Brooklyn And Columbus Tighten The Major League Pickleball Playoff Chase In NYC
Major League Pickleball (MLP) presented by DoorDash made the cross-country trip from San Clemente to host its seventh event of the season in New York. This year, they featured this event at a new NYC venue, namely the Sporttime Randalls' Island tennis facility within a stone's throw of LaGuardia nestled in the East river between Harlem and Long Island.
Key Links for tracking the event this weekend, which featured livestreams from the two primary courts at the facility on MLP's YouTube channel and on PickleballTV.com.
Transaction Recap
Ahead of the weekend, the following transactions were announced:
- Carolina gets Etta Tuiotenoa, Texas gets Kaitlyn Christian & cash. So, this is an interesting and impactful move to MLP in general, because Etta Tuiotenoa is clearly a better doubles player than Christian, and Carolina's mixed teams have been a mess. They're nearly in last place though, but this move reunites Ben Johns with a favorite mixed partner in Etta (with whom he won several titles back in 2023 while the team was the Seattle Pioneers). Is this the move that spurs Carolina to success? Meanwhile, this move seems to make Texas weaker in doubles, but stronger in DreamBreakers. But, you have to GET to the DreamBreaker to win. It should be interesting to see how Christian gels with her new teammates, who have high expectations of competing with the league's best.
- Bay Area gets Querrey, Atlanta gets Roddy for its bench. A curiously timed move if anything; Sam Querrey will immediately miss the NYC event for his new Challenger team since he'll be on two weeks' of broadcast duties at Wimbledon for the Tennis Channel. So Bay Area rids itself of a capable player to have to immediately use an on-site sub. Weird. As for the value of the move; is Querrey an improvement over Roddy? I don't think so.
- As the matches unfolded this weekend, we found out about a slew of missing names for major teams, which we'll mention as they come up. Top players missing at least one day of the competition included Parris Todd, Jay Devilliers, Dekel Bar, and the aforementioned Sam Querrey, who was replaced in Challenger by none other than Collin Johns (who has traded a Premier spot playing alongside his brother with on-site super-sub duties).
Premier League Recap
Super-sub AJ Koller (R) teamed with Brooklyn's Riley Newman (L) in NYC.
Day 1 Observations
Day 2 Observations
Day 3 Observations
Day 4 Observations
Carolina's new acquisition Etta Tuionetoa helped Carolina back into the playoff hunt.
Challenger League Recap
Anderson Scarpa is a big reason why Nashville went 5-0 to open up the Challenger playoff race.
Day 1 Observations
Day 2 Observations
Day 3 Observations
Day 4 Observations
Team Standings Update post Event
Here's the teams who made moves up or down the Standings in this event.
In Premier
In Challenger
Player Standings/Stats Analysis for the Weekend:
In Premier
In Challenger
What did we learn this weekend?
What were our top three Takeaways from the competition this weekend?
Matt Klitch Media Pick' Em Contest Update
MLP Super-Fan Matty Pickles (aka Matt Klitch) runs a season-long Media MLP Pick'em Contest on Twitter, where all the pundits in the sport are participating. I had an excellent weekend, going 7-1 in his competition to remain in the season-long lead. The only missed pick was my picking Las Vegas to go undefeated.
Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, MLP heads to Grand Rapids, Michigan for the 2025 Beer City Open and mid-season knockout tournament. Yours truly will be in Michigan for a couple days covering the event and doing some interviews. If you're onsite, I'd love to catch up and chat, whether you're a player, fan, team owner, or league executive. DM me on Twitter or Facebook to sync up.
All match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 22,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours.
Also, a great thanks to The Dink's Erik Tice, who maintains a fantastic MLP detailed data breakdown and makes it publicly available at this Google XLS link. Tice's data has proved invaluable this year as MLP does not make match data available at this detailed level at present.
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