The Report
CNPL’s Regular Season Is Over. Cary’s Draw Is Already Breaking.
Good morning, pickleballers.
Three tournaments, three very different stages of the competition.
The CNPL has reached the end of its regular season. In Cary, two rounds have already started dismantling some of the assumptions contained in the PPA National Championships draw. And in Da Nang, Lý Hoàng Nam has done something rather more straightforward to describe than achieve: he has reached every Pro Open final available to him.
The Canadian National Pickleball League has reached the point where months of regular-season evidence become useful without being decisive.
The final weekend settled the remaining positions and completed the competitive picture heading towards the championship. What it also provided was a much clearer view of which teams arrive there with a repeatable level, which have relied on individual players to keep them alive, and which still have problems that a postseason bracket will expose very quickly.
That distinction matters in a team format. A strong record can establish where a side starts, but the championship eventually asks whether the same roster can keep solving women’s, open and mixed doubles problems once every opponent has a season’s worth of evidence to work from.
The regular season has done its job. It has separated the contenders, identified the players who can alter a tie and given us enough evidence to know where the weaknesses sit. What comes next decides how much of that evidence survives when there is no following weekend in which to repair a bad one.
Inside the CNPL season finaleCary’s draw has already started breaking
There are upsets, and then there are scorelines which require a second look.
John Lucian Goins eliminated Ben Johns from men’s singles on Wednesday 11-0, 6-11, 11-0. Johns recovered from being pickled in the opener, won the second game, then failed to score another point in the decider. Goins won 22 points to zero across the two games he took.
The women’s bracket supplied evidence of something WPM identified before the tournament. Sofia Sewing arrived as the No. 46 seed despite a playing level which appeared to belong considerably higher. No. 9 Liz Truluck discovered the problem on Wednesday, losing 11-7, 11-4. Sewing now faces Kiora Kunimoto in today’s Round of 16.
Anna Leigh Waters has taken the opposite route, beating Allyce Jones 11-0, 11-0. In mixed doubles, Waters and Johns opened with an 11-1, 11-4 win, another reminder that one player’s tournament can look very different across disciplines.
Today is where the early shocks have to become something more. Cary’s progressive format gives every opponent an evening to watch, prepare and adjust. The first upset gets attention. Winning again puts somebody into a Major quarter-final.
What matters before today’s Round of 16Three finals. Three disciplines. One Sunday for Lý Hoàng Nam.
Lý Hoàng Nam has spent the first four days of the World Cup turning every Pro Open draw he enters into the same destination.
He was already through to the men’s singles final against Phúc Huỳnh and the men’s doubles final alongside Nguyễn Ảnh Gia Huy. On Wednesday, Hoàng Nam and Roos Van Reek completed the set by reaching the mixed doubles final.
It was not a comfortable route. Hoàng Nam and Van Reek had to recover from losing the opening game against Robert Stirling and Selina Turulja, needed another three games against Richard Livornese Jr and Vivian Glozman, then produced their cleanest result when the stakes were highest by beating Eungg Won Kim and Mihae Kwon 15-11, 15-10 in the semi-final.
Jack Munro and Nicola Schoeman await in Sunday’s final. Van Reek will also play Turulja for the women’s singles title, while Munro has already reached the men’s doubles final with Livornese. Hoàng Nam will have three championship matches to negotiate.
He has reached three finals at the same tournament twice already in 2026 without completing the sweep. Da Nang gives him a third opportunity, this time at a home World Cup.
Inside Hoàng Nam’s three-final World CupEventually, the court replaces the forecast
There is a common thread running through three competitions which otherwise have very little in common.
The CNPL now has an entire regular season of evidence to carry into its championship. Cary has needed only two rounds to show that some of its seedings describe ranking position better than present playing level. Da Nang has taken Hoàng Nam from home contender to finalist in every Pro Open discipline he entered. Predictions organise a tournament before it begins. Once enough pickleball has actually been played, they become considerably less interesting than the evidence.
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