Next up on the PPA Tour is the Veolia Arizona Open, beginning Monday in Mesa. Several top players will be missing this event, creating opportunities for other players to grab a spot on the medal stand. Let’s look at each draw and see who might be able to take advantage of the situation.

 

 

Gabe Tardio, Hayden Patriquin, and JW Johnson all are skipping Arizona, but Ben Johns will be there. With Tardio out, Johns is teaming up with Federico Staksrud. Staksrud should have no trouble playing a solid right side with Johns, so look for the top seed to do well. The #2 seed goes to last week’s silver medal team of Andrei Daescu and Christian Alshon. Can they get to the final again and perhaps take advantage of Tardio’s absence?

 

In the top half of the draw is the #3 seed, a new pairing of CJ Klinger and Cam Chaffin. Chaffin had a good run in North Carolina; along with Chris Haworth, Chaffin made the quarterfinals. Can he improve on that finish with the highly-ranked Klinger? One team to watch in the top half of the draw is #13 seed Will Howells/Pablo Tellez. They have a reasonable draw and should face Klinger/Chaffin in the Round of 16. If you have to play a top four seed, this is about as good a matchup as Howells/Tellez could hope for.

 

Another team to watch in the top half of the draw is #8 Jack Sock/Augie Ge. They have a favorable draw that could well lead them to face in the quarterfinals the winner of Chaffin/Klinger vs. Howells/Tellez.

 

The bottom half of the draw is the much stronger side. That side includes #4 Eric Oncins/Noe Khlif, #5 Dekel Bar/Dylan Frazier, and #6 Connor Garnett/Roscoe Bellamy. Bar/Frazier have the best draw and could well make a run to the semifinals.

 

Other new pairings include #7 Hunter Johnson/Collin Johns, #10 Jaume Martinez Vich/Chris Haworth, #11 Riley Newman/Craig Johnson, and #15 Nico Acevedo/Yuta Funemizu.

 

 

Jorja Johnson and Anna Bright are skipping Arizona. Anna Leigh Waters is sitting out women’s doubles, apparently due to an agreement with Bright that if either misses an event, the other will skip women’s doubles.

The top seed goes to Rachel Rohrabacher/Parris Todd, and the #2 seed to the new pairing of Tyra Black/Meghan Dizon. No disrespect to any of those four players, but the rest of the field is going to be very happy those are the top two seeds. It creates a much more open women’s doubles draw than we are used to.

 

In the top half of the draw, Rohrabacher and Todd will be challenged by #4 Sofia Sewing/Catherine Parenteau, #5 Kate Fahey/Jamie Wei, and #7 Brooke Buckner/Kaitlyn Christian. Watch Sewing/Parenteau in particular. They are still working out the kinks of a new partnership, but Sewing is showing the skills of a top 10 player, and we all know the quality of pickleball Parenteau brings.

 

In the bottom half of the draw, we have #3 Lacy Schneemann/Tina Pisnik and #8 Etta Tuionetoa/Jessie Irvine. Both of these teams certainly have the ability to topple Black/Dizon.

 

 

Anna Leigh Waters is playing mixed, so she gets the #1 seed with Ben Johns. #2 is Rachel Rohrabacher/Christian Alshon. In the top half of the draw, the toughest challengers for Waters/Johns will be #4 Tyra Black/Noe Khlif and #6 Kate Fahey/Federico Staksrud. Fahey has continued her stellar play from MLP, but toppling the top seed will be a tough task.

 

In the bottom half of the draw, the challengers to Rohrabacher/Alshon include #3 Parris Todd/Andrei Daescu, #5 Tina Pisnik/Eric Oncins, and the new pairing of #7 Catherine Parenteau/Jonathan Truong. Truong has shown flashes of high-level talent, but has not been able to translate it into signature wins over high seeds. With top teams Bright/Patriquin and JW/Jorja Johnson out this week, Arizona provides a golden opportunity for players to sneak up and challenge for a deep run.

 

One lower seed to watch out for is #21 Etta Tuionetoa/Will Howells. They have a reasonable draw, and could well advance further than their seed would indicate.

 

One super interesting match to watch early on is in the Round of 64, with #14 Lacy Schneemann/Jack Sock taking on #46 Sofia Sewing/Casey Diamond. Schneemann/Sock have played well together in 2026, but Sewing/Diamond are a team on the rise; they are much, much better than a #46 seed. Look for an upset in that one.

 

 

The draw for men’s singles will look quite a bit different than what fans are used to. With the new World Pickleball Rankings now in effect, the PPA is trying to encourage doubles specialists to play singles, while at the same time giving singles specialists incentive to do better in doubles. Instead of separate singles and doubles rankings, players now get one overall ranking based on a combination of how they do in singles and doubles. 

 

Players get seeded in singles based upon their record in singles, but the PPA is also giving highly-ranked doubles players byes into the Round of 32 or Round of 16 as an encouragement to play singles.

 

Because of the new system, Chris Haworth gets the #1 seed, but has to play in the Round of 64. Meanwhile, Andrei Daescu is the #45 seed, but gets a double bye into the Round of 16.

 

As usual, the men’s singles draw is incredibly difficult, loaded with top players. In the top half, we have #4 Christian Alshon, #5 Connor Garnett, #7 Zane Ford, #8 John Lucian Goins, and #9 Noe Khlif.

 

Federico Staksrud gets the #2 seed. Joining him in the bottom half of the draw are #3 Hunter Johnson, #6 Roscoe Bellamy, and #22 Ben Johns. Interestingly, Johns gets a double bye into the Round of 16, but will likely face Bellamy in Johns’ opening match. The byes are nice, but it does mean your first opponent will be a much better player than a top seed would normally face in their opening match.

 

As usual, the Round of 64 will include some excellent matchups. #14 Rafa Lenhard plays #37 Chris Crouch, and #15 Grayson Goldin plays #35 Tyson McGuffin.

 

Look for Hunter Johnson to have a good event. Coming off his win last week, he gets a favorable draw and has the easiest road of any top seed to the seminfinals.

 

 

Anna Leigh Waters is playing singles in Arizona and there is no reason to think her long winning streak will not continue. #3 Kaitlyn Christian is in the top half of the draw, but even as good as Christian is, she has not done very well against Waters before. 

 

In the bottom half of the draw, #2 Kate Fahey looks to get back to another final against Waters. Fahey faces the tougher road with #4 Brooke Buckner, #5 Lea Jansen, and #6 Zoey Wang all solid challengers. 

 

Also in the bottom half is #43 Sofia Sewing. Sewing is definitely a top 10 singles player, but she has not yet accumulated the ranking points to get a higher seed. This is bad news for #14 Mary Brascia, who has to face Sewing in the Round of 64. Sewing will be the favorite in that match, despite being the lower seed. Sewing will have to get past Brascia, Buckner, and Jansen if she wants to face Fahey again in the semifinals.

 

Look for Waters to sweep to a gold, but do not discount Sewing. She is the real deal, especially in singles. I like her to get to the seminfinals this week.

 

 

Rarely do lower seeds make deep runs as the top players on the PPA Tour are just so good and consistent. But, I look for the Veolia Arizona Open to be a little different and give us more lower seeds than normal in the Round of 16 and quarterfinals. I like #13 Howells/Tellez in men’s doubles, and #46 Sofia Sewing/Casey Diamond to do better than their seeds indicate.

 

The #1 seeds in the doubles draws look like gold medal favorites and, of course, you have to favor Waters in women’s singles. In men’s singles, #3 Hunter Johnson just has too good of a draw to ignore. He should be able to save some energy for when the matches get tougher and earn back-to-back golds.

 

All the action will be available on Pickleballtv beginning Monday.

 

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