The Report
Arizona Has Lost Its No. 1 Seeds. Now Johns Faces Staksrud
Good morning, pickleballers.
Yesterday we asked which players would take advantage of Arizona's unusually open draws. We have some answers. Yuta Funemizu and Nicolas Acevedo have knocked out men's doubles top seeds Ben Johns and Federico Staksrud, Maria Ford has carried the No.46 seed into the women's singles quarter-finals, and Sofia Sewing and Casey Diamond are still standing in mixed doubles from No.44.
Johns and Staksrud are not finished with each other, either. Hours after losing together, they now meet for a place in the men's singles semi-finals.
Meanwhile in Kansas, 18-year-old Tristan Dussault recovered from an 11-2 opening-game defeat to remove APP men's singles No.1 Ronan Camron. Ammar Wazir awaits him in Sunday's gold-medal match.
Arizona's disruptors refuse to leave
The biggest result came in men's doubles. No.15 seeds Yuta Funemizu and Nicolas Acevedo did not scrape past Johns and Staksrud. They beat the No.1 seeds 11-4, 11-5, changing an entire section of the draw before the quarter-finals had even begun.
Women's singles has its own outsider. Maria Ford, seeded 46th, beat No.6 Chao Yi Wang 11-6, 11-7 and now faces Kate Fahey. In mixed doubles, No.44 Sofia Sewing and Casey Diamond recovered from losing the opening game to fourth seeds Tyra Hurricane Black and Noe Khlif before winning 11-9, 11-5.
Then comes the match that needs little selling. Johns beat Roscoe Bellamy. Staksrud beat Adam Harvey. Now the former doubles partners face each other in the singles quarter-finals, and one of them will be out before Saturday.
Read the Arizona quarter-final briefingDussault turns 2-11 into the result of the day
The first game suggested Tristan Dussault's singles run was about to end. Top seed Ronan Camron won it 11-2. What followed was one of the strongest responses of the opening day in Overland Park.
Dussault took the second 11-6 and then overwhelmed Camron 11-1 in the decider. The 18-year-old now faces Ammar Wazir for gold on Sunday, with Wazir arriving there without dropping a game across four matches.
The women's final followed the seedings but not without resistance. Kat Stewart recovered from a game down to beat Amanda Policare 8-11, 13-11, 11-2, while Domenika Turkovic defeated Seone Mendez 11-9, 11-7. The top two seeds will meet for gold.
Read the Overland Park singles reportNo Report this weekend. We'll see you Monday.
There will be no World Pickleball Report on Saturday or Sunday, but the pickleball certainly isn't stopping.
Arizona moves into its semi-finals on Saturday before Championship Sunday in Mesa. The APP Dillons Overland Park Open also runs through Sunday, with Dussault-Wazir and Stewart-Turkovic already waiting in the singles gold-medal matches.
Keep checking World Pickleball Magazine across the weekend for the latest PPA and APP updates. We'll then bring everything together when the World Pickleball Report returns on Monday morning.
Follow the weekend on WPMWhy is Ben Johns the No.19 seed anyway?
Arizona has exposed one of the stranger consequences of the PPA's new ranking structure. Christopher Haworth entered as the No.1 men's singles seed and had to start in the Round of 64. Johns was seeded far lower and received direct entry into the Round of 16.
It is not a broken bracket. Two different ranking systems are doing two different jobs. Discipline-specific rankings seed the draw, while the World Pickleball Ranking determines entry, byes and qualification for the PPA Finals.
The result is a system capable of producing exactly what we have today: the No.2 seed running into Ben Johns before the semi-finals.
Inside the PPA ranking paradoxThree more stories for the weekend
Barcelona Opens a New Chapter. PPA Tour Europe begins next week with a 20-event circuit across nine countries. Barcelona is where we start finding out what that European structure looks like once players actually step on court.
MLP Asia Has Its Teams. With the franchises taking shape, we can finally look beyond launch announcements and ask what sort of league MLP Asia is actually trying to become.
Japan's Pickleball Moment. Ben Johns and Anna Bright are heading to Tokyo in December, while Johns will partner Yuta Funemizu in men's doubles at Japan's first PPA Asia 125.
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