New Jersey Fives Make A Statement With A Dominant Major League Pickleball Columbus Win

Transaction Recap & Player News

Ahead of the weekend, the following transactions were announced:

• California suffered a blow when Luca Mack, who team officials described as their “secret weapon,” suffered a season-ending injury and had to be put onto the Injured Reserve. In his place, they drafted Australian Joseph Wild, who will join the team in Week No. 4 in Austin.
• Host Columbus will have lead female Parris Todd rejoining the team after serving her one event suspension last week in Dallas. According to this tweet from the Kitchen, when asked who was going to play the Left, Danni-Elle Townsend intimated that they’d play it straight up, a rarity in the pro world these days. Townsend also added, “What people don’t know is my right side is better than my left haha.”
• It did not take Columbus long to cash in on Alix Truong’s performance, trading her to Phoenix for Judit Castillo. Curiously, Columbus sent cash along with the trade for Judit, not the other way around, despite Truong’s top-10 performance in Dallas. Nonetheless, Phoenix pairs the Truong siblings and improves, while Castillo moves to a winning team but likely won’t play unless there’s a blow-out or an injury.
• Las Vegas heads into the event with its Number 1 female Chao-Yi Wang injured; they line up with Liz Truluck alongside the veteran Callie Smith.

News and Noteworthy

Ahead of the event, here’s some news and noteworthy items for MLP.

• Thanks to a 3-way tie for 4th place in the group stage last weekend, MLP updated and clarified their tie-breakers. These are in the media guide linked above and are now part of the official procedures. In order:
  • Group Record
  • Head-to-Head(-to-Head) Results
  • Net Games
  • Point Differential (Net Points)
  • Rock-Paper-Scissors (just kidding).
• Host Columbus will have lead female Parris Todd rejoining the team after serving her one event suspension last week in Dallas. According to this tweet from the Kitchen, when asked who was going to play the Left, Danni-Elle Townsend intimated that they’d play it straight up, a rarity in the pro world these days. Townsend also added, “What people don’t know is my right side is better than my left haha.” I can’t wait for the Columbus-New Jersey rematch.

Premier League Group Stage Match Recap

Day 1 Observations

• The Palm Beach Royals made their league debut, as did Sofia Sewing. They cruised to a women’s doubles win to open the match, but then their veteran Men’s team of McGuffin & Bar stalled to lose to French & Young to even the match. Sewing comes out with Tyson in Mixed, while Carolina subs in bench player Connor Mogle for Young in mixed in an interesting move. It did not matter: the experienced PB team cruised in both Mixed matches to win the tie.
• With two former NJ players on Chicago (Navratil and Humberg), the familiarity is high, but NJ held firm, overcame early deficits to take both gender doubles ties. Zane & Mari really pressed ALW and Khlif, who are still playing together even after issues in Dallas. Chicago gave NJ everything they could handle, isolating ALW on the right but it wasn’t enough; she won the game and match on a far-ranging poach for a winner to win 13-11 and claim the tie. Chicago won the meaningless last game, but this was closer than the score-line indicates. Coincidentally, this would be the ONLY game New Jersey lost the entire weekend.
• Parris Todd resumes her starting slot on the Sliders … and starts off nicely with a win in Women’s doubles with Dallas sensation Townsend, but the underrated Miami Men’s team of Yuta and Acevedo shocks CJ & Andre to even it up. Miami won the first mixed tie as well to shockingly be in a position to win, but Daescu & Todd won Mixed #2 to force the first DreamBreaker of the day. Columbus, not considered to be a great DB team, played Daescu instead of Crum and instantly got dividends with a 4-0 start. Instead, Crum subbed for CJ and went 3-1 to hand the strong Columbus women a 7-1 lead. Todd went 4-0, then newly acquired Judit, traded for earlier today and literally fresh off the plane, moved it to 14-1 before finally dropping another point. They eventually win 21-5, likely the worst ever DB defeat, to salvage the win.

Day 2 Observations

• Miami got the first real jaw-dropping result of the season, sweeping Atlanta 4-0 in a match where none of the games were terribly close. Atlanta’s veteran player strategy came face to face with Miami GM Johnny Goldberg’s genius for finding players and came up short.
• Miami may have been able to beat a mid-level team like Atlanta, but New Jersey wanted none of it. Waters went on a rampage and NJ’s two mixed teams dominated enroute to a sweep.
• LV needed a DreamBreaker to get past Carolina, but luckily is one of the best DB teams out there, winning 21-9 to maintain pace in the group.

Day 3 Observations

• In a statement game, New Jersey dominated Columbus from start to finish. There was no mercy here, no upsets, no surprises from down-under. Just pure domination from the sport’s best player.
• Florida’s player-owner Rettenmaier sat himself, and saw his last-place team get their first win of 2026 behind Martina Frantova’s two wins.
• In perhaps the most shocking result of the weekend, the hapless California Black Bears trounced the same Miami team that blanked Atlanta yesterday.
• Atlanta rebounded from a couple of bad losses this weekend to edge past Chicago, in a likely battle between two teams that will be fighting for the last playoff spot.

Group Stage Results

At the end of the group stages, here were the standings, which drive the final day’s competition.

• Group A: New Jersey, Columbus, Atlanta, Chicago, California, Miami
• Group B: St. Louis, Palm Beach, Las Vegas, Carolina, Florida

Event Standings Results

For 2026, the final day features the Event Standings matches, where the winner of Group A players the Winner of Group B, the 2nd place teams play for 3rd, the 3rd place teams play for 5th, and so on. Here’s a review of those final matches.

• Event 1st Place match: A chippy match between the two best teams on paper turned into a sweep for New Jersey, who beat STL for the first time ever and nearly complete a spotless weekend, finishing 22-1 in games W/L.
• Event 3rd Place match: Disappointed not to win the group, Columbus did not letup in the 3rd place game.
• Event 5th Place match: Las Vegas put down a statement against fellow fringe Playoff contender Atlanta with a 3-1 win for 5th place.
• Event 7th Place match: Florida put up a fight but Chicago swept to claim 7th place points.

Player Stats Analysis for the Weekend

Here’s a quick look at the players who played best (and worst) this weekend.

• Not surprisingly, the top 8 statistical performers were the four starters from each of New Jersey and St. Louis. Jorja Johnson actually led the event in points percentage won with 74%.
• The next highest ranked players not on the two top teams were the two ladies starters from Columbus, Parris Todd and Danni-Elle Townsend.
• Sofia Sewing’s debut? She went 8-2 on the weekend. Not bad. I guess those APP players aren’t half bad.
• Before he pulled the plug on himself, Florida’s Travis Rettenmaier had the worst statistical performance of the weekend, winning just 25% of the points he was involved with in four games.

What did we learn this weekend?

What were our top Takeaways from the competition this weekend?

1. Anna Leigh Waters can certainly dish it out, returning the “B-word” curse at Hayden Patriquin that was uttered at an event last season. Apparently, she didn’t forget.
2. As we learned in the Partners documentary, there’s no love lost between Parris Todd and Jaume Martinez Vich.
3. Even though they finished low in the group standings, teams like Miami, California, and Florida did show some signs of life.
4. Carolina, not so much; they went 0-4 this weekend and are now 1-8 in their first two matches.

Media Pick’ Em Contest Update

MLP Super-Fan Matty Pickles (aka Matt Klitch) created a season-long Media MLP Pick’em Contest last year where a number of leading media pundits and voices in the sport compete as prognosticators each week. This year we have 16+ participants across nearly every major media outlet in the sport. Here’s the link to track the competition online, and I’ll be tweeting out the pick matrix and updates, so follow me on Twitter if interested.

Pick’em Competition Weekly Summary: After finishing dead last in Week 1, the Dink’s Thomas shields earned 9 of the 11 points to win the week along with Johnny 5.0 and Laura Gainor. Erik Tice, despite abstaining both his team’s matches, remains on top for the season. Just one pundit picked NJ to win this event; the namesake of the event Matty Pickles himself.

Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule …

Next up for the MLP is Week 3 in St. Louis, at the Chaifetz Arena, which was an awesome event last year with huge crowds.

MLP-specific stats mentioned herein come from PickleKey.com, 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.

My colleague Erik Tice at the Dink (who does double duty as the GM for the California Black Bears) is back to maintaining his Public MLP Data sheet, which has all sorts of awesome data.

Any Tour-level match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 31,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours.