Men’s doubles: 🥇Ben Johns & Collin Johns 🥈Riley Newman & Matt Wright 🥉JW Johnson & Dylan Frazier
Women’s doubles: 🥇Anna Leigh Waters & Catherine Parenteau 🥈Allyce Jones & Lea Jansen 🥉Anna Bright & Vivienne David
Mixed doubles: 🥇Anna Leigh Waters & Ben Johns 🥈Lucy Kovalova & Callie Smith 🥉Anna Bright & Riley Newman
Men’s singles: 🥇Ben Johns 🥈Federico Staksrud 🥉Julian Arnold
Women’s singles: 🥇Anna Leigh Waters 🥈Catherine Parenteau 🥉Lea Jansen
Back to back double triple crowns for Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns! Is this going to be a thing now where they just compete against themselves for the most triple crowns by the end of the year? Because no else is on their levels! The third star of the weekend went to a very unusual suspect…the Cactus! The PPA just couldn’t get enough. Peep this 👀:
Waters and Johns got their championship Sunday underway with a mixed doubles gold, which paid homage to the same tournament last year, where they got their first mixed doubles championship as a duo, and Waters’ her first ever. Lucy Kovalova and Matt Wright were on the wrong side of history in this one, but showed that they are still at the top of this heat.
Kovalova/Wright had an outstanding run Friday which saw them beat Callie Smith/Jay Devilliers and newly-formed duo Anna Bright/Riley Newman in possibly the most exciting match of the tournament.
As for that Bright/Newman-talk of being legit contenders to the mixed throne, looks like we were a little premature! So that didn’t age well🙈. They’re going to have to get to Sunday first, before we can consider them challengers.
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Women's Doubles
In women’s doubles, Waters’ teamed up with Catherine Parenteau to defeat Allyce Jones and Lea Jansen in four games. While they didn’t get the gold, it was a very impressive tournament for the silver medalists.
However, the big storyline in this bracket was the one-seeds Kovalova/Smith losing to the 17th-seeds Sarah Ansboury/Bobbi Oshiro in the second round. They then went on to upset Jorja Johnson/Andrea Koop in the next round. Their Cinderella story came to an end at the hands of Jones/Jansen in the semi-finals, but pretty good stuff from the underdogs.
Men's Doubles
In men’s doubles, it was the story as old as time: Ben and Collin Johns taking out Newman/Wright in the finals. JW Johnson and Dylan Frazier came out with the bronze, but showed they are still a step behind the Johns brothers when they played them in the semi-finals. If they keep this up, they will overtake Tyler Loong/Callan Dawson as the clear third-best team in this division.
Johns and AL finished off their tournament with singles crowns, with Johns beating Federico Staksrud and AL victorious over Parenteau. Both Johns and AL lost their second games, which forced the thirds. But in those, there was no mercy. With Jansen winning the bronze in women’s singles, that division showed it is very much a three-woman race at the top.
Format Change
Lastly, the PPA revealed a new format change to the bronze-medal matches over the weekend with no prior indication. When you’re the PPA, you can do those kinds of things.
The bronze-medal matches all weekend were played between the losers of the semi-finals. Traditionally if you lost in the semi-finals you were forced into the consolation bracket where you had to win one extra game before getting into the bronze match.
In this tournament, those losers just automatically respawned in the bronze match. That also meant that the consolation bracket was a battle for fifth place. This is definitely the right format in my opinion, but if it becomes a staple on tour, we could see more players/teams dropping out of the backdraw.
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