Breaking down the best point ever

Win a stay at this EPIC pickleball house

August 06, 2026

 

If you’re a pickleball fan, we bet you’ve seen the viral point from last weekend involving Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters in Major League Pickleball.

Rallies like that one are amazing to watch. But they’re also useful to study. Today we’re breaking it down sequence by sequence to understand what strategies the best players in the world use to their advantage and how they manage to keep a point alive for 100+ shots.

You’ll want to take notes on this one. Learn more below.

In this issue:

  • This reaction seemed a bit extreme 😡

  • MLP Playoffs start TOMORROW 👀

  • Win a stay at this epic pickleball house 🏠

  • This is one of the best deals in pickleball 💸

  • PPA introduces new ranking system 📈

Let’s cook! 👨🏻‍🍳

GIVEAWAY

Win a private pickleball getaway at AMAZING pickleball vacation home

We’ve teamed up with Kaizen Pickleball to give one lucky group a 2-night stay at the Blue Ridge Pickle Barn in the North Georgia mountains.

HOW TO ENTER

1. LIKE this post
2. TAG a few friends (every tag is a new entry!)
3. FOLLOW @kaizenpickleballclub and @thekitchenpickleball
4. SHARE this post to your stories

BONUS ENTRIES: Enter your email here for up to 500 bonus entries!

The giveaway ends Sunday, Aug. 9.

MORE ABOUT KAIZEN

The Blue Ridge Pickle Barn in Georgia is the first of several planned properties that combine luxury hospitality, active lifestyles, game improvement and meaningful social connection.

The group behind the project is currently seeking investors to help expand the concept to other locations in the U.S. Get in touch here. 

Kaizen Pickleball will also have a booth at this week’s Major League Pickleball event in Dallas — stop by if you’re at the event and want to learn more!

VIRAL VIDEO

Bro pickleball is NOT that serious

There are a lot of crash out videos that come across our desks, but this one is an all-timer.

If you’ve ever chucked a paddle before, you probably were surprised at just how fast and far they tend to travel.

The guy in the clip above found that out when he rocketed his paddle into orbit out of frustration. By the looks of it, he probably isn’t good enough to get THAT upset about his missed third-shot drive.

🔗 Check out this clip on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok

THE PROS

Major League Pickleball Playoffs: First-round matchups and schedule

The Major League Pickleball playoffs kick off this week from Dallas, with 8 teams in action starting Friday.

FIRST ROUND PLAYOFF FORMAT

▪️Best-of-three match series featuring the No. 5-12 seeds.

▪️Seeds No. 5-8 select their First Round opponents from the No. 9-12 seeds. No. 5 seed (Brooklyn) had first choice, followed by No. 6 seed (Dallas), etc.

▪️Series winners advance to the quarterfinals in Newport Beach and are re-seeded based on regular season standings points.

The top four seeds — No. 1 New Jersey, No. 2 St. Louis, No. 3 Los Angeles and No. 4 Columbus — have a bye into the quarterfinals.

First-round matches will start at 2 p.m. Friday from Pickler Universe in Carrolton, Texas, which is the same venue that hosted Week 1 of the regular season.

FIRST-ROUND MATCHUPS

No. 5 Brooklyn Pickleball Team vs. No. 10 SoCal Hard Eights: Brooklyn has been without Riley Newman (injured in a scooter accident a few weeks ago) and Rachel Rohrabacher (injured in the video board incident at MLP New York) for significant stretches this season. But both are expected to play this week, which makes Brooklyn a heavy favorite.

No. 6 Dallas Flash vs. No. 11 Las Vegas Night Owls: Dallas is riding an 11-match winning streak heading into the playoffs, and the Flash won their last two events of the regular season. They’ve been a different team since trading for Danni-Elle Townsend and Alix Truong in June. Advantage Dallas.

No. 7 Palm Beach Royals vs. No. 12 Chicago Slice: Teenagers Elsie Hendershot and John Lucian Goins came up big for the Slice down the stretch, and their late-season heroics helped Chicago barely sneak into the playoff field. But even though the Slice have been playing well lately, they are still underdogs in this matchup.

No. 8 Texas Ranchers vs. No. 9 Atlanta Bouncers: This is the closest first-round matchup on paper. Both teams have had solid weeks during the regular season, but both have also turned in clunkers at times. This one seems like a tossup.

INSTRUCTION

Breaking down the most exciting pickleball point of all time — 5 lessons you can use

Was this the best pickleball point of all time? You can certainly make the case given the situation and the players involved.

It’s 10-10 in mixed doubles at the Major League Pickleball regular season finale in Orlando. Anna Leigh Waters/Noe Khlif for the New Jersey 5s against Jade Kawamoto/Ben Johns for the Los Angeles Mad Drops.

If you somehow haven’t seen it yet (or even if you have), we recently broke down the whole point and discussed 5 lessons you can learn from just this rally.

Lesson 1: The staggered formation. Both players at the kitchen line is generally better, but it isn’t a rule. Watch how one player up and one player back lets a team defend and apply pressure at the same time.

Lesson 2: Defensive mechanics. Watch how calm the players’ bodies stay when under duress. Paddle out in front, face open, moving only as much as necessary. Good defense isn’t about doing more with your paddle. It’s about doing less.

Lesson 3: Backing off the kitchen line. Anna Leigh ends up almost in the bleachers, and it’s the right call. When you’re under attack, the question is simple: where is the best place for me to be right now?

GEAR

The best deal in pickleball right now

The Proton Peacock, which was released late last year, was already a good pickleball paddle ... the problem was the price. At $280, it was tough for a lot of players to justify. But now Proton has completely restructured pricing and suddenly this paddle has a very different value proposition.

EVERY PROTON PADDLE IS AT LEAST $100 OFF RIGHT NOW + an ADDITIONAL 15% OFF with code “KITCHEN.” 🤯

In this review, we take another look at the Proton Peacock after the massive price drop.

TOPICS COVERED

▪️Proton Peacock performance.
▪️Elongated vs. widebody shapes.
▪️13mm vs. 15mm core differences.
▪️Gen 4 atomic foam core technology.
▪️Lifetime warranty details.
▪️Why the new pricing changes everything.

INTERNATIONAL PICKLEBALL

PPA Tour introduces new World Pickleball Rankings

The PPA Tour on Wednesday announced the launch of the World Pickleball Rankings, a first-of-its-kind system designed to identify the best overall pro pickleball players in the world.

The new ranking system will debut in the 2026-27 season and bring every PPA Tour event around the world under one unified, global leaderboard. According to a news release, the change is meant to give players, fans and media a single, definitive answer to the question: Who is the best pickleball player in the world?

The World Pickleball Rankings will be a composite measure of a player’s performance across all three divisions — gender doubles, mixed doubles and singles. A player’s overall score will be weighted (gender doubles at 50%, mixed doubles at 35% and singles at 15%) and drawn from their 14 best results over the trailing 52 weeks.

The system rewards complete players, according to the release — “The ones who show up and compete everywhere, in every format.”

Every PPA Tour event, whether it’s a Challenger event, international stop or a U.S. PPA Tour event, will feed into the same leaderboard, with points scaled to the size of each event. The announcement comes on the heels of the launch of PPA Tour Europe, a new circuit that will feature 20 pro pickleball events across 9 European countries in 2026 and 2027.

The tour now has international events in several regions — PPA Canada, PPA Asia, PPA Australia and PPA Europe — that will be part of the World Pickleball Rankings.

QUICK HITS

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