Anna Bright goes for $1.23M, the tour goes global, and everything else that happened in pro pickleball this week.
Pro pickleball had a busy week. The MLP draft wrapped up Friday morning, the PPA announced its full 2026-27 schedule, and the Mesa Cup delivered one of the best upsets of the young season. Here’s everything that happened.
MLP Draft: St. Louis Pays Record Price for Anna Bright
The 2026 Major League Pickleball draft took place Friday, February 27th, and it opened with a statement. The St. Louis Shock set a league record by bidding $1.23 million for the No. 1 overall pick and selected Anna Bright — keeping intact the same core four that played together in 2025: Bright, Kate Fahey, Gabe Tardio, and Hayden Patriquin.
For context: that’s the highest amount ever paid for a draft pick in MLP history. It signals both how valuable Bright is considered as a franchise player and how seriously teams are investing in roster construction.
The New Jersey 5s made the second-biggest move of the draft, outbidding the Dallas Flash for the No. 2 pick at $800,000 and selecting Jorja Johnson — last year’s league MVP. That gives New Jersey a dominant women’s doubles pairing in Anna Leigh Waters and Johnson, with Will Howells and Noe Khlif as their likely men’s starters.
The full 20-team rosters are now set heading into the 2026 MLP season.
PPA Tour Announces 2026-27 Season Schedule
The Carvana PPA Tour dropped its full 2026-27 schedule on February 24th, and it’s the most ambitious calendar in the tour’s history.
Key highlights:
– The season opens August 31st with the Veolia Pickleball National Championships (location TBA)
– 20 U.S. tournaments worth 1,000+ ranking points, including new stops in Chicago and Malibu
– The Pickleball World Championships returns to Dallas in November
– The PPA Finals returns to San Clemente, California
– Largest international presence in PPA history: new events in Kuala Lumpur, Brisbane, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, and Italy
– PPA Challenger Series expands to an anticipated 20 events
All points earned at any PPA-affiliated tournament — domestic or international — count toward a unified global ranking. That’s a significant structural change that opens the door for international players to build ranking points without traveling to the U.S. for every event.
Connor Pardoe, PPA Founder & CEO, noted that the recent CBS broadcast of the PPA Masters peaked at over 1 million viewers — the most-watched pickleball event of any kind on any network. The Mesa Cup also broke ticketing records, becoming the highest-grossing PPA event outside of Worlds.
Mesa Cup Recap: Bright and Patriquin Upset Waters/Johns
Before the draft even happened, Anna Bright had already made headlines. She and Hayden Patriquin won the mixed doubles gold at the Mesa Cup on February 22nd, defeating the No. 1 seeds Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns in a dominant three-game sweep: 11-8, 11-9, 11-3.
It was a statement win — Waters and Johns are the most decorated mixed doubles team in the sport, and getting swept is not something that happens to them often. Bright and Patriquin have now positioned themselves as the legitimate challengers to that top spot heading into the new season.
What to Watch Next
The Newport Beach Open runs March 2-8, 2026, and will be one of the first major tests of the new MLP rosters in action. With the draft fresh and teams newly assembled, the early PPA events will be a good read on how the roster moves translate to court chemistry.
We’ll keep tracking the pro scene here on The Baseline. If you want to follow along in real time, the best sources are PPA Tour, MLP, and The Dink.