Patience, thy name is Pickleball. Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters won their triple crowns at the OH SNAP! Denver Open in characteristic fashion. The champions known for consistency and precision journeyed through a few rises and falls in play on Sunday, but were able to reset and regain control each time, notwithstanding the savvy play of the weekend’s underdogs.
Pablo Tellez and Federico Staksrud, the lefties who took on the Johns brothers in the Men’s Doubles final, came out aggressive and intentional early in the first game, sliding fast and countering Ben’s speedups with care. Tellez and Staksrud quickly built a 4-0 lead.
After that opening salvo, the brothers were quick to reassess.
“They were hitting a lot of out balls,” Collin said after the match, “and they kept hitting the net. They got three or four of their points off netballs.”
In response, the Johns brothers drew out dink rallies for longer and waited for more attackable balls, while Tellez and Staksrud continued to play well, but began to unravel. The Johns brothers won the men’s doubles championship, 11-7, 11-4, 11-4.
Earlier, in the women’s doubles championship, Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright found that taking their time would be more important than trying to hit quick winners against the fired-up team of Lacy Schneemann and Vivienne David. After losing the first two games 11-5, 11-4 to Waters and Bright, Schneemann and David dug deep for game three, taking a 0-6 lead and hanging on through a Waters and Bright resurgence to win game three 11-9 and forcing the only game four of the day on Championship Sunday at the Denver Open.
“When a team is making errors, and we had our patches of making errors, you just want to keep giving them the same balls that they’re missing and just stay solid,” Bright said after she and Waters won the match (11-5, 11-5, 9-11, 11-5).
Waters added, “There are a lot of runs in pickleball, and you kind of just have to keep them at bay, call timeouts, take a little longer in between points, and just try to switch the momentum of each game.”
That’s just what Waters needed to do next in the Women’s Singles championship against Irina Tereschenko.
Waters said she grappled with fatigue as she began the first singles game, having already left a lot on the court to clinch the mixed doubles championship with Ben Johns against Matt Wright and Lucy Kovalova (11-8, 11-5, 11-1) and going into the singles final directly after her women’s doubles win. The Denver altitude was also playing a role in creating additional fatigue among players over the course of the tournament.
Though Waters has beaten Tereschenko many times, she insisted she treats every new encounter as a clean slate.
“I do have past experiences of Irina just whipping me [in singles matchups] when I was younger.”
Tereschenko covered the court impressively, pushing Waters to her max in game one. Tired, Waters struggled to keep the pressure on Tereschenko and seemed to be having trouble moving forward in the court and ended up pushed backward on many of her shots. With Tereschenko leading Waters 10-8, Waters called timeout. When they returned, Waters pushed through on her balls, surging forward to close up space. She secured the championship by winning a decisive next game 11-3.
For the final match on the slate, Men’s Singles, Ben Johns faced Christian Alshon, who was making his Championship Sunday debut. Johns secured victory with exhilarating 11-1, 11-2 wins.
Where we see champions accruing trophies, they see themselves as refining their skills and facing new threats.
“I think it’s a new challenge every time because I feel like players are getting better and better at every event,” Waters said. But so are Waters and Johns, who refused to let victory disappear into thin air this weekend.
Watch their mixed doubles championship match below!
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