Jack Munro Doubles Up as Columbus Turns Near-Misses Into Gold

Jack Munro and Richard Livornese Jr extended their remarkable men’s doubles run to six consecutive APP Tour titles in Columbus, while Munro added mixed doubles gold and Domenika Turkovic and Tristan Dussault converted sustained 2026 progress into singles championships.

There are tournament results that stand alone, and there are results that make more sense because of everything that happened before them.

Columbus belonged firmly in the second category.

Jack Munro and Richard Livornese Jr arrived in Ohio with five consecutive APP Tour men’s doubles titles and left with six, extending a championship run that has increasingly made the division their own. Munro then partnered Jill Braverman to mixed doubles gold, turning an already significant weekend into another double-title statement.

Yet the 2026 APP Columbus Open presented by The James was about considerably more than extending an established run.

Domenika Turkovic had spent much of 2026 reaching the latter stages of US APP Tour singles events without converting that consistency into gold. Tristan Dussault had come within one match of his first singles championship at Overland Park only two weeks earlier. Both left Columbus as champions.

Shelby Bates and Christine Maddox added the women’s doubles title, their second together across three APP Tour stops, completing a weekend in which almost every significant result felt connected to a wider trajectory.

Across a $125,000 event at Pickle & Chill, Columbus did not reset the APP season. It moved several of its most interesting stories forward.

Six Straight for Munro and Livornese

At some point, a winning streak becomes something more substantial.

Munro and Livornese have reached that point.

They entered Columbus having won five consecutive APP Tour men’s doubles championships, including their latest success at Overland Park. That result had already made their partnership one of the defining stories of the APP season and placed an obvious question over Columbus: could anybody finally stop them?

The answer was no.

Munro and Livornese defeated Jay Devilliers and Tanner Tomassi in the championship match to extend their sequence to six consecutive titles.

The number itself is impressive, but sustained success creates a different kind of competitive pressure. Every additional tournament gives opponents more footage, more familiarity with the partnership and another opportunity to identify patterns that might be disrupted.

Munro and Livornese keep finding answers.

Their run has therefore developed beyond a sequence of particularly good weekends. They have become the competitive reference point for APP men’s doubles, and every subsequent tournament now carries a question that barely needed asking earlier in the season.

Who stops them?

That question became particularly relevant in Columbus because Devilliers and Tomassi had earned their opportunity rather than simply benefiting from an opened draw. The No. 6 seeds beat the No. 2 partnership of Callan Dawson and Etienne Blaszkewycz 11-7, 11-6 in the semi-finals, while Munro and Livornese reached the final by beating Quang Duong and Aidan Schenk 11-0, 11-9.

WPM followed those developing Championship Sunday storylines in our Columbus Championship Sunday preview.

Devilliers and Tomassi had climbed through the draw. Munro and Livornese were waiting at the top of it.

The champions stayed there.

Braverman and Munro Do It Again

Munro’s Columbus weekend did not end with men’s doubles.

He and Jill Braverman also won mixed doubles, adding another championship to a partnership that had already demonstrated its potential earlier in the season.

Braverman and Munro won together in Cincinnati in June, recovering from 7-2 down in the deciding game against Sofia Sewing and Casey Diamond before taking the championship 11-9.

That previous success matters because Munro’s season is increasingly about more than one dominant partnership.

His run alongside Livornese comes from one of the most settled and successful combinations on the APP Tour. Mixed doubles asks different positional questions and requires adaptation to a different partner, yet Munro has continued to accumulate titles there too.

That versatility has become part of his 2026 story.

At Overland Park, Munro and Emilia Schmidt reached the mixed doubles final before losing an extraordinary three-game match to Allison Harris and Dussault. Two weeks later, he was back in another mixed final and this time left with gold.

For more on how that previous tournament shaped Columbus, read WPM’s APP Overland Park Championship Sunday review.

Turkovic Finally Converts US Consistency Into Gold

Domenika Turkovic’s championship requires more careful framing than simply calling it a breakthrough.

She had won before.

What had eluded her during the US APP Tour season was turning repeated contention into gold.

Turkovic retained the women’s singles title at the Proflex English Open in August, beating Roos van Reek in the final. Her wider 2026 season, however, had increasingly become defined by how consistently she was reaching the latter stages of APP events without yet winning on the US tour.

WPM’s English Open review examined that title and a weekend in which Turkovic again demonstrated her place among Europe’s leading players.

Back in the United States, the podium finishes continued.

At Overland Park, Turkovic pushed Katerina Stewart through three games in the women’s singles final. Stewart won the opener 11-8 and moved 6-1 ahead in the second before Turkovic responded with eight consecutive points and eventually forced a decider with an 11-8 game.

Stewart recovered to take the third 11-5.

Another final. Another medal. Still no US APP Tour gold in 2026.

Two weeks later, Turkovic reached the Columbus final after surviving one of the tightest matches of the tournament, beating Amanda Policare 13-11, 6-11, 12-10 in the semi-finals.

This time she finished the job against Jillian Evanier.

That distinction matters because Columbus was not the story of a player suddenly discovering a level she had never previously reached. Turkovic had spent much of the season demonstrating that the level was already there.

The missing piece was converting repeated contention into a US APP Tour championship.

Columbus supplied it.

Dussault Turns Momentum Into a Championship

Tristan Dussault’s progression has been considerably more compressed.

Two weeks before Columbus, he arrived at Overland Park without an APP Tour gold medal. By the end of that weekend he had won mixed doubles alongside Allison Harris and reached his first men’s singles final.

The mixed title required considerable resilience. Harris and Dussault lost the opening game against Emilia Schmidt and Munro 11-3 and fell 5-1 behind in the second before scoring ten consecutive points. They eventually survived multiple match points in the deciding game to win 12-10.

Dussault’s singles weekend ended one match earlier than he wanted, with Ammar Wazir winning the final 11-5, 11-7.

WPM had already seen the warning signs. During singles day in Kansas, Dussault recovered from an 11-2 opening-game defeat to knock out No. 1 seed Ronan Camron 2-11, 11-6, 11-1. You can revisit that run in our Overland Park singles report.

Columbus gave Dussault another opportunity almost immediately.

Again, Camron stood in his way.

Dussault beat the No. 1 seed 12-10, 7-11, 11-7 in the semi-finals before facing No. 2 seed Dusty Boyer for the title.

Removing the highest-ranked player from a draw creates an opportunity. Converting it is a different task.

Dussault did both.

His Columbus title means the sequence across two tournaments now carries considerably more weight. Overland Park gave him his first APP gold, his first men’s singles final and silver. Columbus turned that singles silver into gold.

That is no longer an isolated result.

It is a trajectory.

Bates and Maddox Return to the Top

Shelby Bates and Christine Maddox added another significant result to their developing partnership in Columbus, defeating Glauka Carvajal-Lane and Domenika Turkovic to win women’s doubles gold.

It was their second championship together across three APP Tour stops.

The first came in Detroit, where Bates and Maddox produced an extraordinary turnaround in the championship match. After losing the opening game 11-1 to Megan Fudge and Kara Wheatley, they trailed 10-3 in the second before saving match points, winning the game 12-10 and completing the comeback 11-1 in the third.

Two weeks later at Overland Park, they remained on the podium but slipped to bronze as Fudge and Katerina Stewart took gold.

Columbus put Bates and Maddox back on top.

The result changes the way their recent run should be viewed. One championship can represent an outstanding weekend. Winning twice across three tour stops, with another podium between them, begins to demonstrate repeatability.

For Turkovic, defeat prevented what would have been a double-gold Sunday, but singles gold and women’s doubles silver still made Columbus one of the most significant US weekends of her season.

She did not simply win the singles title she had been chasing. She reached two championship matches and reinforced the wider sense that her late-season form has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Singles and Doubles Are Telling Different Stories

The five Columbus championships also exposed an interesting contrast within the APP.

In doubles, continuity is becoming increasingly important.

Munro and Livornese are the extreme example, with six consecutive titles turning their partnership into the benchmark of the men’s division. Bates and Maddox have now won twice across three events. Braverman and Munro have demonstrated that their Cincinnati mixed title could be repeated.

The partnerships are beginning to acquire histories.

Singles feels less settled.

Turkovic had been threatening a US championship throughout the season before finally winning in Columbus. Dussault has accelerated rapidly from contender to champion. Boyer, beaten in Sunday’s final, had himself celebrated a breakthrough singles championship earlier in the year.

That relative openness matters.

A division does not require a different champion every week to remain competitive, but it does need credible pathways for players to move from the chasing group into genuine title contention.

The APP currently has them.

Columbus provided two examples on the same weekend.

Columbus Was About What Happened Next

The deeper significance of Columbus lies in how little of it existed in isolation.

Munro and Livornese did not suddenly become the dominant APP men’s doubles partnership in Ohio. They arrived with five consecutive titles and made it six.

Turkovic did not suddenly emerge as a singles contender. She had spent months reaching podiums and finals before converting that consistency into her first US APP Tour gold of the season.

Dussault did not appear from nowhere. Overland Park had already provided his first APP championship and first singles final before Columbus turned silver into gold.

Braverman and Munro had won together before. They did it again.

Bates and Maddox had already demonstrated that they could win together. Columbus gave them a second title in three tournaments.

That continuity is important because professional tours become more compelling when tournaments begin to carry consequences beyond their own final day.

A silver medal can establish the context for a gold two weeks later. One doubles title can become two, then five, then six. A partnership can move from an interesting combination to something every opponent is specifically trying to solve.

Columbus contained all of those things.

The Questions Have Changed

For Munro and Livornese, the central question is no longer whether they can win another tournament together.

Six consecutive championships have answered that often enough.

Now it is about the scale of the run and who eventually ends it.

For Turkovic and Dussault, the question has changed too.

Both spent part of this season trying to convert evidence of progress into US APP Tour singles championships. Both have now done it.

For Bates and Maddox, Columbus changes the question from whether Detroit could be repeated to how far this partnership can develop.

That is why the weekend mattered.

The APP left Ohio with its dominant men’s partnership becoming still harder to dislodge, two singles contenders converting opportunity into championships, another women’s doubles partnership establishing repeat success and Munro strengthening an already significant 2026 season with another two-title weekend.

Columbus did not give the APP entirely new stories.

It made the existing ones considerably more important.

Further Reading

• APP Columbus Open Reaches Championship Sunday With Turkovic Chasing Double
• APP Overland Park: Dussault Breaks Through as Munro and Livornese Roll On
• Dussault Takes Down No. 1 Camron at APP Overland Park
• English Open 2026: The NEC Changed Everything

Official tournament information: 2026 APP Columbus Open presented by The James

Chris Beaumont

Founder and Editor-in-Chief

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at…

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