MLP by Margaritaville, San Clemente 2023
The third event of the 2023 Major League Pickleball (MLP) season is in the books. MLP San Clemente by Margaritaville was held at the Lifetime Fitness facility in San Clemente, California just a week after the PPA tour held a regular stop there, giving the bulk of the touring pros two events for their traveling dollar.
This is the final event of 2023’s first mini-season, and marks the half-way point of the 2023 season in total. Thanks to a newly signed TV Broadcast deal with ESPN2, the “super finals” of the mini-season will be broadcast live on ESPN2 on the Monday after the conventional MLP event finishes up, with the best performing teams across all three of the MLP events so far competing for the title. Heading into this event, Seattle and the LA Mad Drops were in position for the Premier League Super Final, while the Bay Area Breakers and the Chicago Slice were in pole position for the Challenger super final, and only a complete collapse in Southern California would prevent these two from playing for the mid-season title in their respective divisions.
Let’s recap the San Clemente event. Here’s some helpful links to follow along with the action.
Premier Division Recap
Ben Johns fittingly took home MVP honors for the weekend as he led his Seattle Pioneers team to ... [+]
Challenger Division Recap
Jill Braverman of Dallas PC led her team to the title and earned event MVP honors.
Season Super Finals Recap:
Based on the results this weekend, and through the first three events of the year, the two teams in the lead for the super finals held serve and made it to the nationally televised Monday night finals. In those matches, broadcast live on ESPN2:
Other Observations from the weekend:
This wraps up the third MLP event of the year. The next MLP event will be in September at the Peachtree Corners Life Time facility, which just held the PPA Atlanta Open to rave reviews from players and fans alike.
After this event, the Premier teams will switch places with the Challenger teams, everyone will re-draft all 96 players, and we’ll play the rest of 2023 to determine the league that each of the 24 teams will play in starting in January of 2024. We’ll cover the re-draft with roster observations, surprises, and snubs.
Next up on the Pro Pickleball Calendar, we get a break in the action for the last weekend in June. The first weekend of July will see the APP return to action in Newport Beach, the NPL will hold its second senior team event in Overland Park, and the PPA takes a month-long break, returning to action in Denver in mid-July.