Anna Bright and Dekel Bar celebrate a victory over the top seeds.
Anna Bright and Dekel Bar will play for their first title as a partnership on Sunday. PPA Tour

Bright, Bar stun Waters, Johns in three games

Anna Bright/Dekel Bar accomplished something Saturday afternoon that no one had been able to do in nearly a year: beat Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns in mixed doubles.

The No. 3 seeds pulled off a thrilling 12-10, 7-11 11-9 upset victory over the top seeds in a match that brought an unmatched energy to Humana Championship Court.

They found themselves trailing 1-5 in the deciding game but were able to get to the side switch leading 6-5 thanks to some big serves from Bright and bigger serves from Bar.

A few minutes later, Bar/Bright again trailed 7-9, but they went on a four-point run to close out the epic encounter that lasted just over 90 minutes.

 

Bright also played a role in Waters/Johns' last loss, which came in the final of the Austin Open last March. She and Andrei Daescu won that contest 11-3, 11-9, 11-3.

She praised Bar for the way he countered Waters’ speedups off the bounce throughout the entire match.

“The key to beating them for me is trusting that my male partner is going to handle Anna Leigh’s attacks because I can’t avoid hitting her the ball, but I also can’t press and try and do too much,” she explained. “Dekel did a great job because she had some amazing speedups—she’s always going to—but I think he handled them really, really well.”

Even though Saturday’s triumph is a huge moment in his career, Bar isn’t getting ahead of himself when it comes to celebrating.     

“Obviously it’s an amazing win today, but tomorrow is a new day,” he said. “We’ll start fresh knowing that we have one more match to go. We’re going to give it everything and focus as best we can to take them down.”

No. 2 seeds Jorja Johnson/JW Johnson await in the final.