New Jersey lost both gender doubles games on Saturday and both mixed games on Sunday. They survived both matches, won two DreamBreakers and finally claimed the MLP title which had escaped them for two years.
At 20-19 in Saturday’s DreamBreaker, the St Louis Shock were one point from taking control of the Major League Pickleball Finals.
Gabe Tardio had the ball. Will Howells stood across from him. New Jersey had already lost both gender doubles games, surrendered eight consecutive points in the men’s match and spent much of the tiebreaker behind. After falling in the championship series in each of the previous two seasons, the 5s were about to begin another final by watching an opponent close them out.
Howells kept the point alive.
The rotation moved to Anna Leigh Waters against Kate Fahey. Waters won twice, turning match point down into a 22-20 victory and a 1-0 lead in the series.
Twenty-four hours later, the same teams reached another DreamBreaker by reversing the path which had taken them to the first. New Jersey won both gender doubles games. St Louis recovered through mixed.
There would be no prolonged finish this time.
Federico Staksrud and Waters each won their singles matchups 6-2. Jorja Johnson closed the championship with consecutive points against Anna Bright. New Jersey took the DreamBreaker 21-9, completed a 2-0 series victory and finally became season-long MLP champions at the third attempt.
St Louis found different ways to place them under pressure. New Jersey kept finding someone capable of releasing it.
St Louis return to the old weakness
The opening game of the series returned New Jersey to the tactical problem which had followed them since July.
At the Mid-Season Tournament, Bright and Fahey directed 80.3 per cent of their shots towards Johnson, limiting Waters’ involvement and ending the New Jersey women’s unbeaten start to the season. As WPM’s tactical analysis showed, the plan gave St Louis a repeatable approach against a team containing the best player in the world.
In Central Park, the Shock used it again.
Bright and Fahey beat Waters and Johnson 11-2 on Saturday. They kept the ball away from Waters, placed the burden of construction and defence on Johnson and waited for errors to arrive. The game never became close enough for New Jersey to change its terms.
St Louis then took control through the men’s doubles.
Staksrud and Howells led Patriquin and Tardio 8-3, placing New Jersey within three points of levelling the match. The Shock slowed the exchanges, extended the dink rallies and won the final eight points. An 11-8 victory left St Louis one game from the opening match.
New Jersey’s two foundation pairings had both lost. Its mixed teams had to rescue it.
Waters and Noe Khlif beat Bright and Patriquin 11-4 before Staksrud and Johnson defeated Tardio and Fahey 11-8. A match which had appeared close to ending after two games went to singles, where St Louis moved within one point of victory.
Howells’ contribution at 19-20 will not carry the same visual memory as Waters winning the final two points, but the championship weekend turned upon it. Had Tardio converted, St Louis would have led the best-of-three series and returned on Sunday needing one more match.
Instead, New Jersey left Saturday knowing it could lose both gender games, face match point in the DreamBreaker and still find a way through.
Johnson answers and the men reverse the finish
New Jersey’s response on Sunday began with Johnson.
One day after St Louis had subjected her to another heavy targeting plan, she returned alongside Waters and won the women’s game 11-9.
The result did not invalidate the Shock’s approach. Bright and Fahey had already shown twice that it could work, and an 11-9 defeat did not erase the questions it creates for New Jersey. Johnson was markedly sharper on Sunday, absorbing enough pressure to keep Waters and New Jersey in the game.
The margins remained narrow in men’s doubles.
Staksrud and Howells faced three game points against Patriquin and Tardio before winning 12-10. The previous afternoon, they had allowed an 8-3 lead to become an 11-8 defeat. This time they stayed in the game long enough to reverse it, leaving New Jersey one mixed-doubles victory from the title.
St Louis refused to provide it.
Patriquin and Bright raced to a 7-0 lead against Khlif and Waters before winning 10-6 in a game played within the CBS broadcast window. Tardio and Fahey then recovered from 4-0 down against Staksrud and Johnson, controlling the longer cross-court exchanges late in the game and winning 11-9.
Every doubles pairing had now won once and lost once across the series.
The championship would be decided in singles.
New Jersey built a team capable of winning the fifth game
St Louis had strengthened its DreamBreaker lineup for this precise situation.
Hunter Johnson joined the Shock ahead of the Finals, giving them the world’s No. 3-ranked men’s singles player for a format in which the previous four games no longer mattered. New Jersey had made its decisive move in July, acquiring Staksrud from the Orlando Squeeze shortly before the trade deadline.
Both decisions recognised the same truth. A leading MLP roster cannot be designed solely around winning three doubles games. It must remain dangerous when nobody does.
Across the two Finals DreamBreakers, Staksrud outscored Hunter Johnson 13-7. Waters beat Fahey 6-4 on Saturday and 6-2 on Sunday. Those margins gave New Jersey control at the two positions where it possessed the stronger singles players.
Howells supplied the point which prevented defeat in the first tiebreaker. Johnson supplied the final two in the second.
Sunday’s 21-9 score was striking because DreamBreakers between evenly matched teams rarely finish that way. St Louis had won the only previous one between the sides during the regular season, taking it 21-15 at the opening event in Dallas. On Saturday, the Shock had again come within a point.
By Sunday, New Jersey had removed the uncertainty.
Waters and Staksrud established the advantage in their direct rotations. Howells and Johnson protected it. Johnson then completed the title against Bright before St Louis could make the score respectable.
New Jersey’s depth got the 5s to a fifth game on both days. Its singles strength decided what happened there.
Staksrud completes the roster
Staksrud was named the inaugural MLP Finals MVP after finishing the weekend with a 4-2 doubles record and winning his singles matchup against Hunter Johnson across both DreamBreakers.
His selection completed one of the season’s defining roster decisions.
New Jersey already possessed a championship-level team before the trade. Waters, Howells and Khlif had returned from the 2025 runners-up, while the franchise spent $800,000 for the second selection in the draft to acquire Jorja Johnson. The group established itself near the top of the league well before Staksrud arrived.
The trade addressed the remaining margins.
New Jersey sent Martin Emmrich, Lina Padegimaite and an undisclosed cash payment to Orlando for Staksrud and Milan Rane. As WPM argued when the deal was completed, Staksrud gave New Jersey a new route past St Louis without requiring the 5s to dismantle their established mixed partnerships.
Staksrud entered the starting lineup alongside Howells in men’s doubles and Johnson in mixed, finishing the season 7-4 with the former and 9-2 with the latter.
In Central Park, his value extended beyond those partnerships. He gave New Jersey an elite singles rotation and brought the emotional intensity of a player transformed by the stakes around him.
“It’s something that I’m gonna remember for my whole life. That’s what I play for, these moments.”
The move did not create New Jersey’s title challenge. It completed it.
The missing title from Waters’ career
For Waters, Sunday removed one of the few blank spaces from a career already crowded with titles.
She had dominated the PPA Tour, occupied the top ranking across singles and doubles and driven New Jersey through three successive championship appearances. MLP’s season-long title had remained beyond her.
Dallas denied the 5s in 2024. Columbus did the same in 2025. New Jersey returned with three players from the previous season, added Johnson through the draft and kept searching for the final improvements after establishing itself as a contender.
The resulting roster was not invulnerable. St Louis exposed that often enough.
Bright and Fahey routed Waters and Johnson on Saturday. Patriquin and Tardio recovered from 8-3 down. Both New Jersey mixed teams lost when given an opportunity to close the series on Sunday.
The champions simply refused to let one failure infect the next game.
After the women lost heavily, the mixed teams responded. After the men surrendered eight straight points, Howells returned to save match point. When both mixed teams lost the following day, the singles lineup produced the most decisive passage of the final.
Waters described the championship as a group effort. In this instance, the familiar phrase was exact.
Every member of the starting four supplied a point without which New Jersey might not have won.
St Louis leave with the standard, New Jersey with the title
St Louis leave Central Park without the first season-long title their body of work appeared to deserve.
The Shock lost only three regular-season matches. Bright and Fahey developed the clearest tactical plan any women’s partnership found against Waters and Johnson. Patriquin and Tardio remained capable of controlling the men’s game, while both mixed pairings won under elimination pressure on Sunday.
Against almost any other opponent, that combination would have been enough.
New Jersey could withstand losing from every position and still arrive at the DreamBreaker with Waters and Staksrud waiting.
The final reflected the season shared by these teams. St Louis won the Mid-Season Tournament meeting. New Jersey answered in Orlando to secure the No. 1 seed. They reached Central Park as the two sides which had spent months forcing the rest of the league to chase them.
The official MLP Finals programme had placed the league’s two leading regular-season teams on opposite sides of the bracket. Both swept their semi-finals before producing eight doubles games, four wins each and two DreamBreakers in the championship series.
New Jersey won both.
For two years, the 5s had reached the final and discovered one way to lose it. In Central Park, St Louis presented them with several more.
This time, somebody in a New Jersey shirt answered every one.
Further Reading
- MLP Finals 2026 Preview: Four Teams, Three Days and No Easy Way Through Central Park
- How St Louis Found a Way to Beat Anna Leigh Waters
- Federico Staksrud Gives New Jersey a New Route Past St Louis
- New Jersey Answer the Biggest Question Ahead of the MLP Playoffs
Chris Beaumont
Founder and Editor-in-ChiefChris 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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