PPA Finals Showdown: Top 8 in Innovative Pool Play Format

Tyson Mcguffin (Image credit: Nick Uzunyan)

The PPA Finals are this weekend. For those who like watching the best players, it fits the bill since only the top 8 players in each category (singles, gender doubles, and mixed doubles) played it. The cool part was the pool play format (World cup format), where there were two pools of 4, and the top 2 from each made it to the elimination round. Today is Championship Sunday where players will vie for GOLD!  As usual, Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters (ALW) are fighting for the triple crown. In a departure from the usual, there were some interesting upsets in the pool play. National champion, JW Johnson, went 0-3 in singles and Ben Johns lost a match to Connor Garnett. The biggest upset, however, was Ben Johns and ALW losing only their second match all year, 8-11 8-11 to Anna Bright and James Ignatowich. 

If you are less in touch with the pro game, this was a very interesting tournament because the Pro players played a different style, much more like that played by amateurs. We have seen that the Tours are trying to look at new ways to enhance and grow viewership, and they are changing formats in various ways.  You have the traditional bracket style, the MLP team format, the progressive draw format (where you play one round of singles, mixed, gender each day) and now this pool plays into a playoff format. The interesting thing will be next year if we will see them settle on 1 format or if the tours (especially the PPA) will keep trying new things to see what sticks.

How the Pool Play Format Has Shaped Pro Pickleball Since 2023

Looking back from 2026, the PPA Finals pool play experiment was a turning point. The format succeeded in creating more meaningful matches — every game in pool play carried weight, unlike early rounds of traditional brackets where top seeds rarely faced real challenges. The "World Cup style" approach gave fans guaranteed matchups between elite players rather than the usual first-round blowouts.

Since then, we've seen the tours continue experimenting. MLP's team format proved the sport could support franchise-style competition, while the PPA has refined its event structures to maximize both player competition and broadcast appeal. The pool play format from these 2023 Finals laid the groundwork for many of those innovations.

The upsets from this tournament — JW Johnson going 0-3, Ben Johns losing to Connor Garnett, and the Johns/Waters mixed doubles loss to Bright/Ignatowich — also signaled a shift in competitive balance that has continued into 2026. The gap between the top players and the rest of the field has narrowed considerably, making every tournament more unpredictable and exciting for fans.