MLP Austin had some heat, some humidity, lots of fans, and some really good pickleball.
It was a round robin in Premier with five teams: New Jersey, Dallas, Texas, Orlando, and Miami. Everyone was looking forward to the New Jersey/Dallas rematch of last year’s championship final. Orlando was looking to extend their hot 9-2 start to the 2025 season, Miami wanted to prove they belonged, and Texas was there to show their stuff as a top-tier playoff team.

 

 

Big D showed their championship pedigree, going 4-0 in Austin. Dallas had easy wins over Orlando and Miami, and defeated Texas and New Jersey in DreamBreakers, taking home 10 team points. Jorja Johnson was especially dominant, losing only one game in Austin. She also came up big in the DreamBreaker win over NJ, beating Anna Leigh Waters 5-3 in their singles matchup. The entire Dallas team played well, showing the depth that won them the championship in 2024. The only small blemish on the weekend was that Dallas dropped slightly behind St. Louis in points per game. However, at this point, it does look likely that Dallas and St. Louis will finish first and second in the regular season, securing important playoff positioning.

 

 

 

Despite the DreamBreaker loss to Dallas, New Jersey had a very solid week. They went 4-1, and scored 10 team points. New Jersey is highly likely to finish #3 in points in the regular season. New Jersey was led by Will Howells, as usual, who went 7-1, only losing a meaningless mixed match at the very end. His only blemish was losing 6-2 to JW Johnson in that important DreamBreaker loss to Dallas. Howells was my pick for MVP in 2024, and he is doing nothing in 2025 to show my pick was wrong. Waters is great, but it is Howells who makes this team a championship contender.

 

3. Orlando gets squeezed

Orlando came into Austin with a 9-2 record and some people believing they could be a championship contender. My prediction was that Orlando would get only three points out of Austin and that proved prophetic as Orlando went 1-3, only defeating Miami. Orlando’s undoing was, as expected, the play of their women. Orlando went 1-3 in women’s doubles, defeating only Miami. Orlando may make the playoffs, but this team is going nowhere and will lose early in the postseason.

 

As I have said all year, if you want to rank the teams, you can do so pretty much by just ranking the women’s doubles teams and ignore the men. The three best women’s doubles teams are Jorja Johnson/Tyra Black (Dallas), Anna Leigh Waters/Meghan Dizon (New Jersey), and Anna Bright/Kate Fahey (St. Louis), and those are the three best teams. The fourth best women’s doubles team is Etta Tuionetoa/Tina Pisnik (Texas) and they are the fourth best team. The fifth and sixth best women’s doubles teams are Lea Jansen/Parris Todd (Columbus) and Rachel Rohrabacher/Jackie Kawamoto (Brooklyn) and those are the fifth and sixth best teams. It also holds true on the bottom end. The worst women’s doubles teams is either Dominique Schaefer/Lingwei Kong (New York) or Judit Castillo/Irina Tereschenko (SoCal), and they are the two worst teams. There are a lot of really good men’s doubles teams in MLP, and the late round picks of Howells and Augie Ge have meant a lot to the success of New Jersey and Dallas, but the straw that stirs the drink is the quality of the women’s doubles teams.

 

 

Interestingly, the big winner from MLP Austin was St. Louis, and they didn’t even play a match. With Dallas "only" getting 10 points in 4 matches, St. Louis takes over the points per match lead for the season. The top spot may well seesaw back and forth all year between St. Louis and Dallas, but I fully expect them to come in 1-2 at the end of the regular season. Finishing top two gives an easier playoff road, and as New Jersey is likely to finish third, finishing first would help avoid the toughest semifinal. Watch the battle all year between St. Louis and Dallas for that top spot.

 

Finally, I do want to note that the team points in Austin (Dallas 10, New Jersey 10, Texas 7, Orlando 3, and Miami 0) was exactly what I predicted in my MLP Austin preview.

Catch each preview done before every MLP for more insights.

 

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