PPA Arizona Open Recap: Six Championship Points Saved, Double Gold for ALW, and Haworth Owns Mesa

The PPA Tour's second stop of the 2026-27 season had a little bit of everything.

The No. 1 seeds in men's doubles got absolutely smoked in their first match together. A pair of teenagers continued to prove the PPA Challenger Series is producing legitimate Tour-level talent. A 46-seed made the quarterfinals. A team had six championship points and somehow didn't win.

Oh, and a bird pooped on the eventual men's singles champion in the middle of the final.

Welcome back to Mesa.

The Veolia Arizona Open was always set up to be a little different. A handful of top players were missing, the new World Pickleball Rankings created some very unusual seeds and byes, and Anna Leigh Waters wasn't playing women's doubles, opening up an entire draw.

By the time Championship Sunday ended, we had four different championship teams, an Anna Leigh Waters double gold, and probably the best men's doubles final of the season so far.

Let's get into it.

Alshon and Daescu Survive Six Championship Points

I picked Ben Johns and Federico Staksrud to win men's doubles before the tournament.

They lasted one match.

Nico Acevedo and Yuta Funemizu took the No. 15 seed and completely dismantled Johns and Staksrud, 11-4, 11-5, in just 34 minutes. This wasn't an 11-9, 12-10 upset where a couple of balls went the wrong way. Acevedo and Funemizu were simply better.

And it turned out that result was not a fluke.

They beat Casey Diamond and Tyson McGuffin 12-10 in the third in the quarterfinals, then did the exact same thing against No. 3 seeds CJ Klinger and Cam Chaffin in the semifinals, winning 12-10 in another third game.

That put them into the final against Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu.

What followed was ridiculous.

Alshon and Daescu won Game 1, Acevedo and Funemizu answered in Game 2, and the deciding game turned into a marathon. Acevedo and Funemizu had six different championship point opportunities.

Six.

They couldn't convert any of them.

Alshon and Daescu finally escaped, 11-7, 7-11, 15-13, after 91 minutes. It was their fourth title together and their second in Mesa.

Acevedo and Funemizu were probably the story of the tournament despite finishing with silver, but give Alshon and Daescu a ton of credit. Surviving one or two match points is one thing. Six is absurd.

Alshon also made the mixed doubles final and men's singles semifinals. He was everywhere this week.

Anna Leigh Waters Wins Two More — and Ben Gets Back on Top in Mixed

Anna Leigh Waters only entered two events this week, so there was no Triple Crown available.

She settled for two golds instead.

Waters and Ben Johns entered Mesa coming off a semifinal loss at Nationals in Carolina, and this particular venue hasn't exactly been kind to them recently. They hadn't won mixed doubles in Mesa since 2024, losing to Anna Bright and Dekel Bar in 2025 and then Bright and Hayden Patriquin at the Mesa Cup earlier this year.

There was no drama Sunday.

Waters and Johns beat Rachel Rohrabacher and Christian Alshon 11-3, 11-6 in the mixed doubles final.

For Johns, the win was career PPA mixed doubles title No. 80 and extended his streak to 58 straight PPA tournaments with at least one gold medal.

Waters then finished the tournament against Kate Fahey in women's singles.

Fahey played a very good first game and kept things competitive, but Waters won 11-9, 11-4 to finish her weekend with two gold medals. Her singles unbeaten streak entered the tournament at more than two years and three months — and it continues.

At this point, the biggest women's singles storyline at every event is pretty straightforward:

Who is going to beat Anna Leigh?

We still don't have an answer.

Chris Haworth Apparently Really Likes Mesa

Chris Haworth won men's singles at the Mesa Cup in February.

Six months later, he did it again.

Haworth and Federico Staksrud produced one of Sunday's best matches, with Staksrud taking Game 1, 12-10, before Haworth responded 11-9.

Then things got weird.

Haworth trailed 6-3 in Game 3 when a bird literally pooped on him.

He proceeded to score the final eight points of the match.

I am not suggesting the two things are related. I'm also not NOT saying that.

Haworth won 10-12, 11-9, 11-6 to defend his Mesa title and capture the ninth PPA Tour singles championship of his career.

More importantly, Haworth continues to solidify himself as one of the two or three men you absolutely do not want to see in a singles draw.

In my preview, I picked Haworth to win the tournament. I'll conveniently ignore some of my other predictions and take the win here.

Rohrabacher and Todd Get the Gold — Just in Time for the Wedding

With Anna Leigh Waters not playing women's doubles and Anna Bright and Jorja Johnson also absent, this was as open as a women's doubles draw has been in a long time.

Rachel Rohrabacher and Parris Todd took advantage.

The top seeds reached the final against the new pairing of Meghan Dizon and Hurricane Tyra Black and looked like they were going to cruise.

Rohrabacher and Todd won the first game 11-4 and got all the way to 10-2 in Game 2 with championship point.

Dizon and Black somehow came all the way back to steal it, 12-10.

Instead of letting that collapse carry into the third, Todd and Rohrabacher reset and won the deciding game 11-6. It was their second title as a team and their fifth medal together.

The timing is pretty good for Rohrabacher.

She gets married on September 26.

The PPA's tournament preview called her "the bride to be" and asked whether she could take a gold medal to her wedding.

Mission accomplished.

Other Storylines

Ben Johns and Federico Staksrud Were One-and-Done

This technically fits into the Acevedo/Funemizu story, but it deserves to be repeated.

Johns and Staksrud were the No. 1 seed and one of the most intriguing new partnerships in the draw.

They lost 11-4, 11-5 in 34 minutes.

Acevedo was willing to sit in crosscourt dink exchanges with Johns, while Funemizu was outstanding on the other side. For a pairing that had received plenty of attention before the tournament, it was an unbelievably quick exit.

Funemizu and Acevedo reaching the final after the upset made the whole thing even more impressive.

The Teenagers are Legit

Kiora Kunimoto and Elliott Schupp are 18 and 19 years old.

They also reached the mixed doubles quarterfinals.

The two had already gone 11-2 together in two PPA Challenger events, including winning the Atlanta Challenger, and brought that success directly to the main Tour in Mesa.

Their path included wins over Etta Tuionetoa and Will Howells, No. 9 seeds Kaitlyn Christian and Connor Garnett, and Meghan Dizon and John Lucian Goins before finally running into Waters and Johns.

Kunimoto and Schupp look way ahead of schedule and are going to be a force to be reckoned with during the remainder of this year.

Maria Ford Makes a Run From the 46 Seed

One of the bigger surprises in singles was Maria Ford.

Ford entered as the No. 46 seed (and had to make it out qualifiers) and made it all the way to the women's singles quarterfinals, including an 11-6, 11-7 win over No. 6 Chao Yi Wang.

Kate Fahey ended the run emphatically in the quarters, but getting from No. 46 into the final eight at a PPA event is a heck of a week.

Jalina Ingram Beat Two Top 10 Seeds to Make her First Semifinals

Local teenage standout, Jalina Ingram, had herself a phenomenal week of singles.

As the No. 13 seed, she had to play a qualifier in the Round of 64, and Charlie Trevino is a very good singles player. Ingram won 11-0, 11-5. Ingram then took care of Marcela Aguila Ampon in the Round of 32 11-5, 11-5.

And then the big wins started.

In the Round of 16, Ingram faced off against No. 3 Kaitlyn Christian on SC1. In a very back and forth game one, Christian took it 14-12. Ingram was able to come back and win game two, 11-9. In the third and deciding game, Ingram pulled ahead and won 11-6.

She then faced No. 7 seed Catherine Parenteau in the quaterfinals. After going down 3-2 in game one, Ingram fired off nine straight points, winning 11-3. Parenteau came out swinging in game two, winning 11-9, and Ingram had a couple of match points on her paddle. 

In game three, Ingram’s serve and power took over, winning 11-1.

This weekend marked Ingram’s first run to the semifinals in her career. She lost to Anna Leigh Waters 0 & 0 at the semis, but is using that as a learning experience moving forward. 

The Arizona native is playing some of the best ball I have seen in her career and she loves playing in Vegas, which is the next stop on the tour.

Sofia Sewing and Casey Diamond Do It Again

I highlighted Sofia Sewing and Casey Diamond as a dangerous low-seeded mixed doubles team before the event, and they delivered.

They dropped Game 1 to Jack Sock and Lacy Schneemann before coming back to win 3-11, 11-7, 11-2. Then they beat Angie Walker and James Delgado before knocking off Tyra Black and Noe Khlif in three games to reach the quarterfinals.

Kate Fahey and Federico Staksrud finally stopped them.

As Sewing continues accumulating PPA points, she's going to stop showing up in these absurd spots in the draw. Until then, the higher seeds who keep drawing her early probably aren't very happy about it.

The New WPR Bye System Is Still Weird

I mentioned this at length in my tournament preview, and nothing from this week changed my opinion.

Because World Pickleball Rankings are being used for the new bye system, Ben Johns — the No. 22 singles seed — and Andrei Daescu — the No. 45 seed — received double byes directly into the Round of 16.

Meanwhile, No. 1 Chris Haworth and No. 3 Hunter Johnson had to begin in the Round of 64. Players like Matthew Barlow and Alex Crum were sent through qualifiers.

The WPR is trying to create one global ranking that rewards results across disciplines and events. I understand the idea.

But a singles draw where the 45 seed starts in the Round of 16 and the 1 seed starts in the Round of 64 is going to be difficult to explain to the average fan.

I wrote before the tournament that I expect changes to this format entering 2027.

I'm sticking with that.

Championship Sunday Goes Best Two-of-Three

One other notable change: all five Championship Sunday finals were played best two-out-of-three games instead of the traditional best three-out-of-five.

And three of the five finals still went to a deciding game.

The 91-minute men's doubles final certainly didn't lack drama.

It will be interesting to see whether the Tour continues with this format moving forward - personally, I really like this change and hope it sticks.

Next Up: Las Vegas

There isn't much time to reset.

The PPA Tour heads to Nevada for the Rate Las Vegas Open, running September 28 through October 4 at the Darling Tennis Center.

Mesa gave us a little bit of everything: established stars winning again, young players breaking through, bizarre seeding situations, new partnerships making deep runs, a massive early upset and one of the craziest men's doubles finals of the year.

And a bird.

Don't forget the bird.