The story of the PPA Virginia Cup that concluded over the weekend was none aside from the nice Anna Leigh Waters, who’s to ladies’s pickleball what Ben Johns is to the boys’s recreation.
Waters, who has quite a few gold medals to her identify, added three extra on the PPA Virginia Cup as she accomplished her thirty sixth Triple Crown. However she didn’t simply win three titles in Virginia; she additionally dominated the competitors, leaving little question that she is among the many biggest the game has ever seen.
Take the Blended Doubles crown Waters gained, as an example. Waters and fellow GOAT Ben Johns all however breezed via the competitors, holding their opponents to beneath 4 factors per recreation. And it’s not as if Waters and Johns performed no-good foes. They performed high quality opponents however nonetheless made them look vastly inferior. To wit, Layne Sleeth and James Ignatowich scored simply 5 factors. Riley Newman and Catherine Parenteau tallied seven factors. Tina Pisnik and Andrei Daescu bought to 11. Jorja and JW Johnson earned a mixed 16 factors in three video games within the Finals.
In complete, Johns and Waters have gained six consecutive Blended Doubles titles relationship again to Could and 10 of 12 in 2025.
Waters was simply as dominant doing it on her personal, destroying everybody she confronted in Ladies’s Singles by a mean scoreline of 11–5. Alongside the way in which, she beat extremely fancied rivals like Catherine Parenteau, Parris Todd, and Brooke Buckner to win one other gold. Buckner a minimum of made Waters sweat, although, extending her within the first recreation, 12–10, and placing up a valiant effort within the second recreation earlier than in the end dropping, 11–6.
In Ladies’s Doubles, Waters and companion Anna Vibrant bought again to their successful methods, dominating the division by a mean scoreline of 11–2 on their option to one other title. The pair’s gold-medal end comes on the heels of two consecutive tournaments the place they did not win gold. However Waters and Vibrant got here again with a vengeance within the PPA Virginia Cup with a dominant show they highlighted with an 11–1, 11–3 spanking of Parenteau and Jade Kawamoto within the Semis and a commanding 11–3, 11–1, 11–3 victory over Jorja Johnson and Rachel Rohrabacher within the Finals.
Evidently, Anna Leigh Waters made the PPA Virginia Cup her personal private stomping floor and proved but once more why she’s the GOAT of the ladies’s recreation.
