The PPA Tour made its first stop of the 2025 calendar year in Rancho Mirage, California, at the Mission Hills Country Club this past weekend. This was a Slam level event, worth 2,000 PPA Points for the winners.
Play was windy, and air quality was not good, due to the horrific fires in nearby Los Angeles. Speaking of the terrible fires, they were the main cause for the PPA Tour canceling the Southern California Open later this month.
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Anna Leigh keeps her domination level high in 2025
In the first tournament in the 2025 calendar year, Anna Leigh did what Anna Leigh does - win gold. She started off the year with a triple crown (the 31st of her career) at the Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, California.
Luke Burton
The road was not easy.
In singles, Anna Leigh DOMINATED her competition, beating her five opponents with a combined score of 110-26. That means an average scoreline of 11-2.6 per game. That is obviously very good, but look at the scorelines of her last opponents:
- Kate Fahey - 11-3, 11-1
- Parris Todd - 11-4, 11-1
- Kaitlyn Christian - 11-0, 11-6
She beat three top 10 women in back to back to back matches, 66-15. Absolute insanity.
In women’s doubles, Catherine and Anna Leigh dominated the competition all the way until the semis. They won their combined five matches by a scoreline of 132-59, more than doubling their opponents' scoreline. While they lost two games (one to Viv Glozman and Jackie Kawamoto and one to the Girlies), they never looked at risk of losing.
Mixed doubles is where Anna Leigh was pushed the hardest, which is crazy because her and Ben have dominated for so long. Again, they didn't really get pushed until the semis. They won their first three matches 66-20, never dropping a game. One of those was against Collin and Christa Gecheva, which Ben and Anna Leigh won 11-4, 11-4.
In the semi-finals, Anna Leigh and Ben had to pull off some MAGIC. Facing off against (7) Hurricane Tyra Black and Christian Alshon, they were put to the test. They lost game one, 7-11 - Ben started a little slow, no big deal. They win game two easily, 11-5. Okay, we are in control now! Nope. Alshon and Tyra go up 10-4 and have FOUR match points in game 3. Ben and Anna Leigh fought off those match points and scored eight straight unanswered points, to win 12-10.
In the final, Fed and Catherine put up a great fight to start, winning game one, 12-10. Then Ben and Anna Leigh kicked it into gear, winning 11-5, 11-3, 11-3.
Anna Leigh is the most dominant player in pickleball right now, and it’s not really close. Overall on the week, Anna Leigh won a combined 381-154. Her opponents averaged 2.74 points per game against her, in the 36 games she played.
The Johns brothers go out on with a literal and figurative bang
The shot heard ‘round the world:
Ben nearly took Quang’s head off on this play. I have access to a slow motion version of this shot, and the ball clearly hit the net and rose towards Quang’s head. Was this too far?
Speaking of Quang, he caused some controversy this weekend with his paddle. He switched back and forth between his Selkirk paddle (the one he is sponsored to play with) and a Proton paddle. He was also given a ceast and desist from Selkirk, basically saying stop playing with other paddles. Pickleball is getting awfully litigious lately.
Back to Ben and Collin. In terms of play, Ben and Collin were energetic. Collin was noticeably less emotional on bad breaks, whether it be a bounce, the net, etc. Most importantly, they looked like they were having FUN again.
With the fact that they are for sure breaking up for the foreseeable future, both Collin and Ben played like they had a weight lifted off their shoulders. They didn’t drop a game until the semi-finals, beating their first three opponents, 66-26.
In the semis, Alshon and Daescu pushed them, with Ben and Collin winning 11-6, 5-11, 11-5. In the finals, Collin and Ben looked dominant and never at risk of losing the match. They beat Fed and Hayden 11-5, 12-10, 11-3.
While this breakup is a “for now” thing, it will be VERY interesting to see how their new partnerships fare. Ben is playing the majority of events with Gabe Tardio, but has one with Hayden and one with Max Freeman. Collin, on the other hand, is playing some with Jay Devilliers, James Ignatowich, and Dekel Bar.
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Fed wins one gold and two silver
Federico Staksrud won gold in singles over Jaume Martinez Vich. He also had to face Ben Johns in the men’s doubles final and mixed doubles final. He took a game off Ben and Anna Leigh with Catherine. He also took a game off Ben and Collin with Hayden.
Fed is in the best shape on tour. He plays the most singles matches by far. He didn’t miss an event in 2024 and is making deep runs in all three disciplines.
A couple of fun stats to show Fed’s dominance at The Masters:
- In the men’s doubles quarterfinals, Hayden and Fed DOUBLE PICKLED Connor Garnett and Tyler Loong
- Fed beat (8) Christian Alshon 11-2, 11-1 in the quarters
- In the Round of 32, Fed beat Pesa Teoni, 11-0, 11-2
Fed announced this was his last tournament playing as a JOOLA sponsored athlete and gave a ton of thanks and praise to JOOLA for backing him as a pro player. He will announce his new title sponsor soon.
New rules introduced for 2025
Some new rules were announced on the PPA Tour at this event. I don’t think the players were ever notified, though, because they looked lost on stream when they were told the new rules.
One new rule on the PPA Tour applied to all pro players. A player may now cross the plane of the net without hitting the ball (a fake Erne). However, if a player completely crosses the plane of the net, it is considered a fault.
The other new rules only apply to Grandstand and Championship Courts (ones with replay and challenges). Challenges are no longer tied to timeouts. In matches that are best two out of three, players get one timeout per game and three challenges per match. In matches that are best three out of five, players get one timeout per game and five challenges per match.
Additionally, if you are out of challenges, but still want to challenge, you can. If you are wrong, you lose a point.
I like that the new rule allows players who are out of challenges to still be able to challenge, and I like that challenges are no longer tied to timeouts. However, players abused this rule in the Masters, quite often.
Players who wanted to take a timeout, but were either out of one, or saving it for later, would challenge blatant calls. Some examples were a player challenging an out call on a ball that was over two feet out and another player challenging to see if a player had a foot fault, when no one was near the kitchen line.
I like the direction these new rules are going, and I am sure the PPA will do some tinkering to find the exact right way to do the challenges and timeouts.
The parity on the PPA Tour in 2025 is going to be insane
There were multiple upsets at the Masters this week, with these standing out the most:
- (26) Julian Arnold made it all the way to the quarterfinals in singles, defeating (4) Quang Duong and (24) Noe Khlif on the way
- (14) Gabe Joseph beat (3) Hunter Johnson, one of the hottest players on tour right now
- (45) David Litvinov and Jordan Chrysostom beat (18) Todd Fought and Michael Loyd
- (15) Genie Bouchard beat (2) Brooke Buckner
- (20) Milan Rane beat (9) Zoey Wang
The level of play keeps rising on the PPA tour. Every event, someone new is making a deep run. While ALW is really dominating in all three events she plays, no one else really is. Ben isn’t playing singles for the first few months, so Fed could dominate there. Other than that, though, the fields are going to be wide open, and it will be interesting to see how long (or short) some of these new partnerships last.
Full Results
Women’s Singles
🥇 Anna Leigh Waters
🥈 Kaitlyn Christian
🥉 Catherine Parenteau
Men’s Singles
🥇 Federico Staksrud
🥈 Jaume Martinez Vich
🥉 Tyson McGuffin
Mixed Doubles
🥇 Anna Leigh Waters/Ben Johns
🥈 Catherine Parenteau/Federico Staksrud
🥉 Hurricane Tyra Black/Christian Alshon
Women’s Doubles
🥇 Catherine Parenteau/Anna Leigh Waters
🥈 Rachel Rohrabacher/Anna Bright
🥉 Jorja Johnson/Hurricane Tyra Black
Men’s Doubles
🥇 Collin & Ben Johns
🥈 Hayden Patriquin/Federico Staksrud
🥉 Christian Alshon/Andrei Daescu
