Syromolotov Topples Spain’s No. 1 as Mijas Shows the Scale Behind Pickleball’s Spanish Rise

Yuri Syromolotov has spent much of his sporting life trying to extend it. In Mijas, the former US college tennis standout defeated Spain’s top-ranked Pickle Pro Tour singles player in two games decided at the limit. Around them, 290 players and 866 matches provided another measure of how quickly Spain’s competitive pickleball structure is developing.

Key takeaways

• Yuri Syromolotov defeated unified Spanish No. 1 Ignasi de Rueda 22-20, 22-21 to win the men’s PRO singles title.
• The former Middle Georgia State tennis standout was twice SSAC Player of the Year and the 2021 ITA NAIA Senior Player of the Year.
• Pep Canyadell was the only player to win two PRO titles in Mijas, taking men’s and mixed doubles.
• The tournament attracted 290 players, up from 148 in 2025, an increase of almost 96 per cent.
• Mijas staged 866 matches across 17 courts, with Barcelona next before December’s Madrid Master Final.

Yuri Syromolotov needed two games to win the biggest pickleball title of his career.

He needed almost every available point in both.

Ignasi de Rueda arrived in Sunday’s men’s singles final at the Costa del Sol Mijas Open as the No. 1 player in the Pickle Pro Tour’s unified men’s singles ranking and one of the established reference points of Spanish pickleball.

Syromolotov beat him 22-20, 22-21.

There was no game in which De Rueda disappeared and no comfortable stretch in which the favourite stopped asking questions. Across two games played almost entirely at the margin, Syromolotov repeatedly reached moments when either man could have taken control and found the next point.

For somebody who has spent years searching for ways to remain competitive, there was something fitting about it.

Mijas did not introduce Yuri Syromolotov to high-level racket sport.

It may have introduced a different version of him to Spanish pickleball.

The competitive life after tennis

Syromolotov’s route to Sunday’s final began long before he picked up a pickleball paddle.

From Granada, he played college tennis in the United States for Middle Georgia State University and was named Southern States Athletic Conference Player of the Year in both 2019 and 2021.

His first award followed a season in which he went 10-2 at No. 1 singles and 14-2 in doubles during the regular season while remaining unbeaten in conference play.

His senior season produced an even stronger final chapter.

Syromolotov went 10-1, finished No. 6 nationally in NAIA singles and recorded victories over several nationally ranked opponents. The Intercollegiate Tennis Association subsequently named him its 2021 NAIA Senior Player of the Year.

His tennis career also carried him into the ATP rankings, with a career-high singles mark of No. 1023, and he later worked as a professional hitter at Britain’s GB National Tennis Academy.

Pickleball never replaced any of that.

It became another place to compete.

In an interview with Canal Tenis, Syromolotov explained that he had been introduced to the sport through the second coach of Spanish tennis player Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. He tried it, began preparing for the Spanish Championships and won the 4.5 singles category.

He described pickleball as a new opportunity.

That phrase helps explain why Mijas matters.

Staksrud showed what might be possible

Syromolotov already had one unusually relevant reference point for what a tennis player could become in pickleball.

Federico Staksrud.

The two crossed paths during the US college tennis system, and Syromolotov has previously pointed to Staksrud’s rise as evidence of how quickly the foundations of an elite tennis player can translate.

The comparison should not be pushed too far. Staksrud has built one of the strongest careers in professional pickleball, while Syromolotov has followed a much quieter route through Spanish and European competition.

But the underlying idea matters.

For players whose tennis ambitions have changed, pickleball offers another competitive language using many of the same instincts: movement, anticipation, ball striking, pressure management and the ability to construct a point against somebody trying to take time away.

Syromolotov has been learning that language without abandoning the first one.

Mijas provided his clearest evidence yet that the second is beginning to stick.

This was not the result his ranking predicted

The scale of the victory becomes clearer when the rankings are placed alongside each other.

De Rueda is currently No. 1 in the unified men’s singles standings.

Before Mijas, Syromolotov’s Pickle Pro Tour profile listed him at No. 61 on the tour’s men’s singles ranking and No. 35 in the unified standings.

Earlier results had shown flashes rather than dominance.

At the Málaga Spanish Open in May, Syromolotov beat Álvaro Dóyega but did not emerge from the event as an obvious future champion. Madrid was stronger, with an unbeaten group stage that included wins over Carlos Alcalde, Diego Tarazona and Javier Gallego.

There remained a considerable distance between producing good results and beating the country’s leading ranked singles player in a final.

Mijas closed some of it.

What stands out is how little separation Syromolotov ever managed to create.

An upset can occasionally be explained by one player catching fire while the favourite never finds their level. Games finishing 22-20 and 22-21 ask something different. De Rueda remained close enough throughout to reverse the outcome with a tiny change in either direction.

Syromolotov still found the finish twice.

He now has a benchmark that the ranking cannot provide.

He knows he can beat No. 1 when the score is tight enough that reputation offers neither player any protection.

De Rueda gets another chance

De Rueda did not have to wait long to respond.

His men’s doubles final alongside Pep Canyadell initially appeared to be heading towards another defeat when David Illescas and Jesús García took the opening game 21-16.

The second became another of Sunday’s contests played at the limit.

This time De Rueda came through it.

He and Canyadell survived 22-21 before completing the recovery 21-17 in the deciding game.

For De Rueda, the victory ensured the singles defeat did not define his weekend.

For Canyadell, it was only half the job.

He returned alongside Clara Contis to face Candela Pérez and Alberto Horcajuelo in the mixed doubles final.

Again, Canyadell’s team lost the opening game.

Pérez and Horcajuelo took it 21-19. Contis and Canyadell responded 21-15 before another tight deciding game went their way 21-19.

Canyadell therefore left Mijas as the only player to win two PRO titles, and he did it without winning the opening game of either final.

The player carrying the most gold medals spent much of Championship Sunday behind.

Amaro wins, Costantino and Méndez do it again

The women’s finals followed a more direct route.

Raquel Amaro defeated María Pintor 21-17, 21-16 in women’s singles, adding another significant result to a season in which she has increasingly established herself among Spain’s leading players.

Women’s doubles then reinforced a partnership that had already succeeded elsewhere on the tour.

María Costantino and Sabrina Méndez defeated Clara Contis and Pintor 21-12, 21-13, adding the Mijas title to the A Coruña Open victory they had already won together.

Contis recovered later by winning mixed doubles with Canyadell, just as De Rueda recovered from singles disappointment through men’s doubles.

Across five PRO finals, several players were required to absorb defeat in one discipline and return almost immediately with another title available.

Syromolotov needed no second chance.

From 148 players to 290 in one year

If 22-20, 22-21 tells us what happened at the top of the competition, the more important long-term numbers may sit underneath it.

The 2025 Mijas Open attracted 148 players.

This year there were 290.

That is an increase of almost 96 per cent in 12 months.

The 2026 event generated around 600 entries across its categories and required 866 matches to be played on 17 courts over three days.

Those figures deserve more attention than another generic declaration that pickleball is growing.

Growth is easy to announce.

Participation is harder to manufacture.

These were people entering a tournament, travelling to play and committing to competition, with many entering more than one discipline.

The comparison with 2025 does not prove that Spain has reached some decisive threshold. The starting base remains relatively young and one tournament cannot tell us how many of these players will still be competing in three or five years.

But 148 becoming 290 tells us something tangible happened.

And Mijas was not a standalone participation festival.

It was the fifth of six regular Pickle Pro Tour stops in 2026, with another competition already waiting in Barcelona.

That distinction matters.

The difficult stage in developing a sport is rarely persuading somebody to try it once. It is giving them enough structure to return.

Syromolotov had already identified what Spain needed

There is a useful connection between Sunday’s men’s singles champion and the tournament developing around him.

When Syromolotov discussed Spanish pickleball with Canal Tenis, his assessment was measured.

He considered the sport to still be at an early stage and argued that development needed to reach further down, into coaching, grassroots participation and more tournaments for amateur players.

Mijas does not prove those issues have been solved.

Spain still has to build deeper coaching pathways, more facilities and enough regular competition to turn the first wave of interest into something durable.

But one of Syromolotov’s requirements was straightforward.

Players need somewhere to compete.

Mijas supplied 866 matches.

It did so with almost twice as many players as the previous year.

And the person holding the men’s singles trophy was somebody who had already articulated why that competitive structure matters.

A tournament people could encounter

The setting added another layer.

Mijas staged the tournament at Gran Parque de Mijas, using both its sporting area and auditorium, with the competition open to the public free of charge.

The organisers have increasingly experimented with placing pickleball in visible civic spaces rather than keeping every important match behind the gates of a traditional racket club.

There is value in that distinction.

When a sport remains inside specialist facilities, the audience largely consists of people who already know enough to go looking for it.

Put a court in a public space and the relationship changes.

Somebody can arrive without knowing Syromolotov, De Rueda or Canyadell and still stop because a match is happening in front of them.

Understanding can come later.

For an emerging sport, discovery matters almost as much as promotion.

Mijas therefore operated in two directions at once.

Seventeen courts were needed to process the competition.

The public-facing centre court helped put that competition where other people could see it.

Barcelona is the last regular stop

The Pickle Pro Tour now has one regular-season event remaining.

The Barcelona Open runs from 16-18 October and will complete the six-event regular circuit, with the accumulated rankings deciding both the Pickle Pro Tour champions and the Spanish champions.

The season itself does not finish there.

The top eight players in each category will return for the Madrid Master Final from 11-13 December, where the circuit’s third crown, Maestro Nacional, will be decided.

That leaves Mijas sitting at an interesting point in the year.

Late enough for rankings and reputations to mean something.

Early enough for one result to alter both.

Syromolotov has changed his own conversation

Syromolotov arrived in Mijas with a serious tennis background, a developing pickleball career and enough results to suggest he could trouble strong opponents.

He leaves having beaten the country’s unified No. 1.

One victory does not suddenly make him Spain’s dominant singles player, and the ranking gap cannot be erased by a weekend.

It does change what happens the next time his name appears in somebody else’s draw.

That feels appropriate for a player whose relationship with pickleball has always been connected to the idea of prolonging competition.

After his college career and an ATP-ranked tennis life, he wanted somewhere else to keep testing himself.

Pickleball gave him that.

He also wanted Spanish pickleball to provide more people with the chance to compete.

Mijas gave 290 players precisely that opportunity.

One of them beat No. 1.

The other 289 may ultimately tell us more about where the sport is going.

Further reading

• Spain confirms 2026 Pickle Pro Tour calendar
• Who Are Europe’s Best Pickleball Players Right Now?
• Pickle Pro Tour Rankings: De Rueda, Canyadell and Méndez Lead