The St. Louis Shock Dominate Their Home Major League Pickleball Event And Take The Crown

Transaction Recap & Player News

Ahead of the weekend, the a slew of transactions occurred. Instead of burying them in this piece, I published a stand-alone analysis earlier this week.

See my Waiver Wire/Trade recap 6/3/26 post for all the moves ahead of this weekend.

Premier League Group Stage Match Recap

Day 1 Observations

• The STL event fittingly opens with Brooklyn, one of the two teams yet to debut. They’re also featuring a new front-man in Christian Alshon and have high hopes. Their ladies blew through game one, then Alshon/Newman showed a little bit of adjustment period before getting past the high-energy Hovenier-Bellamy pair for a 2-0 lead. Bellamy blasted his way to an early lead in Mixed 1 but Brooklyn reigned him in and turned an 3-0 early deficit into an 11-4 win to secure the match win. Riley and Jackie finished off the sweep, and Brooklyn has to like their start to the 2026 season.
• In a match between two similarly-ranked teams, Atlanta’s ladies Irvine & Christian opened the tie with a big upset over Sewing & Pisnik. The Men’s tie was razor thin, with both veteran-laden teams fighting for every hands battle. McGuffin saved game point by defending an ATP, then sealed it with his own ATP, overcoming the fantastic exploits of Devilliers to tie it up. Sewing continued her undefeated run with McGuffin and ground out an 11-8 mixed 1 win. Mixed 2 was a blowout, and Palm Beach wins 3-1.
• The surprise opening weekend event champs LA came out of the gate flat, with Utah’s Jones & Tuionetoa shocking Parenteau & Kawamoto in the first game. This put LA on its heels early, and the pressure on their big star Ben Johns. LA eventually won 3-1, but each of the four games was an 11=7 or 11-8 slog. I’d expect this kind of match against one of the top teams, not against Utah.

Day 2 Observations

• A last minute foot injury to Riley Newman called Singles specialist Haworth into action for Brooklyn, and though he played well in gender doubles, his mixed team got crushed as the Mad Drops edged their top rival to take pole position of the group. This ended up being the group-decider, as Brooklyn and LA were the two best teams in the group.
• Phoenix shocked Las Vegas early on Friday, winning both gender doubles matches to go up 2-0. LV pulled back both mixed matches to head to a DreamBreaker. LV is thought to have one of the best DB squads, but 15-yr old Cam Chaffin embarrassed top-10 singles pro Roscoe Bellamy, beating him 10-2 through three turns to win it for Phoenix, a massive upset.
• Jack Sock’s energized play continues, as he leads Orlando over Palm Beach in a battle of likely second tier playoff contenders.

Day 3 Observations

• St Louis swept the streaking Orlando team to wrap up 1st place in their group and put themselves into the event title game on Super Sunday.
• LV’s women shocked Parenteau & Kawamoto 11-4 to open this tie, but then LA took back control to win 3-1. The win secures the group officially for the LA Mad Drops, who have yet to lose a match this season.
• Las Vegas and Utah played just the 2nd DreamBreaker of the event, a rarity in a sport where 25% go to the decider. Braden Jacobson held his own against Tama, and Bellamy turned the tides on Garnett to finish the DB with a 4-0 sweep to win.

Group Stage Results

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

• Group A: LA Mad Drops, Brooklyn, Las Vegas, Utah, SoCal, Phoenix
• Group B: St. Louis, Orlando, Palm Beach, Atlanta, Bay Area

Super Sunday Results

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: St. Louis came out on fire, destroying LA in both gender matches before cruising to a Mixed #1 match to sweep LA, give them their first loss of the year, and to secure their first event title in three tried on home soil.
• Event 3rd Place match: Brooklyn ground out two mixed match wins to secure a 3-1 match and 3rd place for the weekend.
• Event 5th Place match: Palm Beach blitzed Las Vegas in gender doubles, sitting Hovenier in lieu of Jacobson for the Men’s tie. Palm Beach’s veterans Pisnik & Bar then took the first mixed match to complete the sweep and secure 5th place.
• Event 7th Place match: Atlanta and Utah are a great matchup for 7th place, both with veteran players who have had up and down performances. They went to a DB, where Etta Tuionetoa kept her team in the match with two 3-1 wins, and Victoria DiMuzio getting the better of Kaitlyn Christian to win it 21-19 at the end.
• 9th & 10th place goes to Bay Area and SoCal, who earn 1 point a piece. 11th place goes to Phoenix, who finished last in the Group with 6 teams. They receive 0 event standing points.

2026 League Team Standings Update Post Event

We’re now through three events, and every one of the 20 teams has played. When you sort the standings by Points-per-event, the resemblance of the standings to pre-season power rankings is already astounding.

The top 5 teams are essentially everyone’s pre-season top 5 teams, albeit in a slightly different order thanks to LA’s event win two weeks ago. The rest of the playoff field (spots 6-12) are basically those teams we thought would be competing. The bottom six teams, who each have secured 0 or 1 point per event, are also no surprise.

It did not take long to have the standings table take the expected form.

Player Stats Analysis for the Weekend

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

• To little surprise, the four STL players finished in the top 5 players by W/L and points won percentage for the weekend. Anna Bright led the way with an astounding 76% points won percentage to take the “MVP” for the weekend.
• Brooklyn’s Rachel Rohrabacher had a fantastic debut weekend, going 11-1 in matches and winning 66% of her points.
• Palm Beach’s Tina Pisnik continues to be the motor for the Royals, going 7-3 with a 59% points won percentage.
• At the other end of the spectrum, SoCal’s Genie Erokhina and Len Yang finished the event winless with points won percentages in the 33-37% range.

What did we learn this weekend?

What were our top three takeaways from the competition this weekend?

1. Brooklyn is going to be a challenge for teams to deal with, but they’re going to need Riley Newman to stay healthy. Rohrabacher looks rejuvenated and will be a tough out no matter who they play.
2. St. Louis turned it on at home, blitzing their way to an event win. Can they do it away from home? More importantly, can they do it when the pressure is on come August in the playoffs?
3. We have some pretty bad teams in the league. I mean, we didn’t “learn” that this weekend, but it’s going to be a long summer for Bay Area, Phoenix, and Carolina in particular. All three are now just 1-8 through two events and may struggle to get to more than a handful of wins on the season.

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 16 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: The Dink’s Alex Weaver takes the weekend, but his colleague Erik Tice leads the season.

Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, the MLP heads straight to Austin for Week 4 of the season.

Next weekend also features an APP event, a PPA-challenger event, a SPT event, and a PPA-Australia event. It’s a busy week for pickleball.

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.