![\"Johnson](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0x0.png\")
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In a year when Dallas looked like they may have been retooling for 2027, JW Johnson has them powered into the semis of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
MLP<\/p>\n
Major League Pickleball<\/a> (MLP), presented by DoorDash, headed held its quarterfinal playoffs last weekend in Newport Beach. We had four best 2-of-3 matches between the best teams, we had some national TV spots on Fox Sports 1, and we had more than a few interesting matches and upsets.<\/p>\n Key links for tracking the event this weekend, which feature livestreams from the primary courts at the facility on MLP\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a> and on PickleballTV.com<\/a>. I also have data-centric links at the bottom of this recap.<\/p>\n Quarterfinals Opponent Draft Results<\/p>\n Ahead of the event, the 1st – 4th finishing teams \u201cdrafted\u201d their first round playoff opponents. The results were announced noon Monday<\/a>, and had a couple of surprises.<\/p>\n No. 1 New Jersey picked No. 7 Palm BeachNo. 2 St. Louis picked No. 8 TexasNo. 3 Los Angeles picked No. 6 Dallas No. 4 Columbus was left with No. 5 Brooklyn<\/p>\n This set of selections was not too surprising. New Jersey picked Palm Beach despite their being ranked higher than Texas. Palm Beach\u2019s men have been struggling as of late, to the point where they\u2019re playing Waiver pickup Casey Diamond instead of Tyson McGuffin. New Jersey probably wanted to avoid Texas\u2019 energy and solid DreamBreaker team in this round. St. Louis then picked Texas to have the least bad of three bad choices, and probably favors their chances in every matchup. They\u2019ve already played three times this season and STL has dropped just one game across those 3 matches. I\u2019m slightly surprised LA picked Dallas, if only because Brooklyn can\u2019t seem to field a full-strength team, but the margins between Dallas and Brooklyn are probably pretty thin. There\u2019s going to be some very fun matches in that LA-Dallas tie. That leaves Columbus facing off against Brooklyn in what should be a very close tie.<\/p>\n Quarterfinal Playoff Recaps<\/p>\n Matchup No. 1: No. 1 New Jersey vs No. 7 Palm Beach<\/p>\n Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes<\/p>\n New Jersey’s women’s doubles team (Anna Leigh Waters L, Jorja Johnson R) cruised through this weekend and will be a major factor in their team’s success in NYC.<\/p>\n MLPMatch 1: New Jersey, who picked Palm Beach as their opponent, got more than they bargained for in their opening match. After the expected ALW\/Jorja win in Women’s, PBR’s Men’s team trounced Fed and Howells 11-4 to even the match. Then, for just the 5th time this season, Waters & Khlif lost in Mixed, and lost badly 11-4. With their backs against the wall, Jorja & Fed powered past Diamond & Sewing to push to the DreamBreaker, where NJ ground out an 21-17 win to take the first tie.Match 2: For the 2nd day in a row, PB was able to beat ALW in mixed, giving New Jersey some serious lineup questions to consider ahead of the finals next week, but a dominant set of game wins otherwise powered NJ to a 3-1 win and a 2-game sweep of Palm Beach that was a lot closer than many thought it would be.<\/p>\n Matchup No. 2: No. 2 St. Louis vs No. 8 Texas<\/p>\n Match 1: In the opening match of the weekend, STL did not mess around with Texas, Blasting them 11-3 and 11-2 in gender doubles, then finishing them off with a pasting by Bright & Patriquin 11-4 in Mixed-1. There’s not a lot of obvious areas here for the Ranchers to improve if they want to even get a game off of St. Louis.Match 2: St. Louis and Texas kicked off Saturday\u2019s play as well, and STL picked up right where they left off, destroying the Texas squad for the second straight day for another 3-0 sweep and the match. Lea Jansen also picked up right where she left off from yesterday with her rising frustration with Patriquin and the Shock team in general, making a comment about the Greek life history in particular of Ross Chaifetz at one point during the match. St. Louis moves on.<\/p>\n Matchup No. 3: No. 3 Los Angeles vs No. 6 Dallas <\/p>\n Match 1: Dallas\u2019 Townsend & Truong continued their improvement as a team by topping the veteran Kawamoto\/Parenteau team to open, but Johns & Freeman held firm against JW & Ge to tie it up. From there, LA\u2019s superior mixed teams cruised, winning both ties 11-6 to take the first match 3-1.Match 2: We got “good” Ben Johns today, as he powered his team to two wins in doubles, normally LA\u2019s recipe for victory. However, Dallas countered with “good” Townsend, who won both of HER doubles matches to send the tie to a DreamBreaker. There, the seeming underdog DB team of Dallas pulverized LA’s top-notch singles squad 21-11 in shocking dominance by Townsend over Parker in particular (8-0) to send this to the third match on Sunday.Match 3: in the rubber match, a strong start out of LA’s somewhat maligned Women’s doubles team was given away fast by two straight disappointing games from top player Ben Johns, who lost in Men’s 11-2 and then in Mixed 11-6 to sink LA’s chances. Dallas’ Townsend & Ge finished off the upset for a 3-1 win and the match.<\/p>\n Matchup No. 4: No. 4 Columbus vs No. 5 Brooklyn.<\/p>\n Christian Alshon willed his team to victory.<\/p>\n MLPMatch 1: Brooklyn, Finally playing at full strength for the first time since mid June, traded blows with a rusty Columbus (who hasn’t played in a month) to push their first tie to the DreamBreaker, where Brooklyn’s top-notch singles players dismantled the Columbus squad 21-10 for the first match.Match 2: In perhaps a great example of just how close these two teams are, both gender results flipped from the first match, but both Mixed stayed the same split to head to a second DreamBreaker in a row. This DB was a different story from the first one, as Columbus jumped out to a seemingly insurmountable early lead through one rotation. Brooklyn fought back by dominating the second turn and was ahead 18-16 … and Columbus scored 5 straight points to win 21-16, including three straight at the end by Klinger over No. 1 ranked singles player Haworth to shock Brooklyn and send it to the decider.Match 3: Columbus finally ran out of gas, as Brooklyn’s gender teams both cruised to victories, then the two teams split mixed to send Brooklyn into the semis and finish off the weekend.Player Stats Analysis for the Weekend<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a quick look at the players who played best (and worst) this weekend.<\/p>\n The four St. Louis players finished 1st-4th statistically for the weekend, telling us what we already knew: St. Louis crushed Texas.The best statistical performance on a losing team was Dekel Bar, who went 3-1 for Palm Beach in what may be his MLP swan song.Playing New Jersey is a tough assignment, but Sofia Sewing went 0-4 with just a 27% points won percentage for the weekend after a strong debut season.What did we learn this weekend?<\/p>\n What were our top Takeaways from the competition this weekend?<\/p>\n St. Louis may not be the top seed, but they look the strongest top to bottom.New Jersey has a very serious lineup problem. They cannot expect to win against top teams when Anna Leigh Waters doesn\u2019t pick up both her ties, and right now the Waters\/Khlif Mixed-1 partnership looks incredibly vulnerable. During the second game of the tie this weekend, the pair even went as far as switching sides to put Waters on the left, and still the play went primarily through Khlif, who continues to look tentative and error prone. It would not surprise me in the least to see Khlif benched for the rest of the playoffs.Dallas is tough, but I\u2019m not sure I trust them to beat one of the two top teams right now.It is great to see Brooklyn back at full strength, just in time for a great semi-final run against (presumably) New Jersey, who has their pick between them and Dallas as their semi-final opponent.Media Pick\u2019 Em Contest Update<\/p>\n We have a slew of influencers and members of the traditional pickleball media participating in a season-long pick\u2019em contest. Here\u2019s the link to track the competition<\/a> online, and I\u2019ll be tweeting out the pick matrix and updates, so follow me on Twitter <\/a>if interested.<\/p>\n MLP Media Pick\u2019em Competition Weekly Summary: For the first time all year, yours truly won a week. Just in time to put myself within one Thomas Shields collapse of the title.<\/p>\n Media pick sheet for Week 11.<\/p>\n Todd Boss <\/p>\n Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule<\/a> …<\/p>\n Next up for the MLP is the semis and finals of the 2026 playoffs, live from Wollman Rink in Central Park, in two weeks\u2019 time (August 28th-30th). So the teams get a small breather to regroup. In-between now and then, we\u2019ve got a slew of international events that we\u2019ll cover.<\/p>\n MLP-specific stats mentioned herein come from PickleKey.com<\/a>, which has done a great job collecting detailed MLP player data for the league and went through an off-season re-design that includes a slew of new ways to slice and dice the data.<\/p>\n My colleague Erik Tice at the Dink<\/a> (who does double duty as the GM for the California Black Bears) is back to maintaining his Public MLP Data sheet<\/a>, which has all sorts of awesome data. <\/p>\n