Four teams left in MLP. And the APP has two new benchmarks.

Good morning, pickleballers.

Today's Report starts in New York, where four teams have three days to settle an entire MLP season. New Jersey chose Brooklyn, St Louis drew the rebuilt Dallas Flash, and every regular-season argument now has to survive Central Park. Then we turn to the APP, where Jack Munro and Richard Livornese Jr have won five tournaments in succession together, while Ronan Camron finally converted a season of No. 1 consistency into his first singles gold of 2026.

Four teams arrive in Central Park carrying months of evidence. By Sunday, only one result matters.

The New Jersey 5s finished as the MLP No. 1 seed and used the privilege that came with it: they chose Brooklyn as their semifinal opponent. On the other side of the bracket, 29-3 St Louis face a Dallas Flash team transformed by the roster changes that followed a miserable start in Austin.

There is no straightforward favourite once the matchups are examined properly. New Jersey have extraordinary partnership records but difficult lineup choices if anything starts to move against them. Brooklyn are healthier than when the 5s swept them in June. St Louis have spent three years proving almost everything except that they can survive this stage. Dallas have already rebuilt one failed version of their season.

Our Finals preview breaks down all four teams, the combinations that could decide the weekend and the Dream Breaker question waiting underneath it all.

Read the MLP Finals preview

Five tournaments. Five titles. The challengers keep changing. Munro and Livornese do not.

Jack Munro and Richard Livornese Jr have now won four consecutive APP men's doubles titles together: Sacramento, Cincinnati, Chicago and Detroit.

Between Chicago and Detroit, they also travelled to Birmingham and won the English Open. Five tournaments in this run have therefore produced five championships, across different fields and two countries.

Detroit came closest to stopping them. Etienne Blaszkewycz and Callan Dawson led the opening game 10-6, only for Munro and Livornese to win six straight points and eventually take the final 12-10, 11-7. Four APP finals have produced four different challengers. None has yet returned for a second attempt.

Why can't anyone stop them?

The APP's No. 1 finally has the result that was missing.

Ronan Camron arrived in Detroit as the APP's No. 1 men's singles player and its leading male medallist of 2026. He had already collected bronze in Kuala Lumpur, silver in Cincinnati and another bronze in Chicago.

What he had not done was win a singles title this year. Cincinnati made that absence particularly visible when Dusty Boyer beat him 11-5, 11-4 in the final.

Detroit produced the rematch and a different result. Camron beat Boyer 11-7, 11-8, having already survived Brandon Lane 12-10 in a deciding quarter-final game. Consistency had carried him to No. 1. Detroit finally converted it into gold.

How Camron finally converted

The APP has produced two very different versions of becoming the benchmark.

Camron reached No. 1 by accumulating results across a season in which different players kept winning tournaments. Munro and Livornese have travelled the opposite route, stacking championships until everybody else in the draw has to prepare specifically for them.

One story is about consistency finally converting into a title. The other is about titles becoming expectation. Neither guarantees what happens next, which is what makes both worth following: Camron now has to turn one gold into something repeatable, while the APP men's doubles field has to turn one of its rotating finalists into a genuine rival.

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