PPA Bristol Recap! 🥇🥉🤪

Alright guys! My first tournament recap. I was like damn do I really have to write about every event? Then remembered this is my newsletter and I can yap and write about whatever I want and so I will just write about the things that I find interesting. So don’t expect too much men’s singles coverage lol. Sorry. And make sure to vote in my first ever poll!!!

I am generally really happy with this tournament. Hard to not be happy when you walk away with two medals, which I did babyyyyy. Gold🥇 in WD w ALW and bronze🥉 in mixed with King Andrei. Also had a fun time playing singles; a lot of people have asked me if I will be playing again soon, and the answer is… no. I’m good for at least 6 months. 

Women’s… ALW and I kind of popped off. We are playing some obnoxiously good ball. I feel like in our first couple events we were still dealing with the nerves and pressure of playing with each other and just generally weren’t that comfortable. Of course, there are still nerves and pressure, but less. We have also been bonding a ton off court (I even got invited to the RV!!!), and I think that is translating to our on-court performance. The power of sending memes (and the occasional questionable post by other pros) back and forth LOL. 

There are so many things I can work on in WD too, and that’s the cool thing about pickleball- no matter how good you are, there is always something to get better at. Motivation is very high right now which is a nice feeling as I was honestly feeling fairly burnt out after the last MLP swing and didn’t practice much before Bristol.

I generally felt the WD results were pretty chalk this weekend, but I do have to shout out left side Lucy Kovalova for a sick win with Meghan Dizon over the established team of Brooke Buckner and Chao Yi Wang. I really enjoy Lucy, she’s been good to me my whole career and I honestly think she’s quite good on the left side. Can’t teach length! 

Had so much fun playing with Andrei this week. He’s so fun to compete with, definitely one of my favorite partners. We didn’t bring our best against Jorja and JW, especially in game 1, but proud of us for giving ourselves a chance in game 2 and hanging in there. I don’t even know how it got close honestly, I felt like they (Jorja especially) were playing so well and like we had to fight our hearts out for every point we got while they were winning them easily. Some bad luck at 9-9 on our serve and a poor lob decision from me on their serve cost us that game and match. I was frustrated with myself for the lob, but oh well. I don’t really mind poor play, that happens, but costly bad decisions really piss me off. 

Kudos to the Johnsons for pushing Ben and AL to 5 today. They are playing so well and JW seems to be pulling off the bounce much more, which is huge for them. To round out Sunday, Andrei and I squeaked by Christian and Catherine 13-11 in the third. Game 3 of that match was pretty entertaining with a lot of lucky stuff haha, definitely worth a watch if you haven’t had enough pickleball over the last week. This was some of the most excited I’ve been for a bronze match in a while, and definitely ecstatic to have come away with it in a hard-fought battle. 

Played pretty well in mixed but wasn’t rolling my drinks as heavy as I would like to be, need to get dialed with that and also I need to work on my erne. I see Jorja and Parris getting so many ernes and I have to figure out the footwork (or maybe my ability to jump is just terrible, which is also possible, lol). 

Men’s was really entertaining this week. Hate seeing Federico and Hayden lose but I was very happy for Matt and Jaume. I like Matt Wright a lot. Many fans seem to not, but off court he is awesome. Very dad coded and always very earnest and well meaning. Also Jaume beating Fed with an Adidas paddle with his name on it and going on a run is objectively hilarious. 

Max Freeman and Tyson were also fun to watch this week. Tyson always is, and I’ve been playing with Max since the beginning of his career so I was super happy for him. He brings a lot of pure power that, imo, no other lefty really has. Also his ability to full bag the guy in front of him with a backhand is unprecedented, for lefties OR righties. He can hit the s*** out of the ball, luckily when I drill w him (which is fairly often), he doesn’t do it at me. What a gentleman🤗. And of course, the staying power of Tyson needs to be studied. Congrats to Riley and Jay as well on the bronze, a great result for them. Can’t count the legacy guys out! 

Ben and Gabe win the title, I don’t know what the optimal combination is to beat them. As was discussed on twitter, it would be amazing to see Ben and Gabe vs Hayden and Gabe, but not possible. The optimal combination definitely includes Hayden, imo, but I don’t know what side he’d play or who you’d partner him with. 

Parris wins the title over Kaitlyn Christian. She is so gritty and I would love if there was a statistic for how often someone wins games when scores are separated by 2 points (11-9, 12-10, 13-11, etc). I feel like in women’s singles she has got to be towards the very top of that list. I didn’t get to watch her final, but the level in her match against Brooke was crazy. Love watching those two play each other. 

Men’s singles is a gauntlet. Feels like we could play the exact same draw 10 times on 10 different weekends and we’d probably have 6 or 7 different winners. Happy for John Lucian Goins for coming away with the title, I’ve never spoken to him but he seems really sweet. 

That wraps up my coverage for Bristol! On Thursday I will be sending out a preview of the first weekend of the MLP Playoffs! I can’t wait. I usually take one, two, or even sometimes three days off after a tournament, but after getting back home late last night (1AM), I woke up and did a session at 730am today to tune some things up. I want this MLP title and I want it bad. Thanks for reading!