The PPA Tour opens the Fall 2026 season with the Veolia Pickleball National Championships from Cary Tennis Park in North Carolina. The summer gave us an exciting MLP season, but now it will be back to traditional PPA play. But as always happens, we will start up again with some different doubles partnerships and a few new faces ready to make their mark.

 

 

The best new player to begin the Fall 2026 season is Sofia Sewing. She debuted in MLP, and showed there she is a top 10 level talent. Now joining the PPA Tour, Sewing will have a chance to shine at her best event, women’s singles. No one has been able to beat Anna Leigh Waters since George Washington was President, but Sewing will get her chance, maybe as early as this first event.

 

As expected, Waters is seeded #1 at the top of the draw. Sewing is in the bottom half, so the highly anticipated first meeting of Waters and Sewing can only occur in the finals. Can Sewing get there?

 

Sewing opens as the #46 seed due to her lack of ranking points, but her talent far exceeds her seeding. Sewing will play #18 Marcela Aguila Ampon in the Round of 64. If she can win the opening match, things get quite a bit tougher. Sewing would play #9 Liz Truluck in the Round of 32, then likely #8 Kiora Kunimoto in the Round of 16, and #2 Kate Fahey in the quarterfinals. Talk about a welcome to the PPA Tour draw!

 

I think Sewing will prove to be a top five women’s singles player. Will that come through right away in North Carolina? We will see.

 

For the rest of the draw, Waters appears to have a pretty clear path. #3 Kaitlyn Christian is a likely semifinal opponent. In the bottom half, the part of the draw with Fahey, Sewing, Kunimoto, and Truluck is the tough road. Brooke Buckner, seeded #4, has the easier path to the semifinals at the bottom of the draw.

 

 

The top ranking in men’s singles has been bouncing around between Chris Haworth, Federico Staksrud, and Hunter Johnson for the last year. Haworth is currently at the top, so he gets the #1 seed. Staksrud and Johnson, seeded #2 and #3, are both in the bottom half of the draw. Of course, in men’s singles, there is no such thing as an easy draw. Right off the bat, Haworth will be tested in the Round of 32 by the winner of a match between #32 Donald Young and #38 Tyson McGuffin. Lurking in a possible quarterfinal spot against Haworth is #8 John Lucian Goins, who played better than anyone in the MLP DreamBreakers.

 

In the bottom half of the draw, “longshot” #24 seed Ben Johns sits in a spot he is unaccustomed to. He faces #5 Connor Garnett in a Round of 32 match. That could normally be a medal round matchup, but it will instead occur in the Round of 32, again showing how difficult men’s singles is.

 

Another Round of 64 match to watch is #28 JW Johnson against #32 Augie Ge. The Dallas Flash teammates will now be opponents. Both played well in DreamBreakers, particularly Johnson, who defeated Johns 6-2 in a crucial playoff DreamBreaker. The winner of that one will play Goins in the Round of 32. These kind of early round matches are why you want to tune in to Pickleballtv every day of the tournament.

 

 

Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns will have the #1 seed, and the question as usual is whether anyone can top them. #8 Kate Fahey/Federico Staksrud is their earliest test in the quarterfinals. Fahey played her best this MLP season, so we will see if it carries over to the PPA events.

 

Jorja and JW Johnson are seeded #3 and are also in the top half of the draw. They will need to get by #6 Parris Todd/Andrei Daescu, if the Johnsons are to have a chance to upset the top seed.

 

#2 Anna Bright and Hayden Patriquin dominate the bottom half of the draw. Playing together all MLP season has to be an advantage for them. One super interesting Round of 64 match in the bottom half will pit #10 Catherine Parenteau/Riley Newman against #64 Sofia Sewing/Casey Diamond. Both Sewing and Diamond will be new to PPA. They had decent success together in MLP. They will be tested right off the bat. A win over Parenteau and Newman would send a message to everyone that Sewing and Diamond are here to play with the best.

 

Watch out for #5 Tyra Black and Gabe Tardio. They have a relatively quiet draw and look like they can make a run.

 

 

Women’s doubles features mainly familiar partnerships, starting at the top with #1 Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright, and #2 Tyra Black and Jorja Johnson. They could well face each other in the finals, again.

 

Waters and Bright appear to have the tougher competition in their half of the draw. #3 Rachel Rohrabacher and Parris Todd team up again. They will need to get by the one new team in the draw, #5 Catherine Parenteau and Sofia Sewing. It will be interesting to see how Parenteau and Sewing play together. Parenteau has the more experience, but Sewing has more power. Parenteau is best on the right, where her top level defensive skills are best utilized. Sewing, on the other hand, is better on the left, where she can use her singles skills of movement and power to try to end points. But, in MLP, we did see a similar situation with Sewing playing with Tina Pisnik, and they played Pisnik on the left, which would not appear to be optimal strategy. Tune in to see how Parenteau and Sewing will play it.

 

Also in the draw is #7 Etta Tuionetoa and Meghan Dizon. They were a top five team if we go back to 2024. Can they recapture some of that old magic?

 

 

The men appear to like changing up their partnerships more so than the women, and we see that with this first event of the Fall 2026 season. Things have not changed at #1, with Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio teaming up again. At #2, team Power Forward is back with Andrei Daescu and Christian Alshon together again. Alshon played his best at MLP 2026, while Daescu faded just a bit. Let’s see how they do back together.

 

At #3, Hayden Patriquin and Federico Staksrud are together again. They will face a tough test in a likely quarterfinal match against a new team of #6 Eric Oncins and Noe Khlif.

 

The #4 seed is the brand new team of JW Johnson and Tama Shimabukuro. This is the one new team I do not really like. Shimabukuro has been a rising young star, but this partnership puts him on the right, and he simply has not played that well on the right. In talking to other pros, this is the one new partnership everyone is betting has a short shelf life, an evaluation I agree with. We will see if they prove me wrong. If the seeds hold, they will play #15 Yuta Funemizu and AJ Koller. That will be a good test of the new partnership.

 

Perhaps the most interesting new partnership is #14 Pablo Tellez and Max Freeman; that’s correct, two lefties together! I do not recall the last time we saw two lefties team up. Who will play left side? I doubt either Tellez or Freeman have played left side before in a pro tournament. In any event, it will be super interesting to see how they do and how opponents react. They will be tested early by #23 Julian Arnold and James Delgado. What a fun match that will be to watch!

 

Some other new/different partnerships to watch are #5 CJ Klinger/Will Howells, #7 Dekel Bar/Dylan Bar and #12 Tyson McGuffin/Nico Acevedo. Acevedo is another player who made a mark in MLP events, and it will be interesting to see what success he has in PPA tournaments.

 

 

I think it will be a lot of chalk, with #1 and #2 seeds meeting in most of the finals. I expect another triple crown for Waters. The one upset special I am predicting is John Lucian Goins with a singles win. He played at an amazing level in MLP, so I am looking for him to continue that level of play in North Carolina.

 

The play begins Monday. Tune in to Pickleballtv to watch it all.

 

Follow me on X @pickleball_jim for updates.