Jorja Johnson was on fire for the Dallas Flash this weekend. The 2025 Major League Pickleball (MLP presented by DoorDash) season kicked off in Orlando this past weekend, as the league returned to action for the first time since the Dallas Flash won the 2024 season last November. Since then we’ve had dozens of trades, waiver drops, the 2025 draft, more trades, and even a franchise swap that happened so close to the Orlando event that Key Links for tracking the event this weekend, which featured livestreams from the two primary courts at the facility on MLP’s YouTube channel and on PickleballTV.com. MLP Orlando Event home page League Standings and Player Stats MLP Schedule along with Rosters for Premier and Challenger teams News and Noteworthy Before we get to an event recap, some news and notes. The move from rally scoring to conventional side-out scoring debate raged on during the event. Some like it, others don’t. My take? I believe rally scoring eliminates a key aspect of the sport; the comeback. With side-out scoring, teams have the ability to get down early, “dig in" defensively to hold firm and claw their way back into a game. Nearly every rally scoring argument relates to televising the sport and wanting a match to fit into a set time period for predictability of match length, which has nothing to do with ensuring good competition. The one tweak I’d recommend is to make the games to 15 instead of 11 to get a little more play per game. Since the ownership group of the host Orlando Squeeze also happens to own the NBA franchise Orlando Magic, there was a fun exhibition on day one featuring some NBA legends and members of the MLP team playing on center court. When the first match finally made it onto pickleball TV … the courts for this event were, to put it lightly, uniquely painted. The edges of the court are bright orange with the title sponsor prominently displayed at the players’ feet, while the in-play court is light blue with another sponsor painted in white letters inside the Kitchen. The glare in the midday sun looked brutal on players, who were squinting and wearing sunglasses as they played. Also, As anyone who has played with white lettering in the background of the ball flight can attest, this paint scheme has to be causing visibility issues for the players. It certainly is distinctive on TV though. A source who was onsite all weekend said it wasn’t nearly as bad in person as it seemed on TV, for what it’s worth. The kickoff event features all 16 Premier teams and zero Challenger teams. There’s a really unbalanced schedule as well, with some playing just two matches while Columbus plays six. We immediately saw some “bench players” get into main action, which is interesting considering that (per the KOTC podcast preview) many premier teams aren’t even paying their bench players to travel to Orlando for the event. I guess these teams better hope they don’t have any injuries. I also wonder … each MLP event has some “onsite emergency subs” available, who are signed players who didn’t make it onto a squad. But with 120 of the roughly 150 signed players officially drafted, the quality of the remaining non-signed players would be pretty bleak if a top player went down with injury. This bench/emergency sub situation turned out to come true, as on-site emergency sub AJ Koller was called into action for the Mad Drops to replace Hunter Johnson (hand issue). I just have to ask: what’s the point of having bench players if you’re not going to have them available when you need them? I’m guessing we’ll see some new guidelines mandating bench player travel soon. I guess JW Johnson feels he’s gotten the respect he deserves; instead of No. 12 on his jersey he wore his last name like the rest of this Dallas teammates on opening day, then broke out the “Flick Wizard” moniker on day two. Dallas also featured a really slick commercial on the PickleballTV.com stream, highlighting their stars set on the backdrop of the Dallas center city skyline. Well done. A small competition nugget became clear, which has serious ramifications for the matches. The “home” team in each match gets to react to their opponent’s lineup choices and play matchups in the Mixed pairings. This allows teams to “throw” one of their mixed pairings (i.e. playing their No. 2 team versus the clear No. 1 pair from their opponent) instead of playing strength versus strength. MORE FOR YOU ‘It’s Imminent’—U.S. Dollar Fed Warning Braces Bitcoin For A BlackRock ‘Megaforce’ Price Shock Google’s Gmail Upgrade—Why You Need To Change Your App Microsoft Confirms $1.50 Windows Security Update Fee Starts July 1 Premier League Recap Day 1 Observations Miami kicks off the 2025 MLP season with a defeat of its fellow promoted team SoCal. Miami’s trade acquisition Khlif won both his doubles ties and then they outlasted SoCal 21-18 in the DreamBreaker. Texas’ new acquisition Oncins powered the Ranchers, who survives an 11-1 beatdown of its No. 1 Mixed team to win the overall match 3-1, in the only battle of the day that involved two 2024 premier playoff teams. Atlanta opened its tie with the Hustlers with an 11-0 blitzing in Women’s doubles, then cruised to a win over the hapless Hustlers, who embarrassingly fall to a newly promoted team in their opener. Day 2 Observations Anna Leigh Waters (R) teamed with new partner Meghan Dizon (L) to pick right back up where she left ... More off from last year's MLP season. Dallas embarrassed Columbus, winning Women’s 11-1 and Mixed No. 1 11-0 to cruise in a statement-making opener before losing the meaningless final. New Jersey played their game plan to perfection, winning both of ALW’s doubles ties then crushing Brooklyn in the DB 21-7 that included Waters going 8-0 against Rohrabacher. Dallas embarrassed NY with the first 4-0 sweep of the weekend, giving up a combined ten (10!) points across four games. NY’s women’s team Spiridis & Kong take their 2nd 11-0 loss on the day, and Dallas gets two 11-0 wins in the tie. Day 3 Observations Dallas exposed Carolina’s female players to improve to 3-0 on the weekend. ALW and Howells pickled Atlanta’s No. 2 mixed team to finish off an emphatic 3-1 win as New Jersey remains undefeated to start the season. Columbus put it together after two losses to last year’s two top teams and won a very close tie over Texas in a battle of teams looking to push the top three all year. Despite missing Hunter Johnson, emergency sub A.J. Koller went 2-0 as the Mad Drops set down Miami. To be fair they were playing back to back in the midday Orlando sun and likely ran out of gas. Day 4 Observations St. Louis got a stern test against Brooklyn to start its new season, sweeping gender doubles then losing both mixed ties to leave it to a DreamBreaker win. Chicago’s new lineup got its first test of the season against defending champs Dallas, and came up wanting as the Flash swept its way to an undefeated weekend. Columbus hit full cruise mode with their second 4-0 win of the day over Miami to finish the event strong. MLP saved the best for last: last year’s two top regular season teams battled it out in a feisty match late Sunday afternoon, with St Louis showing that they continue to be the overall stronger team with a 3-1 win over New Jersey. The end of the match included some testy exchanges between teams mid-match. Patriquin expressed some outrage at being body bagged repeatedly by Howells in their mixed match, which ALW mistakenly thought was being directed at her specifically. Such bad blood is good press for the competitiveness of the league, especially after some of the duds we saw this weekend. Team Standings Update post Event Orlando Squeeze teammates Dylan Frazier (L) and Federico Staksrud (R) were a tough out this weekend, ... More playing hosts in the Florida sun. (Reminder: because of unbalanced schedules, I refer to points-per-match standings instead of total points when ranking teams, while the MLP’s website ranks them by total points). Dallas starts strong, going 4-0 on the weekend and taking maximum points. They lost just two games all weekend and have a perfect 3 points/match start to the season. Something tells me the Johnson “lack of respect” meme will be something we continue to see all year. St Louis only played twice, but finishes 2-0 to be the only other unbeaten team. Great starts as well for New Jersey, Texas, Columbus, and Orlando, the latter two of which missed the playoffs last year but remade their rosters in the off-season and now look great. At the other end of the table, six teams leave Orlando winless, and there’s little surprise which six teams now sit bottom. Phoenix, SoCal, and Utah at least picked up a DreamBreaker loss point, while New York, Carolina, and Chicago each went 0-2 in brief stints this weekend. Player Standings/Stats Analysis for the Weekend: Unfortunately, the MLP player stats page is a mess post-event, but as far as I can tell here’s some of the best and worst performers on a points-per-game average: Jorja Johnson leads the league, by far, in points W/L percentage, winning all four of her games and giving up just 8 total points for a 44-8 record. The next closest player is ALW’s 64% points W/L rate. The next three best performing players may be somewhat surprising: Fought, Glozman, and Duong finished 3-4-5 in points W/L percentage, great showings for the newly promoted Atlanta players and for Duong, who continues to improve his doubles game at each event. The bottom finisher should be no surprise, as we mentioned above that Lingwei Kong took two 11-0 losses and finishes bottom of the points W/L percentage table. She’s joined at the bottom by fellow Hustler Zane Ford and, surprisingly, Tyler Loong, who had the second worst rate on the weekend. One fun note: Matty Pickles on Twitter is running a season-long pundit match prediction contest, and yours truly went 8-for-8 to start the season. I’ll put my streak on the line next weekend. Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, the US Open began last weekend in competition with this week’s and next week’s MLP events unfortunately. Hopefully at some point the two events can get on the same page and return the US Open to its place of respect. That being said, Anna Leigh Waters is playing the Naples event for the second year running, this time playing Mixed with none other than Andre Agassi. Next up for the MLP? Their next event is next weekend, at the Pickle & Chill facility in Columbus, Ohio. We’ll provide similar coverage all season. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades