Jay Devilliers and Domenika Turkovic beat Megan Fudge and Aidan Schenk 11–1, 11–0 to reach the mixed final against Vivian Glozman and Ronan Camron, who knocked out Jack Munro and Roos Van Reek. Fudge’s record now rests on women’s doubles with Jada Bui. The seniors’ doubles went to a Thursday partnership, split in two.
Eleven–one, eleven–nil. Semi-finals at this level are not supposed to look like that, and certainly not when one of the teams on the wrong end of it includes the most decorated woman in the history of the APP Tour.
That was Friday’s mixed in Mesa. Jay Devilliers and Domenika Turkovic, the Louisville silver medallists, went through their side of the draw without dropping a game: 11–2, 11–7 against Andre Mick and Ava Kalist, 13–11, 11–4 against Bobbi Oshiro and Mark Dancuart, 11–5, 11–5 against Yana Newell and Andre Millet, and then the semi-final against Fudge and Schenk, in which they gave up a single point. Four matches, eight games, 35 points conceded, and only the Oshiro game went beyond 11.
Fudge and Schenk had earned their place. They came through Amber Policare and Etienne Blaszkewycz 12–10, 11–3, then beat Susannah Barr and Patrick Kawka 11–6, 11–6. But the arithmetic of the week has changed. Fudge arrived level with Simone Jardim on 33 women’s pro gold medals, the tour record, and the mixed was her first chance to move clear. She and Schenk now play Emilia Schmidt and Daniel De la Rosa for bronze. Whatever the APP counts towards that record, the mixed can no longer give it to her this week.
The other finalists took the more dramatic route. Vivian Glozman and Ronan Camron, the No.1 men’s singles seed who lost to Alvi Regalado on Thursday, beat Seone Mendez and Ryan Fu 11–6, 11–5 and Allison Harris and Alex Emery 12–10, 11–3. Then came Munro and Van Reek, the Louisville champions, with Munro chasing a third straight mixed gold. Glozman and Camron won 11–6, 7–11, 11–8, and took the semi-final from Schmidt and De la Rosa 11–1, 11–5. Schmidt and De la Rosa had beaten Katerina Stewart and Richard Livornese Jr 11–9, 8–11, 11–4 in the quarter-finals, so the Louisville mixed bronze medallists are out too. The mixed final and bronze match are still to be played.
The ratings got one right
On Thursday I wrote that a 50-plus singles draw is exactly the kind of event where a forecast goes to die. On Friday the forecast went home safe and well.
Youssef Bouzidi, whose DUPR singles rating of 6.07 was the highest in the 14-man AARP Champions (50+) field, won the gold. Marcello Jardim took silver and Blake Arrant bronze, which means the three highest-rated men in the draw finished on the podium. In the women’s Champions singles, Karin Ptaszek-Kochis and Eugenia Carolina Lopez Ascarate, the two highest-rated players and some way clear of the rest, contested the final, and Ptaszek-Kochis won it. Margit Aardmaa took bronze.
One Thursday final, two Friday golds
The Masters (60+) doubles produced the neatest result of the day. On Thursday Heather Iffert and Mark Wilder won the Masters mixed, beating Anna Shirley and Ross Weinberg in the final. On Friday they went their separate ways and both won again.
Wilder and Howard Mendel took the men’s Masters doubles, beating Dana Treister and Scott Greenberg 11–5, 11–6 in the semi-final and Todd Murphy and Steve Scurfield 11–4, 11–1 in the final. Scott Moore and Vince Van Patten, beaten 11–5, 7–11, 11–9 by Murphy and Scurfield in the winners’ bracket, came back through the back draw and took bronze from John Moorin and Weinberg 11–4, 9–11, 11–8.
Iffert, meanwhile, partnered Shirley, the woman she had beaten the day before, and the pair were hardly touched: 11–3, 11–2 against Linda Higgins and Maureen Doyle, 11–5, 11–1 against Lisa Conway and Brenda Niemeyer, and 11–1, 11–4 against Sue Johnston and Barbara Dunne in the final. Conway and Niemeyer recovered to beat Lynn Salo and Jean Halahan 3–11, 13–11, 11–7 for bronze. Two days, two golds each for Iffert and Wilder, and a gold and a silver for Shirley.
Seone Mendez, honest about Thursday
The most candid account of the week so far belongs to Mendez, who arrived in Mesa having just won singles at the US Nationals and lost her quarter-final to Van Reek, 8–11, 11–9, 11–3. Writing in her player blog for the APP that afternoon, she did not dress it up. “Kudos to Roos. I think she played great,” she wrote. “She didn’t really fault, didn’t miss a drop, didn’t miss too many balls.”
She was just as plain about why a defeat stings more for some players than others. “I also put pressure on myself to win more because if you don’t win, you don’t get paid,” she wrote. It is a sentence worth remembering whenever the sport talks about its depth. On Friday she and Fu ran into Glozman and Camron in their first match, won once in the back draw and then went out to Oshiro and Dancuart. On Saturday she plays women’s doubles with Newell.
Saturday: the streak, the record and the Hall of Fame
Men’s pro doubles starts at 08:00 Mountain, which is 15:00 in London. The story is the one the APP put at the top of its own preview: Munro and Livornese have won seven consecutive men’s doubles titles this season, the last of them over Zack Marceau and Schenk in Louisville. They are entered together again, and eight in a row is the number on the line. Marceau has a new partner this week in Ryan Fu, Devilliers plays with Tanner Tomassi, and Regalado, two days before his singles final, partners Bakó Bálint Gergő.
Women’s pro doubles follows at 09:30 Mountain (16:30 London), and it is Fudge’s second shot at the record, with Bui. The pairings have been reshuffled since Louisville. Stewart, who won her first APP women’s doubles gold there with Oshiro, now plays with Brooke Revuelta. Glauka Carvajal-Lane, silver at three tournaments running, is back with Turkovic, her partner for two of them. Van Reek plays with Glozman.
The seniors keep going around them: Champions (50+) mixed from 11:00 Mountain (18:00 London), with the Masters (60+) women’s singles at 10:00 and men’s singles at 13:00 Mountain.
On Championship Court, the APP will also celebrate the Pickleball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026: Matt Wright, Lucy Kovalova and Dave Weinbach as competitors, Marsha Freso, one of the first ten USA Pickleball-certified referees, and Linda Laymon. Championship Court coverage runs from 17:30 to midnight London time on ESPN+, and the Players Court from 15:00 to 20:00 on APPTV on YouTube.
Sunday’s singles finals are already set: Regalado, seeded 41st of 41, against Millet, and a repeat of the Louisville women’s final between Stewart and Turkovic. After Louisville, Turkovic wrote in her own APP blog: “Kat is a great player and I love battling against her.” She gets to do it again on Sunday, with a mixed final to play as well. Saturday decides whether there is a third.
