Waters and Johns, Bright and Daescu to clash in mixed doubles final
LAKEWAY, TX - The mixed doubles gold medal match at the Veolia Austin Open powered by Invited is set.
Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns will take on Anna Bright and Andrei Daescu.
Waters and Johns didn’t drop a game en route to the final to make it to their seventeenth straight Championship Sunday together in tournaments they’ve played in.
“We just try and play our games and do the best we can,” Johns said of the pair’s prolonged success. “Happy to have Anna Leigh, and hopefully we’ll have a lot more wins.”
They took out Jessie Irvine and Christian Alshon, who beat the Johnson siblings earlier in the day, to make the final.
No. 4 seeds Anna Bright and Andrei Daescu were pushed to three games in their first match of the day against Mari Humberg and Martin Emmrich, but they found their groove in the rest of their matches.
The former Major League Pickleball teammates faced Minnesota champions Vivienne David and Thomas Wilson in the semifinals.
In a highly competitive match that featured a little bit of everything, Bright and Daescu prevailed 11-9, 11-9.
One of the match’s more memorable moments happened when Bright took a tumble moving backwards while trying to defend an overhead.
Fortunately, she was all good and even had a laugh about it after the match.
“It felt like I was falling in slow motion,” she recalled. “I’ve never fallen like that on a pickleball court or tennis court, but I’m glad we won the match where it happened.”
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