The Major League Pickleball season continues Friday at MLP St. Petersburg, where 11 teams will be in action across five days at St. Pete Athletic. 

The first four days feature Group Play before the top 4 teams from each group advance to the Standing Point Matches on Super Sunday, with every match taking place on Championship Court.

Here are the groups for this week’s event:   

Group A: Brooklyn Pickleball Team, Chicago Slice, Florida Smash, Los Angeles Mad Drops, Utah Black Diamonds     

Group B: Columbus Sliders, Miami Pickleball Club, Orlando Squeeze, Palm Beach Royals, St. Louis Shock, Texas Ranchers     

Here is the order of play: 

Now, let’s get into what to watch for. 

• The Palm Beach Royals’ starting lineup will look a little different on Friday when they face the Columbus Sliders. With both Dekel Bar (injury) and Grayson Goldin (illness) unavailable, they are turning to newly UPA-signed on-site alternate Casey Diamond. According to the league, Diamond was added as a second available male alternate next to Stefan Auvergne on Thursday due to mounting injury concerns and was picked up by Palm Beach for Friday's contest. He will now make his MLP debut playing alongside Tyson McGuffin in men’s doubles and Sofia Sewing (with whom he has won two APP titles) in mixed doubles. This match will kick off Friday’s action on Championship Court.

• The Chicago Slice sit atop the Group A standings at 2-0 after earning wins over the Florida Smash and Utah Black Diamonds. Things figure to get tougher on Friday when they take on the Brooklyn Pickleball Team in the second match of the day. Look out for the men’s doubles game featuring Brooklyn’s Christian Alshon/Riley Newman taking on the Slice’s Zane Navratil/Hunter Johnson; Navratil/Johnson are 2-0 on the weekend and looked strong in their win against Utah, so they should have no shortage of confidence as they look to help Chicago pull off an upset. 

• The Orlando Squeeze will play the St. Louis Shock for the second time this season on Friday. The Shock came away with a 4-0 sweep when they played two weeks ago in St. Louis, so Orlando will be looking to avenge that result as they play in their home state to close out Friday’s action. At 1-2 and on the heels of a disappointing loss to the Texas Ranchers on Thursday, the Squeeze are in a near must-win scenario against St. Louis as they look to finish inside the top 4 of Group B and advance to Super Sunday. 

Action from St. Pete Athletic begins at 11am ET on Pickleballtv.