Gabe Tardio, Anna Bright and Hayden Patriquin return to the PPA Tour this week, restoring several of its most established doubles teams. Their arrival gives Mesa’s finalists and emerging contenders an immediate chance to prove that their results can withstand a stronger field.

Key Takeaways

  • Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio reunite as the top men’s doubles seeds, while Mesa champions Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu continue with their revised court positions.
  • Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright return to a women’s doubles draw whose leading challengers have changed partnerships since Mesa.
  • Nico Acevedo, Kiora Kunimoto and Elliott Schupp have opportunities to show that their Arizona runs can be repeated against a restored field.
  • Chris Haworth seeks another men’s singles title, while Kate Fahey heads a women’s singles draw without Waters.

Nico Acevedo and Yuta Funemizu were seven championship points away from winning the men’s doubles title in Mesa. They had already beaten Ben Johns and Federico Staksrud 11–4, 11–5, then survived deciding games in both the quarter-finals and semi-finals. Against Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu, they pushed the final to 15–13 in the third game before the favourites escaped with gold. One more point at any of seven opportunities would have given Arizona a very different headline.

That run deserves to be remembered as more than the final Acevedo and Funemizu lost. It removed a leading partnership, carried them through repeated pressure and forced the eventual champions to produce an extraordinary recovery. It also took place while Gabe Tardio and Hayden Patriquin were absent, leaving several of the men’s usual doubles combinations apart. The Rate Las Vegas Open brings those combinations back together. The question is whether Mesa revealed contenders who can alter the order, or gave them an opportunity that becomes harder to seize when the leading teams return.

The same question runs through women’s and mixed doubles. Anna Bright reunites with Anna Leigh Waters, whose absence from women’s doubles opened the way for different champions in Arizona, and with Patriquin in mixed. Tardio resumes men’s doubles with Johns and enters mixed with Tyra Black. Their returns add quality, but they also make the Las Vegas draws a more useful test of the players who reached new territory in Mesa. As WPM’s first look at the event established, Waters also begins the week within reach of 200 career PPA Tour titles. This time, the more immediate focus is on the matches that will decide whether Arizona’s breakthroughs last.

Johns and Tardio return, but Alshon and Daescu have changed

Johns and Tardio take their familiar position as the top men’s doubles seeds, with Alshon and Daescu at No. 2 and Patriquin and Staksrud at No. 3. Those rankings offer a possible shape for the final weekend, although they do not account for what has happened since the leading teams last appeared together. Alshon and Daescu have changed sides: Alshon now plays on the left and Daescu on the right. They reached a final in North Carolina under that arrangement, losing to Johns and Tardio, before winning in Mesa.

The switch is the most substantial tactical question at the top of this draw. Alshon’s move to the left gives him more responsibility for taking space in the middle and directing attacking exchanges, while Daescu must provide the balance from the right. Their two recent finals show that the arrangement can carry them through strong fields. Mesa’s title does not, by itself, show that it has moved them past Johns and Tardio, particularly when Acevedo and Funemizu came so close to taking that final. Las Vegas offers another opportunity to judge how the new alignment holds up across a full event, with a direct comparison to the top seeds possible if both pairs get through.

Johns’ Mesa defeat also requires careful interpretation. He lost with Staksrud, a partnership formed for that event, while the Acevedo and Funemizu pairing that beat them will not enter Las Vegas together. It would be misleading to present the 11–4, 11–5 score as evidence that Johns and Tardio have become vulnerable as a team. What it did show is that an opponent playing at Acevedo and Funemizu’s level can take control quickly, before a higher-seeded pair has found a way into a match. Johns and Tardio have a bye into the round of 16 in Las Vegas, where their first opponents will already have played their way forward.

Acevedo now partners Jaume Martinez Vich in a section containing Eric Oncins and CJ Klinger, Dylan Frazier and Len Yang, and Tyler Loong and Rafa Lenhard. That change makes his individual contribution to the Mesa run one of the tournament’s most interesting questions. His partnership with Funemizu had the balance to win several different kinds of match, from a decisive upset of Johns and Staksrud to tight deciding games later in the draw. If Acevedo goes deep with Martinez Vich, it will strengthen the case that Arizona reflected a step forward in his own doubles standing. If he does not, the quality of the Mesa partnership still stands, but its particular understanding may have been a larger part of the result.

Patriquin and Staksrud offer a different form of continuity. They return to an established partnership after Staksrud’s unsuccessful week alongside Johns. Alshon and Daescu, meanwhile, must back up a title won by the narrowest of margins. That gives the leading men’s teams distinct tasks rather than one shared obligation to hold their seeds: Johns and Tardio must resume their level together, Patriquin and Staksrud must show the value of reuniting, and Alshon and Daescu must demonstrate that their revised arrangement can withstand both.

Bright and Waters return to a changed women’s field

Waters did not play women’s doubles in Mesa. Parris Todd and Rachel Rohrabacher made the most of the opening, although their route to gold was difficult. They survived a three-game contest against Judit Castillo and Mari Humberg, then appeared to have the final against Tyra Black and Meghan Dizon under control at 11–4, 10–2. Black and Dizon recovered to take the second game, forcing Todd and Rohrabacher to steady themselves and win the decider 11–6. Their title was earned through a difficult closing stretch, as detailed in WPM’s Arizona finals review.

Waters and Bright return as the No. 1 seeds in Las Vegas, but the leading opposition does not arrive in the same combinations seen in Arizona. Black partners Catherine Parenteau as the second seeds, while Lacy Schneemann and Kate Fahey are third. The change matters because a seed reflects the players’ standing more readily than the way a partnership will work under sustained pressure. Black’s final with Dizon showed her ability to change a match that seemed nearly over. Playing beside Parenteau presents a new question about how the pair will organise points and respond when opponents direct pressure towards the spaces between them.

Fahey’s partnership with Schneemann offers another test. Fahey reached the Mesa singles final and kept the opening game close against Waters before losing 11–9, 11–4. That result should not be treated as a forecast for doubles, where Bright and Schneemann would shape an entirely different contest alongside the two singles finalists. It does, however, add to the evidence that Fahey is reaching important matches regularly. Las Vegas will show whether she and Schneemann can translate that form into a sustained doubles run against a field restored to full strength.

The presence of Waters and Bright gives the division a reference point that Mesa lacked. Todd and Rohrabacher won the tournament placed in front of them, and their recovery in the final deserves its own weight. A team that reaches Waters and Bright this week will face another measure of how close the field has come to its leading pair. That contest may occur late, but the earlier rounds will matter too: emerging and newly formed partnerships must first show that they can get far enough through the draw to ask the question.

Kunimoto and Schupp have a chance to make Mesa mean more

Waters and Johns lead the mixed doubles draw after winning in Arizona, where they beat Rohrabacher and Alshon 11–3, 11–6 in the final. The score gave them a convincing finish, although their semi-final against Fahey and Staksrud went to three games. Bright and Patriquin return as the second seeds in Las Vegas. A meeting between the top two partnerships would attract attention, but the players in their respective sections have reason to resist treating that match as the natural conclusion before a ball is struck.

Kiora Kunimoto and Elliott Schupp have the clearest opportunity to build on a Mesa breakthrough. They reached the mixed quarter-finals after beating Etta Tuionetoa and Will Howells, Kaitlyn Christian and Connor Garnett, and Meghan Dizon and John Lucian Goins. Waters and Johns eventually ended their run, but three wins against that level of opposition established a stronger case for the partnership than one isolated upset would have done. Seeded No. 34 in Las Vegas, they are positioned in the section headed by Bright and Patriquin.

Repeating a run is a different task from making the first one. Kunimoto and Schupp have shown that they can take matches from established pairings; their next challenge is to do so when opponents have a recent result to study and their low seed no longer makes them an unknown quantity. They need not beat Bright and Patriquin for this tournament to advance their case. Getting through the matches that could lead to such a meeting would itself give Mesa more lasting significance.

Elsewhere, Black and Tardio are seeded fourth, while Alshon partners Tina Pisnik as the third seeds after reaching the Mesa final with Rohrabacher. Jessie Irvine and Daescu, seeded fifth, could meet Pisnik and Alshon in the quarter-finals if both progress. Those combinations make mixed doubles particularly resistant to easy predictions from individual form. Alshon’s strong Arizona week was achieved with different partners, and Black’s women’s doubles final says little on its own about the understanding she will have with Tardio. Their results here will depend on how quickly those pairs establish a shared game, particularly when the exchanges become tighter later in the draw.

Haworth and Fahey face different singles pressures

Chris Haworth brings the strongest immediate men’s singles result to Las Vegas. He beat Staksrud 10–12, 11–9, 11–6 in the Mesa final, recovering from 6–3 down in the deciding game by winning its final eight points. That finish demonstrated his ability to turn a match when the title seemed to be moving away from him. It also underlined how little separated the two finalists. Staksrud is the No. 2 seed this week, making a rematch possible, but both men must navigate a draw that includes Hunter Johnson, Alshon, Connor Garnett and John Lucian Goins.

For Haworth, the test is whether he can carry the level that won Mesa through another tournament without depending on another late recovery. For Staksrud, it is whether the narrow loss provides a route to a different result if they meet again. Johnson and Alshon have their own grounds for expecting deep runs, so the draw should be read as more than a wait for a repeat final. Men’s singles has provided repeated changes of momentum, and Las Vegas begins with several players capable of taking advantage if a leading seed starts slowly.

Women’s singles has a more conspicuous absence. Waters beat Fahey for gold in Mesa but is not entered in singles in Las Vegas, leaving Fahey as the top seed. Kaitlyn Christian and Lea Jansen are among the other leading contenders. Fahey has shown that she can reach the closing stages and make Waters work; this week offers a different opportunity, one in which winning the title depends on handling the expectations attached to being the leading entrant rather than finding a way past Waters at the end.

Mesa supplied a reminder that those expectations can change quickly. Jalina Ingram beat Christian and Parenteau in three games on her way to the semi-finals before losing to Waters. Whether Ingram herself makes another run or another player emerges, the result is recent evidence that the women’s singles draw contains more than a few likely finalists. Waters’ absence increases the reward for anyone capable of putting together several wins, while increasing the pressure on Fahey to turn another strong week into gold.

Waters starts Las Vegas with 198 career PPA Tour titles, so a landmark 200th will remain part of the story. It is an important possibility, but the tournament’s wider meaning will be decided across its draws. Mesa gave Alshon and Daescu a title they nearly lost, Acevedo a run worth testing with a new partner, and Kunimoto and Schupp a first sustained challenge to established mixed teams. Bright, Patriquin and Tardio now return to the places they usually occupy. By Sunday, Las Vegas should have shown which of Arizona’s results can hold their place alongside them.

The Rate Las Vegas Open runs from 28 September to 4 October at the Darling Tennis Center. The published professional draws cover all five disciplines. Pickleballtv coverage is scheduled to begin with the round of 16 on Thursday 1 October.

Further Reading

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Chris Beaumont

Founder and Editor-in-Chief
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris 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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