
Johns bros, Staksrud and Patriquin earn finals berths with three-game victories
Ben Johns/Collin Johns are into the gold medal match in their final tournament together after an 11-6, 5-11, 11-5 victory over No. 6 seeds Christian Alshon/Andrei Daescu.
After teams split the opening two games, the Johns bros went to work and jumped out to a 7-3 advantage in Game 3. They would hold on to that lead and finish the match comfortably from there.
One of the challenges that Alshon/Daescu presented was their length at the kitchen line; with Alshon standing at six-foot-two and Daescu at six-foot-four, both players can attack a lot of balls out of the air.
To combat this, B. Johns resorted to using his two-handed backhand roll dink in his crosscourt rallies against Daescu, as opposed to his traditional backhand slice dink.
“I feel like that shot is almost there in terms of regularly being used, but it was also kind of a good matchup to use it against,” he explained. “When you hit those more penetrating slice dinks, Andrei tends to take them out of the air and can get it on your partner pretty fast because he’s so long.”
That decision paid off, as the top seeds are now into the final.
The Johns bros will face either Federico Staksrud/Hayden Patriquin or Augie Ge/Jaume Martinez Vich on Sunday.
Following the trend of three-game thrillers across Semifinal Saturday, Federico Staksrud/Hayden Patriquin secured the second spot in the men’s doubles final with an 11-5, 8-11, 13-11 victory over No. 8 seeds Augie Ge/Jaume Martinez Vich.
In an especially tight deciding game, the No. 2 seeds saw a 10-9 lead turn into a 10-11 deficit and had to fend off two match points before using a three-point run to close out an early ‘Match of the Year’ candidate.
With this result, Staksrud is now into the final in all three events at the same tournament for the first time in his career. He’ll go for gold in men’s singles, mixed doubles with Catherine Parenteau, and men’s doubles with Patriquin.
If he wins all three titles on Sunday, he’ll become just the sixth player ever to Triple Crown at a PPA Tour event, joining Ben Johns, Anna Leigh Waters, Tyson McGuffin, Catherine Parenteau, and Simone Jardim.
It’s an accomplishment that the Argentinian hopes will become a regular occurrence in 2025.
“I’m super happy to be in this position, especially at a Slam. There are so many points in play, and it’s great for me to start the year like this,” he said. “I want to make these types of results the standard and try and have these results at every tournament.”
Top seeds Ben Johns/Collin Johns await in the final.
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