The Report
Dussault Breaks Through, Arizona Delivers and the Coasters Arrive
Good morning, pickleballers.
We left you on Friday with Arizona's draws wide open and Tristan Dussault heading towards his first APP singles final. Two days later, we have considerably more to unpack.
Christopher Haworth answered his Cary defeat by beating Federico Staksrud for the Arizona men's singles title, Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu survived one of the stories of the tournament to win men's doubles, and Anna Leigh Waters left Mesa with another two gold medals.
Elsewhere, Dussault finally broke through on the APP Tour, Megan Fudge reached 33 career golds, a brand-new MLP Australia franchise won at its first attempt, Sabrina Méndez doubled up in Spain and the Amber Valley Open began an ambitious two-weekend experiment in England.
Arizona opened the door. These were the players who took it.
Arizona began with significant absences, unusual partnerships and a men's doubles draw blown apart when Yuta Funemizu and Nicolas Acevedo beat Ben Johns and Federico Staksrud 11-4, 11-5. The interesting question was whether the disruption would survive all the way to Championship Sunday.
Some of it did. Funemizu and Acevedo followed their enormous upset with two more three-game victories and came within two points of the men's doubles title before Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu finally stopped them 11-7, 7-11, 15-13.
Christopher Haworth supplied another answer by beating Federico Staksrud for men's singles gold, while Parris Todd and Rachel Rohrabacher won women's doubles. Anna Leigh Waters remained the exception to much of the weekend's disruption, taking both women's singles and mixed doubles alongside Ben Johns.
Arizona gave more players than usual an opportunity. Championship Sunday showed us who was ready to convert it.
Read our Arizona tournament verdictDussault breaks through. Fudge reaches 33. Munro-Livornese make it five.
Tristan Dussault's first Championship Sunday began with defeat. Ammar Wazir beat him 11-5, 11-7 in the men's singles final, maintaining his perfect 6-0 record in APP gold-medal matches.
A few hours later, Dussault and Allison Harris were a game down and eventually 10-7 behind against Emilia Schmidt and Jack Munro in the mixed doubles decider. The No.21 seeds scored the final five points to win 3-11, 11-5, 12-10 and give Dussault his first APP Tour gold.
There was history elsewhere. Megan Fudge and Kat Stewart won the women's doubles final 11-2, 11-0, taking Fudge to 33 career APP gold medals and level with Simone Jardim's women's record. Stewart also won her fourth singles title of 2026.
Meanwhile Jack Munro and Richard Livornese Jr won men's doubles for the fifth consecutive tournament. What looked like a hot streak a few events ago is becoming the standard the rest of the APP field has to solve.
Inside the Overland Park weekendMelbourne, Gijón and Stourbridge all gave us something new
🇦🇺 The Coasters win at the first attempt.
MLP Australia's remodelled Premier competition began in Melbourne with a brand-new franchise taking the title. Danni-Elle Townsend, Roman Esteraja, Ryan Henry and Tayah Cross survived a semi-final DreamBreaker against Brisbane Breakers before The Coasters went on to beat Northern Crocs for the opening championship of 2026.
Read: The Coasters win MLP Australia Melbourne →
🇪🇸 Sabrina Méndez doubles up in Gijón.
Méndez won women's doubles with Paula Levitskiy and mixed alongside Pep Canyadell as the APP-backed Top Pickleball Tour completed its inaugural weekend. Álvaro Dóyega won men's singles and Alberto Horcajuelo and David Álvarez took men's doubles, but the bigger question is whether this new circuit can connect Spain's existing competitive scene to something genuinely international.
Read: What Gijón tells us about APP's European model →
🇬🇧 Cawston and Matysik set the standard.
Ben Cawston and Mateusz Matysik dominated the men's Open at the first weekend of the Amber Valley Open, winning the final 11-3, 11-3 after conceding only 18 points across the entire knockout stage. Lauren Gosling and Emma Wrixon, Alexander Minogue-Stone and Evie Kenna, and Richard Love and Anna Linton took the other Open titles.
The tournament now moves from Courtside Stourbridge to Derby Arena next weekend, where its two-venue, two-weekend format gets its second test.
Read: Inside Amber Valley's two-weekend experiment →
Five numbers worth remembering
33 Megan Fudge's career APP gold medals after drawing level with Simone Jardim's women's record. 5 Consecutive men's doubles titles for Jack Munro and Richard Livornese Jr. 21 Harris and Dussault's mixed doubles seed before they won the Overland Park title. 63–18 Cawston and Matysik's knockout aggregate on the way to Amber Valley men's Open gold. 15–13 The deciding game of the Arizona men's doubles final, where Alshon and Daescu finally stopped Funemizu and Acevedo.Go deeper into the global game
The Challenger pathway gets interesting. Kiora Kunimoto and Elliott Schupp arrived in Arizona after going 11-2 together across two PPA Challenger events, then carried that form into a main-tour quarter-final. The gap between the two levels may be becoming more important than it looks.
Asia's structure keeps changing. MLP Asia has drafted its first international rosters, APP is building its own regional schedule and PPA Tour Asia is already producing increasingly recognisable player storylines. The battle is no longer simply to stage events, but to create structures players actually follow.
And Europe is next. With the Top Pickleball Tour now underway and PPA Tour Europe continuing its own expansion, the autumn calendar is about to give us much better evidence of what sustainable professional pickleball in Europe might actually look like.
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