Anna Leigh Waters, Anna Bright put women's field on notice at PPA Tour Atlanta Pickleball Championships
Last Edited
May 18 2025
Category
News
Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright claimed gold in their first tournament together this season on Sunday at the PPA Tour Atlanta Pickleball Championships, and Waters got her 150th career gold medal on tour in the process (she ended the day with 151).
Waters and Bright took down their former partners -- Catherine Parenteau and Rachel Rohrabacher -- in three games in the much-anticipated women's doubles final, 11-4, 11-7, 11-3.
It was the first PPA Tour tournament since Waters and Parenteau ended their longstanding doubles partnership and Bright ended her partnership with Rohrabacher to team up with the No. 1 women's player in the world.
The dominant performance in the 2025 debut of the Waters/Bright duo is a concerning sign for the rest of the women's doubles field, as they didn't drop a game all tournament and outscored their opponents 99-28.
“I’ve been really impressed with Anna Leigh,” Bright said after the match, which was her first gold medal in any division in 2025. “She takes nobody for granted, she’s always ready. … We were fired up for (Sunday's match) and we came out and did what we needed to do against a really good team.”
For Waters, the women's doubles title was one of the three gold medals she won on Sunday -- her third triple crown this season and 34th of her career.
“I haven’t had a triple crown in a little while and I haven’t played all three events in a little while, so I was really hyped for this tournament," Waters said. "I wanted to come out here and prove – not to everybody else, but to myself – that I still had it in me."
Her 151 career gold medals are almost perfectly evenly distributed across all three divisions:
51 singles titles
49 women's doubles titles (31 with Parenteau, 8 with Bright)
51 mixed doubles titles (49 with Ben Johns)
Other results and storylines from the Atlanta Pickleball Championships, which was the second slam of the season:
Men's doubles
Gold medal match: JW Johnson/CJ Klinger def. Ben Johns/Gabe Tardio 11-9, 11-9, 11-7
Bronze medal match: Andrei Daescu/Christian Alshon def. Dekel Bar/Dylan Frazier 13-11, 11-7
Key takeaways:
-Patience pays off for Johnson/Klinger. They had won two bronze medals since teaming up earlier this year, but hadn't gotten past the top teams in their first few tries together. But in the second of four slams, with all of the top players in the draw, they took down the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 4 seeds en route to the title. The win establishes them as a clear threat to win in men's doubles going forward.
"I think we're feeling more confident and stronger together as a duo," Johnson said after the match. "I think we're just getting started and feeling a lot more comfortable each tournament."
-Johnson gets his own win against a former partner. He was forced to scramble to find a new partner earlier this year after Tardio, who he was supposed to play with for much of 2025, chose to team up with Ben Johns after Ben and Collin Johns ended their partnership. It's hard to blame Tardio too much for making that decision, and he and Johnson have remained friends since, but Sunday's win had to feel validating for Johnson. He clearly has put in a lot of work to develop a two-handed backhand dink that makes him more dangerous on the backhand side off the bounce. In the second half of 2024, opponents had started targeting that spot and Johnson's results had suffered as a result. His backhand dink was very solid all week this week, while Klinger did a great job reaching into the middle to take balls out of the air. Sunday marked Johnson's first men's doubles gold medal since the 2024 Orange County Cup, which was 11 months ago.
"I've definitely been working on that shot a lot," Johnson said of the two-handed backhand dink. "I've been drilling it and in tournaments have been trying it out a lot. I do think it is a little bit more of a weapon."
-Men's doubles continues to have great parity. Three active teams have now won at least one gold medal in 2025: Daescu/Alshon (x3), Johns/Tardio (x2) and Johnson/Klinger (x1). Daescu and Klinger also teamed up for a gold medal at the Daytona Beach Open, which counts for 2025 standings. The Johns brothers won The Masters, which was their final event together, and Tyson McGuffin/Tardio won the Australia Pickleball Open. Meanwhile, Federico Staksrud/Hayden Patriquin have five silver medals and one bronze medal this year and are also among the top teams on a given week.
Mixed doubles
Gold medal match: Anna Leigh Waters/Ben Johns def. Christian Alshon/Etta Tuionetoa 11-3, 11-2, 11-7
Bronze medal match: JW Johnson/Jorja Johnson def. Andrei Daescu/Tina Pisnik 11-8, 11-5
Key takeaways:
-Johns set a new PPA Tour record with 39 straight tournaments with at least one gold medal with this win. The previous record was 38, set by Anna Leigh Waters. While the men's doubles loss prevented him from getting his own triple crown, Johns is still a threat to win in every division at any given tournament.
-Alshon continues impressive 2025 season. He now has three silver medals (with three different partners) and two bronze medals in mixed doubles, in addition to his three men's doubles golds and two singles golds. To get to the final this week he and Tuionetoa had a very impressive semifinal win over the Johnson siblings, who beat Johns/Waters a month ago at the North Carolina Open.
Men's singles
Gold medal match: Ben Johns def. Connor Garnett 3-11, 11-9, 11-9
Bronze medal match: Hunter Johnson def. Dylan Frazier 11-2, 11-7
Key takeaways:
-Johns can still beat the best playing an old-school style. There was much talk earlier in the week about the current state of men's pro singles, but Johns stuck to his signature style by beating opponents playing excellent cat-and-mouse points and using a softer Gen 2 paddle. Sunday's final against Garnett was an especially grueling match and Johns let out an uncharacteristic emotional roar after securing the final point.
“It was a very grindy match," an exhausted Johns said after the match. "Connor gets to everything and makes you play so many balls, so I think the emotion just had a lot to do with the kind of match it was."
Women's singles
Gold medal match: Anna Leigh Waters def. Kate Fahey 11-1, 7-11, 11-1
Bronze medal match: Parris Todd def. Catherine Parenteau 9-11, 11-1, 11-4
Takeaways:
-Waters continues to be head and shoulders clear of the field in women's singles. She's 29-0 on the season and has only dropped two games. Her last loss in singles was at the Texas Open in May of 2024.
-Despite Sunday's loss, Fahey is making progress. She had never taken a game off of Waters (0-16) coming into the match, so the 11-7 win in Game 2 is a bright spot. She also made it to the finals relatively easily, as she didn't drop a game in any of the earlier rounds.
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