Tour Finals PPA-500 Draws Offer A Glimpse Into The Future Of The Tour With Tama And Kiora Wins

This year, instead of just having a small top-pro only draw for its Tour Finals event, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) ran an entire amateur tournament as well as a 500-level pro event to get some of its tour players another opportunity to hit the courts and fulfil contractual obligations. Nearly 1,600 players participated in the Tour Finals event as a result, which helped pack the stands and give the non-qualifying touring pros an event to play to help fill their schedules. This is a quick recap of the 500-level event, which in my Medal Tracker I have included into the PPA Challenger section (for lack of a better place to put it). There was also a full slate of Senior Pro events which we’ll briefly cover at the end, which are on the Senior Medal Tracker.

We’ve already covered the Tour Finals component, where the tour’s top players competed for its season-ending championship and which featured a clean sweep of all five No. 1 seeds.

Click here for the PickleballTournaments.com home page for the event, where you can get tournament details, draw sheets, and results.

With that said, let’s recap the action.

Men’s Pro Singles Recap

The Men’s Singles draw featured a slew of singles specialists who have had deep runs in PPA events in the past, names like Zane Ford, Michael Loyd, Luc Pham, Adam Harvey, Mota Alhouni, and Spartak Rahachou. However, the final once again featured the 15-yr old Tama Shimabukuro, who topped the No. 1 seeded Ford in the semis before falling to Rafael Lenhard in the final. Lenhard was famous for giving Ben Johns a round of 64 loss at this same venue last June, a loss that started Johns’ inexorable decision to stop playing singles, but a win over Tama is no small feat here.

Women’s Pro Singles Recap

One week after a spirited run to the Atlanta Slam singles semi finals, where she took a game off of Anna Leigh Waters, teenager Kiora Kunimoto cruised to the gold medal here without dropping a game as the top seed. In the final she took out Australian veteran Sahra Dennehy 9,10.

Mixed Pro Doubles Recap

Nicolas Acevedo made a statement this weekend, making the finals of both Men’s and Mixed Doubles. In Mixed, he teamed with Isabella Dunlap, who has been all over the leaderboards of PPA Challenger events of late, and won the draw as the No. 21 seeds. In the final they beat two PPA veterans in Tyler Loong and Layne Sleeth.

Men’s Pro Doubles Recap

The international expansion of the tour could be seen on full display at this event, with a slew of the newly signed international PPA pros here and competing. One of the best Asia-based Men’s doubles teams, Eunggwon Kim and Hong Kit Wong, were seeded 5th but crashed out in the quarters. Fittingly for a draw without any of the top ranked players, a No. 21 seed made it to the finals in Nicolas Acevedo & Clayton Powell, but they were felled by Tama Shimabukuro & Yuta Funemizo, who had a great run at the Atlanta Slam (they lost in the Bronze medal match) but who took the title here.

Women’s Pro Doubles Recap

The all-Aussie pair of Danni-Elle Townsend & Sahra Dennehy (soon to be seen in MLP playing for the Columbus Sliders and the California Black Bears respectively) held serve as the No. 1 seeds here and took the title. They topped No. 2 seeds Lingwei Kong & Genie Erokhina in the final.

Senior Pro Competition Quick Recap

• Men’s Senior Open Singles: Mattias Johansson took the title in a stacked senior singles field that included several multi-gold medal winners.
• Men’s Senior Open Doubles: Steve Deakin didn’t have his normal partner in Altaf, but he still won gold teaming with Daniel Roditi.
• Women’s Senior Open Singles: Lupita Curiel continues to be a force in senior singles, taking gold.
• Women’s Senior Open Doubles: Julie Shapiro & Jennifer Lyons took gold in the Women’s Senior doubles draw.
• Mixed Senior Open Doubles: Steve Deakin made it another senior double, pairing with Andrea Olson to win the Mixed gold.

Any Head to Head or career match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 31,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours, and has started a fantastic new Bracket Challenge feature for Fantasy-style sports fans to try out.

Other resources I use frequently to cover Pickleball include: