Waters, Johns dominate PPA season as Finals cap long campaign
Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns closed the PPA's longer season with double gold in May, and the numbers behind their runs were absurd: 43 golds for Waters, 31 for Johns.
The PPA season ended the way so many of its big moments did, with Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns standing on top. At the Finals in May, both stars captured double gold and extended a three-year dominance streak at the tour’s climax, a fitting finish to a fall-through-spring calendar that pushed the championship weekend to the end of a longer campaign.
That longer season made the numbers hit harder. Waters won medals in all 46 events she entered, piling up 43 golds, one silver and two bronzes. She went 12 for 12 in singles titles, stretched her active singles winning streak to 25 tournaments, and finished with more Clean Winners than her opponent in 11 of those 12 gold-medal matches. The PPA lists Waters as its No. 1 player in women’s singles, doubles and mixed doubles, and her rise now looks less like a hot streak than a sustained standard.
Waters’ doubles work with Anna Bright was just as ruthless. The pair won 16 gold medals and two bronzes in 18 tournaments, and they closed with seven straight three-game sweeps. In 13 of 15 finals, Waters and Bright produced more Clean Winners than the other side, with their only two game losses in those finals coming against Tyra Black and Parris Todd. Waters also reached 10 triple crowns in 12 appearances across all three disciplines, pushing her to a PPA Tour-record 44 triple crowns. She had been at 39 in the tour’s earlier season recap, which shows how quickly she kept adding to a record she already owned.
Johns stayed just as busy, just as efficient, and just as hard to beat. He finished with 31 gold medals and two silvers, then paired with Gabe Tardio for a men’s doubles run that produced 16 wins in 17 tournaments entered. The only time Johns and Tardio missed the podium came at the World Championships. Nine of their 16 gold-medal matches were three-game sweeps, and the duo set a record with seven consecutive men’s doubles titles. By the Atlanta Championships, they had 15 titles that year and 17 overall.
The practical lesson for amateurs is buried in plain sight. Repeat winners do not just play well at the top of the bracket, they keep winning across formats, across months and across the grind of a full schedule. Waters, who turned pro in 2019 and discovered pickleball in 2017 after her family evacuated to Pennsylvania during Hurricane Irma, and Johns, whose mixed partnership with Waters produced 15 golds and one silver in 16 tournaments, keep proving that dominance in pickleball is built on volume, durability and the ability to finish when the bracket tightens. At the season-ending Finals in May, the top seeds again delivered when it mattered most.
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