Megan Fudge chases APP women’s gold record at Cincinnati Golden Ticket event

Megan Fudge arrived in Cincinnati with the APP women’s gold medal record within reach, and the 2026 APP Vlasic Classic gave her a chance to turn a chase into a milestone. She entered the week one gold behind Simone Jardim’s all-time APP women’s mark of 33, with the added pressure of a USA Pickleball Golden Ticket tournament that sent every gold medalist straight to the 2026 U.S. National Championships.

The event ran June 11-14 at Sawyer Point Pickleball & Tennis Courts in Cincinnati and carried $125,000 in prize money. USA Pickleball listed it as a sanctioned Golden Ticket stop, and current Challenger or Champion membership was required to register. For Fudge, that meant the weekend was never just about a trophy. A gold medal would have pulled her level with Jardim and kept the record chase alive in the most public way possible, on a stage where the path to Nationals was also at stake.

Fudge’s place in APP history already makes the comparison meaningful. She entered Cincinnati with 87 career APP medals, the most in tour history, a run of consistency that has made her one of the defining players of the APP era. The significance goes beyond a single division or weekend result: the fact that the tour now has records worth chasing says as much about pickleball’s growth as any ranking table ever could.

Cincinnati has become a useful measuring stick for that growth. Forbes described the 2025 stop as the third consecutive year Vlasic sponsored the event, and that same stretch has come alongside a broader APP buildout that includes the Breakthrough Series, a challenger-level feeder circuit for players ranked outside the top 20, and APP Passport, which guarantees amateur medalists a place at the season-ending tournament at The Fort. Those moves have helped give the APP a more layered identity, with feeder pathways, season-ending stakes and historical markers that resemble older sports tours.

The 2026 event also fit into a larger expansion push. On June 11, the APP announced an expanded partnership with Pickleball England, and on May 19 it unveiled the APP Asia Tour, with six events planned in the second half of 2026 across Malaysia, China, Thailand, Chinese Taipei, India and Vietnam. The tour also named Yui See Lau as Senior Vice President of Global Expansion and Yuki Chen as Director of Global Expansion, and said it had 30 players signed to contracts in some capacity.

By the time the June 16 recap settled the weekend’s biggest headlines, Jack Munro and Kat Stewart had each won two gold medals, while Marcelle Jardim completed a Triple Crown. That left Fudge’s pursuit as a live historical storyline rather than a finished chapter, and that is what made Cincinnati matter: the record chase was not just about one player, but about how far the APP has come in building a legacy worth tracking.