Major League Pickleball Returns And So Do The Los Angeles Mad Drops

Transaction Recap & Player News

Ahead of the weekend, the following transactions or player moves were announced:

• Stemming from her December 2025 suspension, Columbus’ No. 1 Female Parris Todd is missing this event, which threatened to scuttle the Slider’s plans to come out of the gate firing. MLP Australian newcomer Danni-Elle Townsend and recently acquired Alix Truong will start instead, which is still a pretty formidable looking team. They had a tough group this weekend with Orlando, New Jersey, Dallas, and Phoenix.
• Reports that Dallas’ No. 1 female Hurricane Tyra Black may miss the event due to injury turned out to be unfounded, but there’s still an injury concern there.
• Speaking of injuries, Phoenix’ No. 2 female Daria Walczak is out, and will be replaced by teen-ager and new PPA signee Alexa Schull in the starting lineup. She’ll be thrown to the fire quickly as the Flames will not be favored to win a tie in Dallas.

News and Noteworthy

Ahead of the event, here’s some news and noteworthy items for MLP.

• On 5/16/26, Dallas for Brooke Buckner, sending Callie Smith and reportedly $200k cash to Las Vegas in a curious move that I’m not sure actually makes them better.
• 5/15/26: MLP’s first waiver period of the 2026 season features a few moves, but includes two from the ever-busy Carolina remaking their team.
• 5/15/26: MLP releases a few tweaks to its 2026 schedule and an interesting rule change via an email to media. “The following trade restriction is now official: No MLP team may, at any point, roster three players of the
  same gender who are each ranked in the PPA Top 20 of their respective gendered doubles. Any proposed trade that would violate this restriction
  will be rejected by the league.” This seems to be an anti-tanking/stacking issue.
• 4/29/26: MLP announces they’re moving to the Life Time LT Pro 48 ball for the 2026 season, making it consistent with the PPA. This was an expected move, based on the relationship that Life Time has with the UPA and for consistency purposes for the UPA players.

Premier League Group Stage Match Recap

Day 1 Observations

• In Columbus’ first match defending their title, Danni-Elle Townsend’s introduction to MLP was impressive; she dominated on the left and controlled the action to lead her team to an 11-5 win to open. In gender doubles we saw possibly a first: Jack Sock on the right, playing alongside Staksrud. After settling in, the pair dominated play and cruised to an 11-6 surprise win over Daescu & Klinger. After splitting Mixed though, it was one-way traffic in the DB to no surprise, with Orlando winning 21-7.
• New acquisition Brooke Buckner made an immediate impression, winning in both gender and mixed as host Dallas topped the youthful Phoenix Flames squad 3-1 to open their weekend.

Day 2 Observations

• The first real shocking result of the season; Columbus split gender doubles with New Jersey as one might expect, then swept both Mixed matches for the surprise 3-1 win. NJ split up ALW and Howells, and neither team looked entirely comfortable. Meanwhile, Townsend is a revelation, and Alix Truong stood toe-to-toe with Waters for the win.
• Dallas swept gender, then Orlando squeaked out both mixed to force a DreamBreaker. There, we saw Dallas’ Albie Huang take over for Tyra Black surprisingly … and she dominated Lacy Schneemann to make the difference as Dallas squeaks by Orlando in a battle of mid-table teams.
• Anna Leigh Waters woke up in the Dallas-New Jersey match and dominated, winning both her ties 11-1 to power her team to a win in the marquee matchup of the group. New Jersey’s men still have some challenges, losing 11-2 to JW & Ge, but the tie was turned by NJ picking on Buckner in the 2nd mixed match.

Day 3 Observations

• In one of the marquee matches of the event between the last two MLP champions Columbus and Dallas, Andrei Daescu continues to be a force to be reckoned with, powering his team to a win over the hosts and guaranteeing his team the group title thanks to their earlier win over New Jersey.
• In what some thought would be a cakewalk for the top seeded New Jersey squad, The Jack Sock show continues, getting two wins to get Orlando to the DreamBreaker, where you would have thought they’d almost be favored. Instead, the NJ singles players came out to shine, trouncing Orlando 21-11 to keep the pressure on in the Group.
• In the match of the weekend, LA went down 0-2 to St. Louis after losing both gender doubles, but then saw a complete Ben Johns take-over in Mixed. Parenteau willed her team to victory in mixed 2, and then LA blew away STL in the DreamBreaker for a statement win and to take the group.

Group Stage Results

At the end of the group stages, here were the standings, which drive the final day’s competition.

• Group A: Columbus Sliders, New Jersey, Dallas, Orlando, Phoenix

Columbus surprises the heavily favored New Jersey team, even without their top female player, to win the group and continue to remind us that the MLP format. Phoenix finishes as the only winless team of the weekend.

• Group B: LA Mad Drops, St. Louis Shock, Texas Ranchers, Utah Black Diamonds, Bay Area Breakers, Carolina Hogs.

LA’s veteran team played a scintillating match to close out the group stage Saturday night, with Ben Johns reminding us why he’s the GOAT. Utah, Bay Area, and Carolina had a 3-way tie for 4th place that went down to unpublished tiebreakers to give Utah the 4th seed out of the group.

Super Monday Event Finals

For 2026, the final day features the Event Standings matches, where the winner of Group A players the Winner of Group B, the 2nd place teams play for 3rd, the 3rd place teams play for 5th, and so on. Here’s a review of those final matches.

• Event 1st Place match: After one last Townsend win, LA and Ben Johns took over to power his team to a surprise win for the weekend. Los Angeles Mad Drops are the Dallas champions.
• Event 3rd Place match: In the STL-NJ match most everyone thought would be the final, Howells finished off a 4-8 weekend on the losing end of two more matches and STL’s Goins was the hero of the DreamBreaker to seal 3rd place for the Shock.
• Event 5th Place match: Dallas made fast work of Texas, sweeping gender doubles and then winning the first mixed to seal 5th place.
• Event 7th Place match: Orlando cruised past Utah 3-1 for 7th place.
• 9th and 10th place went to Bay Area and Phoenix respectively, each receiving 1 standing point. They did not compete on Sunday.
• 11th place goes to Carolina, who finished last in their group and thus last for the weekend despite having a match win as compared to Phoenix. They receive 0 event standing points.

Player Stats Analysis for the Weekend

Here’s a quick look at the players who played best (and worst) this weekend.

• To little surprise, Anna Leigh Waters was the individual leader in both matches won (9-1) and points percentage won (70%). Her only loss on the weekend came at the hands of Columbus in Mixed.
• Most of the individual leaders for the weekend were from the Shock or the Fives, who otherwise dominated all weekend except in the crucial group final stage.
• Jack Sock was the best player not from the four top teams on the weekend, going 7-3 and really impressing with his right-side play and his domination of Mixed.
• MLP newcomer Alexa Schull unfortunately gets the title for worst performer on the weekend, going 0-8 and winning just 31% of her points for Phoenix. The rest of the Flames did not fare much better.
• Utah’s women struggled badly, going a combined 4-20. If Utah has playoff aspirations, they may want to consider some moves. Columbus now seems to have a surplus of females capable of competing and could make a move for the right price.

What did we learn this weekend?

What were our top Takeaways from the competition this weekend?

1. It took Ben Johns about five points into his first match of the weekend to slump his shoulders and start to disengage, eventually losing alongside new partner Max Freeman to Utah’s Connor Garnett & Tama Shimabukuro. However, in the marquee Saturday night matchup against St. Louis, he was as dominant as I’ve ever seen him play on the court, completely taking over the Mixed match and powering his team to victory. The consensus opinion is that “Johns is Back” as he went 9-3 for the weekend after settling in.
2. Danni-Elle Townsend certainly impressed in her US MLP Debut. She dominated on the left, got better as the week went along, and makes me wonder what Columbus does when Parris Todd comes back. Also, not for nothing, but Columbus made the final w/o their No. 1 female; what would they have done with her?
3. Jim Kloss and I texted each other during Orlando’s first match at the exact moment; “holy cow is Jack Sock on the Right?” Well, as it turns out, he’s not half bad there, as he and Federico got solid wins all weekend. Sock played like a new man this weekend and Orlando looks to be a lot better than the 7th-8th spot in the power rankings most pundits have them pre-season. Sock was 7-3 for the weekend with wins over Howells/Khlif and Daescu/Klinger while going 4-1 in Mixed.
4. This new format is certainly exciting, with teams jockeying for position and one loss taking them out of the title game. Furthermore, we already have a major tie-breaking scenario come down to the 4th (unpublished) tiebreaker in Group B when Utah, Bay Area, and Carolina all finished 1-4 while beating each other up. Utah ends up with the 4th seed by virtue of points differential, being tied with Bay Area on match wins, game wins, and then game differential (h/t to Tice for the breakdown).
5. Singles specialists were used a few times in DreamBreakers with varying success. Alex Crum subbed in for Daescu and went 3-5 against Jack Sock, Albie Huang subbed in for Hurricane Tyra Black and went 6-2 over Lacy Schneemann, John Lucian Goins subbed in for Gabe Tardio and went 3-8 against Ben Johns, and Gabriel Joseph subbed in for Max Freeman and went 5-4 over Hayden Patriquin. Is the gambit worth it, to sub in a player who’s warmed up and ready to go for a singles specialist who’s been sitting for 2 hours?

Media Pick’ Em Contest Update

MLP Super-Fan Matty Pickles (aka Matt Klitch) created a season-long Media MLP Pick’em Contest last year where a number of leading media pundits and voices in the sport compete as prognosticators each week. This year we have 17 participants across nearly every major media outlet in the sport. Here’s the link to track the competition online, and I’ll be tweeting out the pick matrix and updates, so follow me on Twitter if interested.

Pick’em Competition Weekly Summary: Unlike last year, where a number of us went 7-8 or 8-8 in week one picks, it was carnage this weekend. The Dink’s Erik Tice was the big winner on the weekend, being one of just two players (along with Matty Pickles) to pick LA to win the group. Meanwhile, three pundits got just two picks right out of 11 for the weekend, a sign of just how unpredictable week one was.

Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, the MLP heads right to Columbus for Week 2 next week. Next weekend also features a PPA Challengers in Fort Collins, the 2026 Macao Open in China, and the kickoff of the 2026 Champions Series Pickleball league for the sport’s top seniors.

MLP-specific stats mentioned herein come from PickleKey.com, which has done a great job collecting detailed MLP player data for the league and went through an off-season re-design that includes a slew of new ways to slice and dice the data.

My colleague Erik Tice at the Dink (who does double duty as the GM for the California Black Bears) is back to maintaining his Public MLP Data sheet, which has all sorts of awesome data.

Any Tour-level match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 31,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours.