MLP Asia’s first night went to the home team twice: a 4-0 rout of Manila Helios, then a 3-2 win over the favourites that came back from 11-17 down in the league’s first DreamBreaker.
New leagues are supposed to open politely. A ceremony, a few nervous games, a result that tells you very little. THE DOTS TOKYO did not get that memo. On Friday night at Sansan Pickleball Court Ikebukuro, in front of a home crowd with a professional team of its own to watch for the first time, they won both matches of MLP Asia’s first match day, took five points and went to bed on top of the table.
The second of those wins was the one the rankings said they would lose. It was also the one they nearly did.
A first match with no argument in it
Manila Helios arrived with the lowest-ranked roster of the night, and the opener played out exactly as the numbers suggested. THE DOTS won all four games. Aiko Yoshitomi and Rika Fujiwara set the tone, winning the women’s doubles 11-3. Captain Yuta Funemizu and Daniel Moore matched it, 11-3 in the men’s doubles. By the time Mihae Kwon and Nasa Hatakeyama closed out the second mixed game 11-1, the Helios had barely laid a glove on them.
That is not a cruel line. It is what a 4-0 with scores like those looks like. Manila have three more matches to find a way into this season, and they will need one.
The match that was supposed to go the other way
The Malayan Stripes were a different proposition, and the league’s own preview had said so. On average World Pickleball Rankings across the full roster, the Stripes were 74, THE DOTS 129. Take only the top four and it was 41 against 43. Either way, the visitors were the paper favourites, with world No.11 Lacy Schneemann and No.23 Eunggwon Kim in their line-up.
They played like it from the start. Schneemann and Xiao Yi Wang-Beckvall won the women’s doubles 11-6. Then the captain took over. Funemizu and Moore won the men’s doubles 11-4, and Funemizu came straight back out with Yoshitomi to win the first mixed 11-5. Schneemann was not finished either. She and captain Jimmy Liong took the second mixed 11-4, and at 2-2 the match went to the first DreamBreaker in MLP Asia’s short history.
For most of it, according to the league’s match report, the paper was right. Liong, Kim, Schneemann and Wang-Beckvall pulled clear in the rotating singles, and with three rotations left THE DOTS trailed 11-17. Six points behind in a race to 21, against the best-ranked roster of the night. You would not have backed them.
Then came eight points in a row. Kwon won all four of her rallies. Hatakeyama, the left-hander, did the same, and a six-point deficit had become a 19-17 lead. Funemizu kept them in front at 20-19. The last point fell to Fujiwara, across the net from Schneemann, the highest-ranked player in the building. She closed it out, 21-19.
The captain, and the player-coach
The night’s outstanding figure was not hard to find. Funemizu won all four of his games across the men’s doubles and first mixed, conceding just 18 points in them, and then held his nerve in the breaker. He came into the season 17th in the world in men’s doubles. On this evidence, that number is not flattering him.
The more entertaining figure is his partner. Moore, the team’s player-coach, went into the week 518th in the world rankings, the single figure that dragged Tokyo’s six-player average down to 129. He and Funemizu dropped seven points across two men’s doubles games. Rankings measure where people have played over the past year. They are not much use at measuring a player-coach who puts himself on court and then proves the point.
For the Stripes, Schneemann was the visitors’ best player on the night, winning both her doubles games, and she ended the night on the wrong end of a 21-19. That is the cruelty of the format. All four games count, and then the fifth counts more.
What one night is worth
Not a great deal yet, and I would not pretend otherwise. Each team plays only four regular-season matches, with 12 points available, and the top four of six go to the finals at Tomaz Pickleball Club in Kuala Lumpur on 11 and 12 December. THE DOTS have five of a possible 12. Under the league’s points system the Stripes take one for losing a DreamBreaker. The Helios have none.
But a short season makes an opening weekend matter more, not less. Tokyo have already done their hosting, and their next two matches are on the road: the Viet Panthers in Ho Chi Minh City on 21 November, then the Dragon Warriors on 27 November in Kuala Lumpur, where that match day has been moved for operational reasons. The Stripes go to Ho Chi Minh City the same night with a point and a grievance.
The preview figures said Stripes. The home crowd said otherwise, and so, from 11-17 down, did Kwon, Hatakeyama, Funemizu and Fujiwara. Paper is useful. It does not play DreamBreakers.
On Saturday the league moves to Discovery Bay, where the Hong Kong Cannons host the Viet Panthers and the Dragon Warriors. Our MLP Asia daily, first thing tomorrow, covers what Tokyo has changed and what to watch in Hong Kong.
