The United States swept Latin America 3-0 in Texas to win the first MLP Nations Cup, and dropped only four games all weekend. But the semi-finals told us more about where the rest of the world stands. Both losing semi-finalists won the one game they were best at, then lost the other three.
The short answer: The USA beat Latin America 3-0 (11-9, 11-1, 11-6) in the final of the first MLP Nations Cup at Brookhaven Country Club in Farmers Branch, Texas, on Sunday 1 November. They won all five of their matches and 14 of 18 games. In the semi-finals Latin America beat Asia Domestic 3-1 and the USA beat Europe East 3-1. On WPM’s own count, the USA were the only team of the eight that finished ahead on points in all four disciplines.
The closest anyone got to the champions came late on Saturday, and it took the only DreamBreaker of the weekend to settle it. Asia Domestic won the men’s doubles against the USA 11-6. They won the first mixed game 14-12. The USA had taken the women’s game 13-11 and then won the second mixed 11-4. That left the match at 2-2 and sent it to the singles rotation. The USA won it 21-18. MLP called it the first DreamBreaker of the event, and none of the other 14 matches needed one.
Less than a day later the final was over in three games. The women’s opener went to 11-9. The men’s game finished 11-1. The mixed game finished 11-6. Asia Domestic took more games off the USA in one evening than Latin America and Europe East managed between them on Sunday.
That gives you the conventional reading of the weekend, and it is not wrong: the USA against the world, and the USA win. My argument is that it is the least interesting thing the event measured. The Nations Cup was billed as stars against depth. The final could not settle that, because the USA had both. The semi-finals could, and they settled it clearly.
What did the final actually test?
Before the weekend, our slate set a falsifier for the depth argument. If the final was won on the gender doubles by a team that lost both mixed games, the idea that balance wins MLP-format ties would be in trouble. It did not happen, in the final or anywhere else. In none of the 15 matches did the winner lose both mixed games.
It would be dishonest to call that a victory for depth, though. The USA won the women’s, men’s and first mixed games in the final, so Sunday never tested whether one could make up for the other. According to ThePickleHub’s game-by-game report, Anna Bright played two of the three games, with Kate Fahey in the women’s and with Ben Johns in the mixed. Johns played the other with CJ Klinger. In other words the champions’ best players were also their deepest resource. That is not a contradiction. It is what the USA roster is like.
Johnny Goldberg, the USA captain, put the speed of it in plain terms. “They’re definitely all patriots. They were really proud playing for their country coming into it,” he told pickleball.com. “I knew they were all great players, but to get them to come together in 24 hours—they bought into everything.” He added: “I felt like we were playing our best pickleball in that last match.” The scoreline supports him. Latin America scored 16 points in three games.
Where do our numbers show the gap?
A quick word on the method. Everything below comes from the official results board on the World Championships site. It covers all 15 matches: 12 pool matches, two semi-finals and the final. I have taken each team’s game record and point difference by discipline. MLP plays women’s doubles, men’s doubles, then two mixed games, with a DreamBreaker only if the tie stands at 2-2. I have left the one DreamBreaker out of the discipline totals. The official board does not say which pair played which game, so where I name pairs, I credit ThePickleHub’s report.
| Team | Women’s | Men’s | Mixed 1 | Mixed 2 | Games | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 4-1 (+12) | 4-1 (+27) | 3-2 (+21) | 3-0 (+21) | 14-4 | +81 |
| Latin America | 3-2 (+6) | 2-3 (−1) | 3-2 (+13) | 1-0 (+8) | 9-7 | +26 |
| Asia Domestic | 1-3 (−15) | 4-0 (+13) | 3-1 (+13) | 1-2 (−13) | 9-6 | −2 |
| Europe East | 2-2 (+4) | 1-3 (−14) | 4-0 (+16) | 1-2 (−7) | 8-7 | −1 |
| Australia | 2-1 (+2) | 1-2 (−2) | 1-2 (−2) | 2-0 (+11) | 6-5 | +9 |
| Europe West | 2-1 (+9) | 0-3 (−21) | 1-2 (−17) | 1-1 (+3) | 4-7 | −26 |
| Canada | 1-2 (−4) | 1-2 (−2) | 0-3 (−22) | 0-2 (−15) | 2-9 | −43 |
| Asia International | 0-3 (−14) | 2-1 (0) | 0-3 (−22) | 0-2 (−8) | 2-9 | −44 |
Game record by discipline (point difference in brackets) across all matches. Second mixed games are only played when a tie is still alive. Source: official MLP Nations Cup results board; WPM analysis.
Read the table across rather than down. The USA are the only team with a positive point difference in every column. Their weakest discipline, first mixed, was still won 3-2 and by 21 points. They lost four games all weekend: the women’s game against Canada, the men’s and first mixed against Asia Domestic, and the first mixed against Europe East. Two of the four were lost 14-12. Nobody found a soft spot in the USA side. At best they found a few long games.
Now look at the two beaten semi-finalists. Asia Domestic’s men were unbeaten, 4-0. Their women won one game in four. Europe East were the reverse in mixed: 4-0 in the first mixed game and 1-3 in men’s doubles. Each team had one outstanding discipline and was ordinary elsewhere.
Why did the semi-finals matter more than the final?
The semi-finals are where the table stopped being a pattern and became a result. In the first one, on Sunday morning in Texas, Latin America beat Asia Domestic 3-1. Asia Domestic won the men’s doubles 11-9, the one game they were built to win, and ThePickleHub credits it to Augustus Ge and Len Yang. Latin America won the other three games 11-3, 11-3 and 11-3. MLP summed it up on X as “a bodybag, an ATP and a ticket to the final”, and it is hard to argue with. Asia Domestic scored 20 points across four games. Nine of them came in the three games they lost.
In the second semi-final the USA beat Europe East 3-1, and the same thing happened. Europe East won the first mixed game 14-12, their unbeaten discipline, which ThePickleHub credits to Andrei Daescu and Daria Walczak. They lost the women’s, men’s and second mixed games. They did it without Tina Pisnik, whom MLP said was out of the semi-final through illness. That deserves credit: a team a player short still took a game from the champions.
So both losing semi-finalists won the game they were best at and lost the rest. That is the depth argument in its most useful form. A brilliant pair gets you one game in four. MLP’s format asks for three.
The women’s game, played first, was the best predictor all weekend. Its winner won the tie in 13 of the 15 matches. The two exceptions were Asia Domestic against Europe West and the USA against Canada, and in both the side that lost the opener won the next three games. Captains will notice. Opening with your strongest women’s pair is not a gimmick. It is how ties were won.
Was the rest of the field really that close?
Below the USA, very nearly. Pool 2 finished with Latin America, Europe East and Australia all on two wins and one defeat. Latin America topped it on the official board despite losing 3-0 to Europe East on Friday. With game difference level at +3, the separator appears to have been point difference: +21 against +14. MLP has not published its tiebreak order in anything I could find, so treat that as an inference from the table, not a rule. Australia went home with the same record as both semi-finalists and a positive point difference of +9. They were only third on game difference.
Pool 1 was less kind to the outsiders. Canada, captained by Steve Deakin, went 0-3 and finished on −43, despite starting their first match by taking the women’s game off the USA 11-5. Our own preview had Canada second in that pool, and they lost all three. That call was wrong. Europe West beat Canada and lost to the two semi-finalists. Their women won two of their three games, and their men won none.
Beyond the USA, the field was tight. Of the 54 regular games, 36 did not involve the USA, and their average winning margin was 5.4 points. Games involving the USA averaged 6.2. The difference sounds small. Over a match, it is a sweep.
What do the old team cups tell us?
Pickleball has borrowed the model, so it is fair to borrow the history. The Ryder Cup began in 1927 as Great Britain against the United States. Repeated American dominance eventually widened the home side, first to Great Britain and Ireland and, from 1979, to the whole of Europe. Fifty-two years passed before anyone redrew the map. Tennis’s Laver Cup started in 2017 with the regions already drawn: Team Europe against Team World. After nine editions Europe lead it six to three. The Davis Cup took the other route. It began in 1900 between Great Britain and the United States, and by 2023, 155 nations entered teams.
MLP has gone with the Ryder and Laver model from the start, and it was the right decision. There are not yet enough professional pairs in enough countries to run a Davis Cup of pickleball. Asia alone had twelve of the 48 roster places, split across two teams, and Europe had another twelve. The host nation had six. The first edition shows what the regional model fixes and what it does not. It produced a three-way tie in one pool and a Latin American team in the final. It did not produce a team that could beat the USA, or take more than two games off them in a match. A 14-4 game record leaves everyone else some way behind, and the regions should remember how long the Ryder Cup took.
Where is the global story in all this?
Latin America is the story the result headline will bury. Their side had three Brazilians, Mari Humberg, Rafael Lenhard and Eric Oncins, with Nicolas Acevedo of Chile, Alexa Schull of Puerto Rico and Carlota Trevino of Mexico. They lost their opening match 3-0, won the next three, and reached the final with the second-best point difference of the event. They lost all six games they played against the USA and Europe East, so the gap at the top is real. Against everyone else they looked like a team rather than a list of names.
Asia Domestic matter for a different reason. Their roster drew on China, Chinese Taipei, India and Vietnam. They beat Europe West and Canada, took the USA to a DreamBreaker, and reached the last four. Readers of our piece on China’s CPC points route will know the questions about how China’s domestic pathway feeds the professional game. On this showing it can already produce a men’s pair to trouble anyone. The women’s side of that pipeline is the next question, and it is a fair one rather than a criticism.
For British readers the count is short. Scotland’s Will MacKinnon, playing for Europe West, was the only player from the United Kingdom among the 48 on the published rosters. Europe West’s men lost all three of their games. That is not a verdict on one player, but it does show how thin our presence at the top of the international game still is.
What should year two look like?
The players seem to want one. “All the chants, all the support from the crowd really meant so much and really helped us feel like we were playing for more than ourselves,” Bright told pickleball.com. “I knew coming into this event that it would be a good time, but it was way more fun than I thought it would be. It was super fun representing the USA with them, and I really hope that this event continues to happen.” Connor Pardoe, the PPA Tour founder whose company runs both the PPA and MLP, called it “a blast” on X. He also pointed straight to the Worlds week that follows: “Now on to the biggest week in pickleball!!!”
Three small changes would make the second edition a better test. Publish the tiebreak order before the first serve, so Pool 2’s finish needs no explanation. Put the pairings for each game on the official board, so nobody has to rely on secondary reports to know who beat whom. And think about a third-place match, because Europe East and Asia Domestic earned more than an early flight. None of that is a complaint. It is what a good first edition gets in return: more scrutiny.
The World Championships main draw begins on Tuesday at the same venue, and most of these 48 players go back to playing for themselves. The Nations Cup will be remembered as a US sweep. It should be remembered as the weekend the rest of the world found out what it lacks. That is not stars. It is a third good pair.
The verdict: the USA were the only complete team in Texas. Everyone else brought one great pair to a format that needs three. Asia Domestic needed a DreamBreaker to lose to the champions. Next year the others need a deeper team.
