Video: How Columbus pulled off big upset in Major League Pickleball playoffs

Alex Lantz

Director of Content

Last Edited

Aug 21 2025

How Columbus won Game 1

Daescu and Klinger had a lot of success with the drive and crash in this game. They were both being aggressive with their third shots and ending points early because Johnson and Ge were both having a hard time with their drives. There were very few extended dink rallies and not many points where all four players got established at the kitchen line.

Game 2: New style, same outcome

The pace slowed down significantly because Johnson and Ge were handling Columbus' drives a lot better. So there ended up being a lot more kitchen rallies, and a distinct pattern started to take shape with Columbus targeting Ge's backhand in long dink rallies.

In Game 1, I counted only one rally where they made Ge hit five or more dinks in a row, and in Game 2 there were seven of those rallies, so Daescu and Klinger's strategy became quite clear.

Ge is known as a very solid player who wins with consistency, but Daescu and CJ were daring him to try to create by consistently funneling the ball to his side of the court. And when he did try to generate offense, both Daescu and Klinger did a great job of countering those attacks.

It’s not that Ge was missing dinks into the net or popping balls up -- it was more the fact that Columbus didn’t seem to think anything bad was going to happen if they put the ball to his side of the court.

Game 3: Johnson tries to help, but over-extends

Johnson was clearly trying to be more aggressive in Game 3 than he had been in Games 1 and 2. He was trying to take any ball close to the middle to keep Ge from getting into the pattern that had been problematic in Game 2, but that strategy didn't work either because Columbus did a good job of punishing Johnson when he got himself out of position.

I also don't think taking a lot of court is a strength of Johnson's. Even when he plays mixed doubles with Jorja Johnson, he stays much more to his side of the court than a lot of other men's players in mixed doubles.

Men's doubles was a clear weakness for the Flash this season

Johnson and Ge did not have nearly as much success this season as they did in 2024, when Dallas won the MLP championship. Here are their stats together over the past two seasons:

2025: 16-16 (50%) -- went 5-9 in their last 14 games of the season and 0-3 in the playoffs.

2024: 25-10 (71%) -- went 7-1 in the playoffs last season.

So it seems like teams really figured out how to play Dallas’ men’s team toward the end of this season. They were funneling a lot of balls to Augie’s backhand to make him try to generate offense, which he wasn’t able to do effectively, and then that forced JW to overcompensate and go for too much.

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