Hot on the heels of MLP Atlanta, the Professional Pickleball Association continued its week and a half long camping trip at Life Time Fitness Peachtree Corners and rolled right into its second grand slam of the year. The 2024 Vizzy Atlanta Slam had the biggest pro draws ever seen in the sport and worked its way around iffy weather all weekend to culminate with a fantastic set of finals on Sunday. This venue is great for fans; I went to this event last year and felt the regret of not making it this year upon watching the streams.
By the time the weekend ended, #1 Anna Leigh Waters, back from a month-long break, had secured her 25th career PPA triple crown and PPA #1 Ben Johns had taken two gold medals, but missed out on a triple of his own.
Click here for the PickleballBrackets.com home page for the event, where you can get tournament details, draw sheets, and results. As always, if you missed the live broadcasts, the replays of all the action are posted to the PPA’s YouTube channel within a day of completion.
Let’s Recap the action.
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Men’s Pro Singles Recap
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The largest pro draw we’ve seen yet started early in the week in Atlanta, as an astounding 124 singles players entered the qualifying draw to join the top 24 seeds in the main draw. Players had to play 3-4 games just to get into the round of 64, and a slew of accomplished singles players were eliminated along the way. Big names who fell in qualifying included its top seed Anton Gutz, US Open champ Jack Foster, Naveen Beasley, Eduardo Irizarry, Phuc Huynh, Ryan Eveloff, and Richard Livornese Jr. A few of the qualifying survivors were able to advance into the “main draw” of 32; #41 Ross Whitaker topped #17 Roscoe Bellamy (Bronze medalist in LA 3 weeks ago), #47 Alexander Crum got a solid win over #22 Marshall Brown, and #44 Dave Bacalla got a walk-over when Gabe Tardio withdrew.
From there, seeds mostly held for the next couple of rounds, as we saw an unexpected normalcy in the draw. The sole upset by seed in the round of 32 was an under-seeded #24 Yates Johnson crushing #16 Julian Arnold 4,1, and only a few other top-16 players even got stretched to a breaker. The round of 16 saw a couple of minor upsets and a couple of fantastic matches: #12 Jay Devilliers topped #8 Dylan Frazier 17-15 in game one (one of the longest games we’ve seen) before retiring due to injury. #9 Quang Duong topped #6 JW Johnson with relative ease to setup yet another meeting with Ben Johns (Duong has multiple wins over the sport’s top player). Lastly, #11 Pablo Tellez got a solid upset win over #7 Jaume Martinez Vich to setup a quarter final showdown with none other than his recently divorced doubles partner #1 Federico Staksrud.
In the quarters, #1 Staksrud won an emotional match over long-time partner #11 Tellez that went to a breaker. #5 Alshon took out #3 Garnett, who continues to be plagued with the “yips” on his serve. #2 Ben Johns ground out a fascinating 12-10 third game win against his recent leading nemesis #9 Quang Duong, and #4 Tyson McGuffin dug deep to come from a game down to top #8 Dylan Frazier. This setups a star-studded semis of players who account for 50 of the 62 gold medals ever won in a PPA Men’s Singles event.
In the semis, the tour’s two top players made fast work of their opponents, setting up the highly anticipated final. As is well known, Staksrud’s dominant 2024 has pushed him to the #1 ranking on tour, but in three head-to-head matchups with Johns he’s yet to get a victory. This has many in pickleball social media circles advocating that Johns is still the “real #1” player on tour, and nobody wants to change that perception more than Staksrud. Unfortunately, the gravity of the moment seemed to get to the #1 seed, as he fell to the long-time #1 Johns with relative ease 3,7. Johns won the battle, even if Staksrud right now is winning the war.
Gold: Ben Johns. Silver: Federiko Staksrud. Bronze: Christian Alshon————————
Women’s Pro Singles Recap
Like the men, a massive qualifying draw of women was in Atlanta (28 for 8 main draw spots). That’s great to see. Even more amazingly, 7 of the 8 qualifiers won their round of 64 match against established mid-20s seeded pros, putting a slew of 40+ seeded players into the main draw. One qualifier made it into the round of 16: #45 Madalina Grigoriu beat #17 Liz Truluck in the opener then #16 Taylor Garcia in the round of 32 to setup a meeting with the gold medalist from Houston Lea Jansen. Grigoriu is a Romanian tennis star who played for the University of Louisiana-Monroe, then stuck around to get her MBA and now works for Deloitte in Miami. Clearly she’s on the “Zane Navratil” track of working in audit until her pickleball career takes off.
The round of 16 went mostly chalk with one major exception: #14 Parris Todd topped #2 Catherine Parenteau in three games to move on. Todd’s seeding doesn’t reflect her actual talent level (she has two PPA medals already in 2024) but a loss at this juncture for Parenteau is surprising. Catherine is coming off a sub-par MLP performance and still seems to be shaking off the rust of her month-long sabbatical from the sport. #4 Lea Jansen ended Grigoriu’s run but had to work to do so, winning 8,7 in a tight match.
In the quarters, the two top seeds held serve in the top half, with #1 Anna Leigh Waters topping LA Open gold medalist #8 Brooke Buckner easily, and #4 Lea Jansen continuing her singles renaissance with a solid win over #5 Judit Castillo. From the bottom half, #14 Parris Todd topped #9 Lina Padegimaite to earn another semis appearance in her months-long progression up the PPA rankings, while #7 Salome Devidze eased past the reigning gold medalist from Red Rock #3 Mary Brascia to setup a juicy semi with long-time rival Todd.
In the top semi, #1 ALW absolutely destroyed #4 Jansen 0,2, with social media comments lambasting Jansen for her sportsmanship. On the bottom-half, two long-time APP stalwarts Todd & Devidze faced off. The last time these two played, it was an appeal-filled emotional battle for gold taken by Salome in Lakeville. This time around? It was one-way traffic for Parris, who won 3,5 in a match that took less than 20 minutes to finish.
In the final, we got a rematch of the June 2022 Orange County Cup final, when Todd gave Waters one of her few career singles losses. This time around, Todd gave Waters everything she could take, splitting the first two games 12-10 each way before Waters found a new gear in the third game and took the gold. final score: 10,(10),5.
Gold: Anna Leigh Waters. Silver: Parris Todd. Bronze: Salome Devidze.
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Mixed Pro Doubles Recap
61 teams entered the qualifying for Mixed Pro Doubles, and a few of the teams made some noise the main draw before the dust settled and the top seeds advanced deeper into the weekend. #49 Bobbi Oshiro & Todd Fought upset two-time 2024 Mixed gold medalist Etta Wright and Tyler Loong in the 32s. #43 Yates Johnson & Rachel Rettger took out #21 Zane Navratil & Lina Padegimaite in the 32s. Lastly, #42 John Cincola & Genie Erokhina shocked #20 Collin Johns (Mixed Bronze medalist last month in Fountain Valley) & Andrea Koop in the opening round. None could advance further, but we did see one significant interloper in to the 16s: #25 Parris Todd & Hunter Johnson took out #7 Tyson McGuffin & Lacy Schneemann for the only top 10 upset on the day.
In the round of 16, #12 Jack Sock & Catherine Parenteau got a significant win over #5 Dekel Bar & Tina Pisnik, who have made two finals this season. This is one of the better results the Selkirk-sponsored pair has had together so far this season. #19 Christian Alshon & Vivian Glozman took a game off of #1 Ben Johns & Anna Leigh Waters before falling.
In the quarters, #9 Rachel Rohrabacher & Federico Staksrud got a great 12-10 third game win over the #2 seeds Wilson & David while the other three top seeds advanced without much fanfare. In the semis, #1 Waters & Johns continued their march towards another gold with a comprehensive 3,4 win over #4 Jorja & JW Johnson from the topside, while #3 Anna Bright & James Ignatowich continued their strong run through the draw to secure the final.
In the final, #1 Waters & Johns sandwiched a surprising 11-0 game three loss around three other game wins to take the match in four. Final score: 7,9,(0),3. Bright & Ignatowich certainly got hot for a game but ultimately couldn’t push it to five.
Gold: Waters & Johns. Silver: Bright & Ignatowich. Bronze: Johnson & Johnson
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Men’s Pro Doubles Recap
Continuing a trend, a massive 68-team qualifying draw started off the week, with one team (#48 Federico Nani & Jorge Nunez) getting a round of 64 win to advance into the main draw. There, a couple of minor upsets occurred, headlined by #24 Quang Duong & Chuck Taylor getting a solid win over #9 Zane Navratil & Darrian Young, but the top seeds mostly advance into the 16s as expected.
New MLP teammates and Texas neighbors #10 Hunter Johnson & Thomas Wilson benefitted from an ankle injury suffered by Devilliers to get a walk-over into the quarters; otherwise there were no other upsets or even tiebreakers in the round of 16. Federico Staksrud has teamed with new partner Matt Wright, survived an early round challenge and dominated their round of 16 match to get to the quarters. Staksrud’s long-time former partner Pablo Tellez has picked up with James Ignatowich, and as the #4 seeds blew through their first two rounds without breaking a sweat.
In the quarters, the Johns brothers got revenge on #8 Daescu & Tardio from the previous event and topped them in two easy games. #5 McGuffin & Bar upset #4 Ignatowich & Tellez, playing together for the first time, to join the top seeds in the semis. There, the new Wright/Staksrud partnership immediately paid off dividends, as they crushed the #1 Johns brothers 5,3 to move into the final. They attacked Collin on speedups to great effect, threw in some crafty lobs here and there, and had the Johns brothers really off their game. On the other side of the draw, #2 Frazier & Johnson had another ho-hum run to the finals of a PPA event, topping #5 McGuffin & Bar with ease 3.2
In the final. Wright & Staksrud couldn’t seem to find the same attacking sense they had against the Johns brothers and fell into the tactical dink-battle that Frazier & Johnson want and excel at. The #3 seeds took the first game, but were more or less ground into submission the rest of the way, losing (4),3,7,5. The #2 seeds win their 2nd event in a row and their 8th PPA title together.
Gold: Frazier & Johnson. Silver: Wright & Staksrud. Bronze: McGuffin & Bar.
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Women’s Pro Doubles Recap
The Ladies had a rare doubles qualifier, with 16 teams whittling down to 8 slots. None of the qualifiers really made any noise in the main draw, and the only real upset in the first two rounds was #24 Trang Huynh-McClain & Malia K Lum upsetting #14 Alex Walker & sister Angela Walker to earn a round of 16 match against the top seeds. #1 Anna Leigh Waters & Catherine Parenteau, back after a month off, made fast work of Huynh-McLain & Lum 0,0 to move into the quarters. The only other upset prior to the quarters was #10 Vivian Glozman & Lacy Schneemann taking out the new pairing of #6 Parris Todd & Lucy Kovalova 11-8 in the third. After a long partnership, Kovalova & Callie Smith have split up; Smith paired with Lea Jansen and cruised into the quarters here as the #4 seeds.
In the quarters, the big upset was #9 Jade Kawamoto & Andrea Koop taking out #2 seeds and 4-time gold medalists Bright & Rohrabacher in three. They joined the other top seeds in the semis. There, #1 Waters & Parenteau topped #3 Etta Wright & Meghan Dizon 8,5 to earn the Sunday final from the top half, while the upstart #9 seeds continued their upset-minded ways and topped #4 Callie Smith & Lea Jansen 12-10 in the third to earn a gold medal shot.
In the final, the “Special K Sisters” Kawamoto & Koop kept it close but ultimately fell in three games to the sport’s top pair. Final score, 9,2,8. Waters & Parenteau win their 5th title of the year to keep pace with Bright & Rohrabacher for the top spot on tour.
Gold: Waters & Parenteau. Silver: Kawamoto & Koop. Bronze: Smith & Jansen.
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Senior Open Competition Quick Recap
This weekend was the debut of the 2024 NPL season, so a slew of top pros were absent, thinning the senior draws. Furthermore, rain issues played havoc with the draws, as there’s limited space inside the facility versus outside, so some draws were cancelled. By the time the weekend was done, all the Senior doubles draws were rained out and just one senior pro/open event got completed:
- Men’s Senior Open Singles: Joshua Cooperman took the gold as the #1 seed.
- Men’s Senior Open Doubles: Rained out.
- Women’s Senior Open Doubles: Rained out
- Mixed Senior Open Doubles: Rained out.
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The Pro Pickleball Medal Tracker has now been updated with these results; check out this link online for a complete pro medal history for all tours and all pro events dating to the beginnings of all the major pro tours, plus pro events that predated 2020.
Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, the APP rolls into New York City for its biggest event of the year, the NYC Open.
Next up for the PPA tour? After a week break, the PPA returns home to the Dallas area for the 2024 CIBC Texas Open in Rockwall, in the eastern suburbs of the metroplex.
