evolution will be how Tama adds to his already refined game.
Quang Duong had one way to play and shaped his game around this one style of play that his father thought was going to be a game changer. It is around 2 years later and Quang is having trouble winning medals at APP events, for those who may have paid attention to the Sacramento results over the weekend. Again, we don’t see Tama as a Quang comparable by any stretch, but we’ll be curious if there are some aspects of Tama’s trajectory that mirrors what happened with Quang or if he will propel himself to the higher highs a la Hayden Patriquin.
We would also be remiss not to share some words about Yuta Funemizu, the man with the backwards forehand backhand. Yuta clearly has skills that can’t be taught, namely his hands being really good. That soft tennis background of his has created a one of a kind style that is brain bending to consider trying to replicate. He does some good things out there, but we are much more skeptical of Yuta than Tama’s long term ability. People are still default attack to Yuta’s chicken wing and it won’t be too long before everyone learns they cannot attack him in the same way as with other players. You could even see Patriquin figuring that out in real time at the end of game 3 in their match.
A glass empty view of Tama and Yuta’s run this weekend is that they had an outlier win against Alshon/Patriquin, who very much played to their floor in game 2, and then played about what would be their expected level after that. A good, but not special win, over Riley Newman and Armaan Bhatia. A somewhat disappointing, but not surprising, loss to Connor Garnett and Roscoe Bellamy. And a quick loss to Daescu/Staksrud in the bronze after what had to be an exhausting week for Tama.
We don’t mean to write all this to completely douse the flames of the heater that Shimabukuro and Funemizu were on in Atlanta. One person deep into the pro pickle scene who we spoke to in Sacramento said to us that they thought Tama would be a top 10 left side player in a month or two. It’s hard to believe that hasn’t already happened after his Atlanta run.
Outside of Ben Johns, Hayden Patriquin, JW Johnson, Andrei Daescu and Eric Oncins, those 6 to 10 spots on the left are more up for grabs than ever. You could make a real argument right now to slot Tama into that #6 spot and it wouldn’t be insane by any stretch of the imagination.
One thing that has to be remembered about Tama is that kids develop at a different rate and have ceilings in ways that are much harder to project than already developed adults entering the sport. If you were placing a bet on Tama becoming one of the best in the game or plateauing, the easy money would be on the former simply based on where his game is at now, his age and lack of physical development for his age, and how much growth we have seen from teenagers in recent years (Hayden, Gabe, CJ, Wyatt Stone Pickleball Junior etc.).
2. Pickleball to the Moon? – As Tom Dundon has been on the receiving end of a ton of criticism for his financial decisions with respect to his recently acquired NBA team, the Portland Trail Blazers, there was a big splash made in the pickleball investing space led in no small part by Mr. Dundon himself. Pickleball Inc. raised a $225 million investment from Apollo Sports Capital (run by Brooklyn Pickleball Team owner, Al Tylis) and Dundon Capital Partners. Essentially, they have rolled everything into one entity, which means the PPA, MLP, Pickleball Central, Pickleball Tournaments etc. are all under the Pickleball Inc. umbrella.
It’s a massive cash injection that should allow them to maximize the value of their businesses and give them the ability to grow. According to CNBC, the raise values Pickleball Inc. at $750 million as the business was said to have generated over $140 million in 2025 revenue. Dundon and the Pardoe family remain the majority shareholders in the business.
The capital raise is notable as Dundon cuts unnecessary costs of the NBA team, or at least costs that he sees as unnecessary. Dundon is taking a lot of crap, but it is unsurprising to see him run the business this way. He has treated the NHL franchise he owns, the Carolina Hurricanes, similarly and he spends literally about as little as possible on his Carolina Hogs MLP franchise. We say the cash injection is notable because Dundon is not afraid to spend money. Heck, he spent a bunch of money to buy the Trail Blazers and now he continues to spend big on pickleball.
However, it is very clear that Dundon’s willingness to spend is only where he sees it as necessary to further his business aspirations. He is cheaper than Tiger Woods when it comes to his MLP team, which has always struck us as odd considering he has a vested interest in the success of Major League Pickleball. Conversely, he has not been cheap about the other parts of the pickleball business, including the PPA. Even small value adds like ensuring every amateur court is streamed for PPA Tour events is a calculated investment in an area of the business that Dundon knows is crucial to their long-term bottom line. Despite being obscenely wealthy, Dundon appears to give zero you know what’s about being seen as obscenely frugal.
Dundon was voted the worst owner in the NHL in a 2025 anonymous poll of player agents conducted by The Athletic, but his Carolina Hurricanes are thriving right now. It would be naïve to expect Dundon to change his ways when it comes to basketball or pickleball, particularly as he has proven that his ways can be successful. Funnily enough, Dundon’s co-investor as part of this capital raise, Al Tylis, takes almost the complete opposite approach as Dundon.
It is worth paying attention when a very rich, notoriously cheap man keeps ponying up money to invest in a sport that has no guarantee of long-term financial success.
3. Anna Leigh’s Competitiveness – Anna Bright has often mentioned how both she and Anna Leigh want to win more than their competitors. This applies to their practice games and spills over into tournament play, where they were absolutely merciless against their opponents in Atlanta – which included dismantling two teams that have been their fiercest competitors since they became a permanent duo (the Kawamoto’s and Jorja/Tyra).
We have seen and heard about Anna Leigh’s relentless competitiveness, and that was on full display in her singles gold medal final versus Kate Fahey. The Memes of Pickleball Instagram page described it best: “Some dude in the crowd started a “Let’s go Fahey!” chant on game point for Kate and Anna Leigh Waters proceed to not drop another point and let him have it”
Down a game point in game one at 9-10, a Kate Fahey chant was started and ALW proceeded to roll to a 12-10 win buoyed by an initial net cord and giving numerous “I can’t hear you” motions to the individual in the crowd who started the chant.
It takes a different type of person and athlete to go without losing a million days in a row. Some of the all-time great ones are wired differently. They use anything they can find as fuel and motivation. A chip on their shoulder. ALW took the “Let’s go Fahey!” chant and channeled it to beast mode in a way we can guarantee no other pro pickleball player on the planet could possibly do.
It wasn’t normal. It was behavior that the other pros probably describe in the group chats as psychotic. But it was one of the more endearing things we have seen from ALW in our time watching her play pickleball. She was kind of mad, but it was fun and playful. And it was also a stern reminder that you should not poke the bear.
It is not hyperbole to say that it is truly gave Michael Jordan-esque vibes.
Anna Leigh Waters is the best player in pro pickleball and she has a mindset that only the smallest percentage of athletes in any sport possess. Her greatness combined with the hatred of losing mentality is so rare, and we are seeing it unfold in front of our very own eyes.
4. Connor Garnett and Roscoe Bellamy’s Random Run – We described it on X as one of the more random Championship Sunday appearances in a while and that remains the case after Garnett and Bellamy took a silver medal at one of the biggest tournaments on the PPA Tour calendar. Random because it featured a first-time partnership of two guys who either haven’t made much noise in doubles in quite some time, or never have at all.
We wrote earlier in this column about the flash in the pan type of players, who the tour is able to adjust to, and highlighted Quang Duong as a prime example. Connor Garnett is another one of those guys. Quang and CG have some similarities as gifted players with funky grips whose primary way of creating offence is off the bounce with their two-hander. It caused trouble for opponents for a period of time, but eventually the development stagnated as teams figured out how to defend and attack them. There was a stretch where Connor Garnett had some very strong doubles results at one point in time, but that has been trending the wrong direction for a good chunk of time.
Roscoe Bellamy is not the same as Connor Garnett. He’s a tall singles specialist, who has had trouble translating his elite singles ability to the doubles court. That’s why it was so random and surprising to see the two of them knock off one of the highest floor teams in pickleball, JW Johnson and CJ Klinger, and consolidated that with wins over Jack Sock/Blaine Hovenier and Yuta Funemizu/Tama Shimabukuro.
Unfortunately for Bellamy and Garnett, their run feels about as flash in the pan as any run we have seen. The CJ/JW upset was undoubtedly a great win, but it wasn’t exactly a gauntlet that they faced in their next two matches. They were quality wins, but nothing to put on the mantle.
Roscoe is the more intriguing guy to monitor for us as there is some thought that maybe it takes longer for a guy of his stature and skillset to figure out the doubles game. He’s playing well, and he can eat up a lot of space in the middle from the right, but the hands still look to be the biggest hurdle for him.
It was a good run and we’ll have to see if they have more of those in them in the second half of the calendar year.
5. Nicolas Acevedo Showing Out – Speaking of unexpected runs, Nicolas Acevedo, the recent Miami PC drafted player had a good week in Atlanta as well. He and Regina Goldberg pushed CJ Klinger/Danni-Elle Townsend to a 12-10 in the third loss and then he and Rafa Hewett upset Freeman/McGuffin (12-10, 12-10) before giving Jack Sock and Blaine Hovenier all they could handle in a 3-game loss.
Acevedo looked good on the left and getting a strong result with a player in Hewett who has not been finding the best results these days is a good indicator of future success, even if it is only one tournament. Acevedo and Clayton Powell also gave Dekel Bar and Wyatt Stone a run for their money in Utah back in March.
We were skeptical of the Acevedo selection by Johnny Goldberg and Miami based mostly on the fact that Acevedo is not a brand new player to the scene and he hasn’t showed much in the way of results prior to his UPA signing in 2026. At a minimum, though, Acevedo is showing that he belongs and he can hang with some of the bigger boys on tour.
That should bode well for Miami, who is trying to be semi-competitive without spending any money. Acevedo and Yuta Funemizu is a competitive men’s starting duo, and Isabella Dunlap has been playing well both on tour and at Challenger events.
They remain on the frisky intriguing teams watch list heading into the upcoming season.
*this article was edited to correct that Tama Shimabukuro won a silver medal in men’s singles and ended in 4th place in men’s doubles, not that he had two 4th place finishes.
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Agreed it will be interesting to see if Tama will be a consistent threat or just had one of those runs every now and then, as he and Yuta had early success before beating Tyson amd Freeman but then didnt do much again until this past weekend. They beat Hayden and Alshon but then lose to a Garnett and Bellamy? They then got beat quickly in the bronze match by Andre and Fed, so it just seemed Hayden and Alshon just got stunned and isn’t any trend they would lose much to a team like Tama and Yuta again. Tama appears to be more of a consistent threat for singles than doubles.