PPA Tour Sacramento Open and PPA Tour Malaysia Open – 5 Takeaways – The World is Getting Better
It is easy to get caught up in the monotony of the travelling pickleball circus. Whether it is PPA or MLP, it often feels like the same event plopped into a different locale. The past week was not the usual format of tournaments in any way, shape or form. We had one American based event in Sacramento that required players to all play with the same wooden paddle, and we had an Asian based event in Malaysia that featured a sprinkling of PPA talent like Ben Johns, Anna Bright, Christian Alshon, Zane Navratil, the Truong siblings, Zoey Wang and Grayson Goldin.
We’re not here to say it was the best pickleball in the world being played at either event, but we are always a fan of different things to spice up the calendar here and there.
1. The World is Getting Better – This is not a takeaway that is specific to the Kuala Lumpur event, where we saw the likes of Ben Johns/Christian Alshon get pushed to 3 games on multiple occasions or Anna Bright lose in the quarterfinals of women’s doubles to a couple of Australians. Although, that is part of the takeaway.
The take that the world is getting better is obvious. Pickleball is far more solved as a sport than it was 5 years ago and that is apparent in the way everyone is playing. What players are able to do with wood players that have zero grit is stuff that would have been borderline mind-blowing in pre-Covid pickleball. As two guys who first picked up the sport in 2017, the wooden paddle event was fascinating to watch simply to see what 2025 players could do with OG technology.
You can’t impart nearly as much spin with a wood paddle nor can you hit the ball nearly as hard, but that didn’t suddenly negate the fact that people can still hit nasty backhand flicks or dip their ground strokes in singles. It was a more limited version of modern pickleball, but still a far more modern version of pickleball than if you roll back the tape to November 2019 when baby and mama Waters won a gold at Nationals.
The baseline level of play continues to get higher and higher. There was a time when if you gave the ball to Ben Johns, he would end the point because he was so much better than the players across from him. You couldn’t give him the ball because you were putting your team at a major risk of losing the point immediately.
We are no longer in place where the best players can dominate on their own, even in the early rounds. Sure, Christian Alshon and Ben Johns haven’t played together before, but they are two of the best men’s doubles players in the world. Being taken to 3 games in a round of 16 match in Asia and then have it happen once again to this version of Rob Nunnery and Vanshik Kapadia shows that sleepwalking through early rounds anywhere in the world isn’t nearly the thing that it used to be. Not to mention their loss to Oncins/McGuffin in the gold medal match.
Anna Bright and Roos Van Reek lost in the quarterfinals to Dani-Elle Townsend and Nicola Schoeman, who then eventually lost in 3 games to Zoey Wang/Kaitlyn Christian in the final. Roos Van Reek has not had incredible results at the highest level in Europe or Asia in doubles and it is objectively difficult to then have to feel like every match with Bright is a must win. Nevertheless, this is a scenario a couple of years ago where someone of Bright’s calibre would be able to blow her opponents off the court. Instead, it was the Australian duo blowing Anna Bright and Roos Van Reek off the court in a quick two games.
There are a ton of results that we can point to from the weekend that show how the gap is getting smaller and smaller between the best and the rest. Wang and McGuffin lost 9 and 2 to Santhosh Narayanan/Sahra Dennehy (has anyone’s stock fallen farther in 2025 than Zoey Wang?). Narayanan is a guy grinding out APPs and not medalling. Narayanan/Dennehy also beat Blatt/Goldin earlier in the tournament.
Van Reek and Zane Navratil lost to Yufei Long/Hoang Nam Ly. Leah Tauber/Callan Dawson, a non-medalling APP team, pushed the Truong siblings to an 11-6 loss in the third. Grayson Goldin lost to a guy named Marco Leuong, 11-9 in the third.
The Malaysian upsets we saw could have been buoyed by a slower JOOLA ball that was played in very slow (hot and humid) conditions as that will often favor the less skilled teams to be able to stay in points and keep up with the pace that they may not be as used to. Nevertheless, the list goes on from the results this weekend and it will be fun to see what the gap looks like between the best and the rest in the coming years.
2. Is the Wood Paddle an Equalizer? – To some degree, this question must be answered positively. Just as we saw some funky results in Asia, there were some funky results that we to see in Sacramento. Jay Devilliers took down Hunter Johnson in 3 games. Jack Sock/Brandon French beat Matt Wright/Federico Staksrud. Joraj Johnson/Tyra Black lost to Lea Jansen/Brooke Buckner. Lindsey Newman and Spencer Smith made a freakin’ quarter final, which has to be the most OG of all OG results – partially assisted by a Tina Pisnikgot /Andrei Daescu withdrawal.
Notably, it seemed that, in spite of the reduced power, players weren’t playing the same level as defence with the wood paddles as what we normally see. It’s not clear whether that had to do with players not being used to playing defence with the paddles or whether it is just harder to keep the ball in play with the rackets they were provided.
Overall, the results and the play on the court did not feel so far outside the norm that we would end up having a different group of top players if this was an every tournament thing. JW/Dylan were on their heels in the semi-finals against Collin Johns/Andrei Daescu, but they eventually found their stride then rolled through to a gold medal win. The Johnson siblings were mixed winners without ALW in the field. Kate Fahey and Federico Staksrud were singles winners. After Tyra/Jorja lost, Etta Tuionetoa and Lacy Schneemann had as good a shot as anyone to win the whole tournament.
This could be a case of confirmation bias, but it still looked like the better players were winning, for the most part, along with some outlier results that may or may correct themselves over a larger sample size and time for players to adjust to the different style of play.
We didn’t have a full complement of players at the Sacramento event, and you really need a number of tournaments with most of the players competing in similar partnerships to test out this hypothesis (science, you know). However, we tend to believe the early returns would have the current best players mostly being the best players, wood paddle or not.
3. Tour Wars Continue Under the Radar – It has been reported that a handful of stalwart APP pros were denied entry into the PPA Asia event in Malaysia last week. We first saw this on Rob Nunnery’s new Asia pickleball focused podcast, although it may have been reported elsewhere prior to that (Erik Tice wrote about it for The Dink in his summary of the event).
Tice reported that Bobbi Oshiro, Yana Newell, Max Manthou, Jack Foster and Amanda Hendry were waitlisted and then never placed into the qualifying draws for the event, even though other APP players and players who play on competing international tours were allowed into the event. From what we have heard, the communication from the PPA in this regard was either very limited or essentially non-existent, including certain players not being advised of their inability to play until they were on their flight out to the event.
It’s unfortunate to hear this type of stuff is still going on as the below the belt tactics have been far more muted since the blow up of the Tour Wars back in the summer of 2023. Regrettably, this is par for the course from the PPA in terms of how it has handled business as a professional organization since its inception.
Tice also wrote that it was “unknown” why the 5 players were not allowed into the event, but anyone with half a brain can figure out why. These players were all originally MLP signed players, not PPA signed players, except for Manthou who was fully unsigned.* Further, they took a buyout from the UPA after the merger, and chose to make their bed with the APP. Oshiro, Newell, Manthou and Hendry all played on MLP challenger teams in 2024 as unsigned players, but they were not allowed to participate in MLP in 2025 as unsigned players.
Ultimately, the UPA has taken the position that exclusivity is the model going forward and that in itself is not a below the belt tactic at this stage in the game. While there are no explicit rules forbidding APP players from playing in PPA events, other than you can’t play qualies if you are in the top 50 rule, it is unsurprising that the PPA would prevent some of the more closely aligned APP players from playing in their events. It is an opportunity for the PPA to make it clear to the rest of the pickleball world that you need to sign with us in order to play at our events.
However, it’s one thing to be in the business of you’re either with us or against is. It’s another thing to avoid basic human decency as part of that ethos. It’s silly and petty that the PPA didn’t do anything to communicate to these players that they weren’t allowed to play. Instead, choosing to ghost them as if they matched on a dating app.
But alas, a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
Something that also continues to strike us as an interesting quirk is that all the new signed players are being announced as PPA signed players rather than UPA signed. No strong take on this without more information. It’s just notable.
4. Doing Good Stuff – Objectively, the Asian arm of the PPA Tour and this wooden paddle event in Sacramento both fall under the category of objectively good stuff. The PPA/UPA is doing well to grow their business inside and outside of the United States and they appear to be doing it in a more sustainable way right now. Taking calculated risks and doing innovative things that may not be well received by the masses makes a lot of sense in our view.
The social media eye test appeared to be less in favor of the wood paddle tournament, but this is something that people have wanted to see in other sports. Golf comes to mind as it is a game that has had trouble contending with modern technology all the way back to the Tiger-proofing days. The sport looks far different in terms of club and ball technology, and it was a very worthwhile experiment to see what pickleball looks like in 2025 with old technology. Wooden bats is still the technology used at the highest level of professional baseball but, outside of that, we don’t get to see what sports look like with older technology – tennis, hockey, golf etc.
The Sacramento tournament was also good timing as a reminder of how seriously limiting the expansion of paddle technology should be taken by the stewards of the game. The UPA is making a real effort to clamp down on that part of the game and, if that can hold steady in the future, it is a major positive and we could look back on it as the most important choice they made for the long-term growth of the sport. For all the flack that we gave them prior to the UPA merger in terms of how they dealt with paddle issues, the UPA deserves major props for what they are doing at this moment.
On the Asia side of things, the love for pickleball in Malaysia and the excitement they had for the US stars coming to their country was incredible to see. The fan energy was off the charts from what we were able to see on stream and on social media. It feels necessary for the American entities to establish themselves in these fast-growing markets. We have another one coming up in Vietnam later this week. The players who go out to those places talk about being treated like stars and it is wild to see the growth when most of their viewing of the top level has been restricted to internet live streams and replays on YouTube.
Another quick note is that the PPA’s streamed courts YouTube channel is streaming every single court each tournament and it’s another cool thing to see them continuing with that.
5. Random Social Media Thought – This is something that has been on the mind for a while, with no good place to really share it so here goes nothing.
Whoever is running the social media accounts for players and MLP teams, why are we only sharing the positives of these events, especially on stories throughout the day? You go on Collin Johns’s Instagram stories where he is sharing that he’s up on Championship Court for the semi-finals and the next update is from the bronze medal match the following day. If you’re not following other accounts or the tournament results closely, are you just like what the hell happened?
This isn’t to signal out Collin Johns or whoever does his social media. It is only highlighting an example that is overly present in the social media sphere. We are by no means social media experts but when you’re following a player or a team on social media, you want all the updates. Good or bad. We get that it’s not as much fun to share the negatives, but isn’t sharing everything the best way to provide the best access to your fans?
Oh, you won the first gender doubles game in MLP but then the next update we get is the schedule for the next match day because you lost 3-1. Thanks?
It’s great that you posted your 14th day in the life of a pro pickleball player Instagram reel, but fans of yours probably also want to know that you might have lost to your round of 32 match to a couple of unknown players.
Social media is often the ultimate highlight reel for a person’s life, but it really seems like a missed opportunity for so many people to avoid sharing all the ups and downs on their journey through the pro pickleball space.
Ya feel us?
*this article has been updated to reflect that Max Manthou did not sign during the Tour Wars.
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