The short answer: The Friday pool winners were Riley Inn/Alex Emery and Eli Steiner/Jackson Ayotte in men’s doubles, Allie Reichert/Madalina Grigoriu and Marisa Ruiz/Kelsey Laurente in women’s doubles, and Grigoriu/Garrison Eaby and Lauren Cole/Jarryd Woog in mixed. Fifteen of the 36 pool matches went to a deciding game. Burkhardt is the only player still in three events.
Eleven-nil, eleven-six. That is how Grigoriu and Reichert opened Friday at Brookhaven Country Club, against Yolena Carlon and Haley Ferguson. By the evening Grigoriu had played six matches in two events and won all six. No other player in the doubles and mixed pools won more than five.
Six wins out of six is easy to report. The rest of the day was harder to sort out. Fifteen of the 36 pool matches went to a third game, three teams finished level on wins, and one mixed pool could only be settled by the tie-break table. With eight PPA Tour contracts for 2027 on offer, and Saturday’s semi-finals and finals deciding them, Friday was a day when one game could cost a player a semi-final place.
What is at stake
The PPA’s Challenger page puts it plainly: “The Challenger Showdown will award eight winners 2027 PPA Tour contracts, officially granting them professional status on the tour.” The field is made up of the highest-ranked players on the Challenger Series who are not already signed. Eight players are seeded into each singles event and eight teams into each doubles event, split into two pools. The page says that “the top two teams/players from each pool will progress into bracket play”, and that every match is best of three games to 11. Doubles partnerships were drafted: the top seed picked a partner, then the picks ran down the rankings.
All of that is now done. Saturday brings semi-finals and finals.
Grigoriu: the best day of anyone
With Reichert, Grigoriu won women’s pool one 3-0. They beat Carlon and Ferguson 11-0, 11-6, Averee Beck and Bella Nelson 11-3, 11-13, 11-7, and Monika Wynne and Ella Boydston 11-3, 11-9. They conceded 41 points in seven games. Their points difference of +36 was the best of the 24 teams in the three doubles events.
With Eaby in mixed pool one, she beat Wynne and Zach Gonnering 11-1, 11-3, then Reichert and Jake Anderson 11-9, 5-11, 11-3. She finished by beating Anne-Sophie Courteau and Juan Varon 11-5, 9-11, 11-6. Eaby and Grigoriu were +31, the second-best figure of the day.
Her ranking makes that more notable. The women’s singles Challenger rankings, last updated on 6 October, list Grigoriu 19th with 115 points. That is her singles ranking, separate from doubles and mixed. What Friday shows is simple: in two events and six matches, she was not beaten.
The same day went the other way for her partner. Reichert won all three women’s doubles matches with Grigoriu, then lost all three mixed matches with Anderson, one of them to Grigoriu. Between them they played 12 matches on Friday. Grigoriu won six of her six and Reichert three of her six.
Burkhardt: three events, seven wins from nine
Burkhardt is now the only Showdown player still alive in three events. He topped men’s singles pool two on Thursday without losing a match, beating Troy Akin, Vincent Rettke and Bret Berryman. His points difference of +33 was the best of the four singles pools.
On Friday, he and Mike Radermacher finished second in men’s doubles pool two. They beat Anderson and Rettke 11-3, 8-11, 11-8, then Nicholas Wade and Dale Kim 5-11, 11-9, 11-5, before losing 8-11, 8-11 to Steiner and Ayotte. In mixed with Chloe Diskin he went 2-1. They beat Maddy Rasmusen and Usama Khalid 11-4, 11-7, and Ruiz and Wade 12-10, 11-4, then lost 7-11, 7-11 to Cole and Woog.
Across the week that is seven wins from nine Showdown matches, one of them from a game down. Earlier in the week he had played in the Worlds main draw, losing 11-9, 11-8 to Tama Shimabukuro in singles. With Radermacher he lost 11-9, 11-3 to Augustus Ge and Jack Sock, who reached the last 16.
Wade, Upminster, and a three-way tie
For British readers, the cruellest result of the day came from a table rather than a single match.
Mixed pool two finished with three teams on two wins each, and each of them had beaten one of the others. Ruiz and Wade beat Cole and Woog 11-9, 9-11, 12-10. Diskin and Burkhardt beat Ruiz and Wade 12-10, 11-4. Cole and Woog beat Diskin and Burkhardt 11-7, 11-7. The sheet’s first tie-breaker is head-to-head matches won, which can’t separate a circle like that. The second is points difference across all games played.
| Mixed pool two | W-L | Points for | Points against | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lauren Cole / Jarryd Woog | 2-1 | 74 | 53 | +21 |
| Chloe Diskin / Matt Burkhardt | 2-1 | 59 | 47 | +12 |
| Marisa Ruiz / Nicholas Wade | 2-1 | 68 | 65 | +3 |
| Maddy Rasmusen / Usama Khalid | 0-3 | 30 | 66 | -36 |
The deciding margins were not made in the matches between the three tied teams. Those three matches were close, and the tied teams finished level on head-to-head. They were made against the team that finished bottom. Cole and Woog beat Rasmusen and Khalid by 15 points (11-0, 11-7). Diskin and Burkhardt beat them by 11 (11-4, 11-7), and Ruiz and Wade by 10 (11-8, 11-4). Wade, who is listed as being from Upminster in east London, beat the team that topped the pool and still went out.
His men’s doubles with Kim also ended 1-2, third in the pool. They took Steiner and Ayotte to three games, and they finished by beating Anderson and Rettke 10-12, 11-4, 11-1. Kim and Wade scored 80 points in their pool, more than any of the other seven men’s doubles teams, and still finished third. Their +10 differential was better than Radermacher and Burkhardt’s +4, who went through. Wins come before points in this format.
The close ones
Fifteen of Friday’s 36 pool matches went to three games. That is 42%. Men’s doubles and mixed had six deciders each from 12 matches; women’s doubles had three. The tightest single group was mixed pool one, where five of the six matches went the distance.
Women’s doubles was the least contested event. The two pool winners dropped one game each: Reichert and Grigoriu lost the middle game 11-13 to Beck and Nelson, and Ruiz and Laurente beat Rasmusen and Grgan 8-11, 11-9, 11-4. Courteau and Diskin, who finished second in pool two, lost their opener 10-12, 3-11 to Ruiz and Laurente. They then beat Rasmusen and Grgan 11-9, 11-8 and Adelie Osher and Janet Liu 11-1, 11-6.
Saturday’s qualified field
These are the players and teams who have qualified, by event. Saturday’s matches decide the contracts.
- Men’s singles: Martin Stanchev and William Hsieh (pool one); Burkhardt and Troy Akin (pool two).
- Women’s singles: Jessica Ho and Laurente (pool one); Eileen Wang and Shannon Pretorius (pool two).
- Men’s doubles: Inn/Emery and Connor McCartney/Wade Heerboth (pool one); Steiner/Ayotte and Radermacher/Burkhardt (pool two).
- Women’s doubles: Reichert/Grigoriu and Beck/Nelson (pool one); Ruiz/Laurente and Courteau/Diskin (pool two).
- Mixed: Grigoriu/Eaby and Courteau/Varon (pool one); Cole/Woog and Diskin/Burkhardt (pool two).
That is 32 qualifying places filled by 26 different players. Burkhardt is in three events. Grigoriu, Laurente, Diskin and Courteau are each in two.
Where a contract has led
The 2025 Showdown gives a sense of what is at stake. Connor Mogle won last year’s men’s singles 11-1, 11-2 against Matthew Finnerty. He had been laid off from his job that May and committed to the circuit. “This means a lot. I’ve grinded out a lot of events, and there’s a lot of highs and lows in pickleball,” he told pickleball.com. “I’m really excited to get to play on the big tour.” A year later he was seeded 31st in the Worlds men’s singles main draw.
Anouar Braham and Christopher Crouch won the 2025 men’s doubles. This week they beat Mota Alhouni and George Rangelov, then Kenta Miyoshi and James Delgado, to reach the Worlds last 16, where they lost 11-1, 11-9 to Ben Johns and Gabriel Tardio, the top seeds.
The gap is real all the same. Of the 43 players entered across the five Showdown events, 16 also played in the Worlds main draw from the round of 64 onwards. Between them they won 2 matches and lost 19. Both wins belonged to Pretorius, who beat Chao Yi Wang, the fifth seed, and Allison Phillips, then lost 2-11, 11-8, 3-11 to Rika Fujiwara in the last 16. Pretorius, a women’s singles semi-finalist on Saturday, has already done more in the main draw this week than anyone else in the Showdown field.
Before the event, Hsieh told Isaac Hunter that “a PPA contract would mean the world to me, and it would feel like proof that what I’m doing is working”, as WPM reported. Ho put it more lightly: “If I secure a contract, that’s my cherry on top.” Both are in Saturday’s field.
The verdict on Friday is simple. Grigoriu was the best player in the doubles pools, Burkhardt has given himself the most ways to win a contract, and points difference settled the closest pool. Saturday will turn those results into contracts.
Saturday’s semi-finals and finals are scheduled at Brookhaven Country Club.
Photo illustration: WPM. Chloe Diskin at the May 2026 Selkirk Combine. Photograph: Selkirk Sport.
