Ben Johns.
Anna Bright.
Hayden Patriquin.
Some of the greatest players on the planet are in St. Petersburg for Major League Pickleball regular season matches now through Sunday (June 17-21).
Why St. Pete? The Burg actually has an MLP team. And for the first time, the hometown Florida Smash is hosting 11 of the 20 MLP franchises.
“I think that they’re gonna blow it out of the water,” Smash player and co-owner Travis Rettenmaier said about his adopted hometown and about the host facility, St. Pete Athletic. “The stadium capacity that they’re gonna have—it should look like a real sophisticated sporting event where people are walking in and feeling like they’re walking into something that matters and something that’s cool.”
St. Pete Athletic is a new club in the Warehouse Arts District. One of SPA’s owners, Reuben Pressman, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay it’s “incredibly exciting” to host Major League Pickleball.
“You’re talking anywhere up to 15,000 attendees” for the several-day event, Pressman added. “The energy is absolutely incredible at these events. I mean you’re talking huge stands, VIPs, courtside access” to dozens of the top pros in the world.
“It’s a full takeover of the entire club. The championship courts will be in the new building that was built with that capacity in mind and has 33-foot ceilings,” Pressman says. “All these arched windows, you’ll have really cool viewing spaces and box suites and watching them practice and behind the scenes. Then all the event energy.”
And Pressman sees having MLP at his club will benefit the entire community.
“I think one of the top reasons people right now are traveling is for pickleball,” Pressman says. He expects thousands of fans to come from outside the region. “You want to be in St. Pete, it’s a good vacation spot, come hang out, come see everything. … Being able to do those things and see Major League Pickleball here is kind of a win, win, win.”
MLP differs from the PPA Tour in a couple of ways. Instead of competing for individual rankings, players in the MLP are part of a team of six players. “It has a very different energy when you’re playing for a city that you appreciate or teammates that you admire and you don’t want to let them down,” says the Smash’s Rettenmaier.
In each MLP match, the teams play four doubles games: women’s, men’s and two mixed doubles. If the teams each win a pair, there’s one game of singles, where every four points the players swap out. It’s called a Dreambreaker, “which is kind of like maybe the coolest thing in sports,” Rettenmaier says.
“From a perspective of men playing against women, because everybody can play against everybody. You play four points in, and your teammate comes up. Everyone uses their own strategy and mixes it around, and that was a winner take all,” he added.
A new rule this season is that players can sub in during a match. That has led to singles specialists sitting out doubles but playing in the Dreambreaker.
“I’m 42,” Rettenmaier says. “I think me in singles is not ideal.” So he expects 19-year-old Cason Campbell will handle Smash Dreambreakers instead.
St. Pete is one of nine events around the country this summer that make up the MLP regular season. There’s a mid-season tournament in Michigan in July and three weeks of Playoffs in August to crown MLP champs.
Most MLP players also compete as individuals on the PPA Tour. There are no PPA events this summer because of MLP.
MLP St. Pete is June 17-21. On Thursday-Saturday, teams within each pool will play each other. Then on what MLP is calling Super Sunday the top four teams from each pool will play the corresponding team from the other pool to determine how many standings points each team
Here are the teams and players to look out for when Major League Pickleball comes to St. Petersburg
Group A: Brooklyn Pickleball Team, Chicago Slice, Florida Smash, Los Angeles Mad Drops, Miami Pickleball Club
Group B: Columbus Sliders, Orlando Squeeze, Palm Beach Royals, St. Louis Shock, Texas Ranchers, Utah Black Diamonds
One favorite to win the MLP this year is the St. Louis Shock, which has three of the best doubles players in the world—Hayden Patriquin, Anna Bright and Gabe Tardio. The side also has two singles standouts who could shine during Dreambreakers: Kate Fahey, who won gold at the PPA Finals in May and Bradenton teenager John Lucian Goins, who won silver. She might not see much game action this season, but on their bench is 13-year-old future star Elsie Hendershot.
The GOAT, Ben Johns, plays for the L.A. Mad Drops. He’s ranked first in the world in both mixed and men’s doubles.
The Columbus Sliders are the reigning MLP champs and have three returning starters, Andrei Daescu, Parris Todd and CJ Klinger.
The Brooklyn Pickleball Team has Tampa phenom, Rachel Rohrabacher and the top men’s singles player, Chris Haworth. As well as Christian Alshon, who is ranked third in men’s doubles and fourth in mixed.
Watch out for young Tama Shimabukuro on the Utah Black Diamonds. The exciting 15-year-old from Hawai’i took home a silver medal at a recent PPA Slam in Atlanta.
A new team, the Palm Beach Royals, features Bradenton residents Tina Pisnik—who is Top 10 in both doubles disciplines—and Tammy Emmrich.
Host team Florida Smash is made up of Travis Rettenmaier (St. Pete), Christopher Crouch (St. Pete), Zoey Weil, Martina Frantova, Cason Campbell, and Paula Rives (Largo).
Noticeably absent will be the most dominant pickleball player in the world, Anna Leigh Waters. She rarely loses and is ranked No. 1 in singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles. Her New Jersey Fives have the week off for MLP St. Pete. But they will be part of MLP Orlando at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex to close out the regular season July 30-Aug. 2.
MLP St. Pete location: St. Pete Athletic, 680 28th St. S. in the Warehouse Arts District.
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