LA Mad Drops Show Up Big At Major League Pickleball Daytona Beach

Major League Pickleball (MLP) presented by DoorDash held its third straight weekend of matches at one of the sport’s most historic pro venues, Pictona in Holly Hill outside of Daytona Beach.

This weekend featured a hodge podge of teams, including some of the best (St Louis and NJ), and some of the worst (NY, Carolina, and SoCal). All told, nine of the 16 teams were in action and we had some huge surprises on the court.

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.

Transaction Recap

Ahead of the weekend, the following transactions were announced:

– Atlanta and Chicago swapped ladies in a trade: Atlanta traded Vivian Glozman to the Chicago Slice in exchange even-up for Vivienne David. It is a bit of a strange move: David is a right-sided expert and was just about 50% in all aspects this season (she won 50% of her Women’s doubles, 50% of her mixed, and exactly 50% of the DreamBreaker points she’s played despite not regularly featuring in singles). Meanwhile Glozman was just 5-10 in Women’s doubles this season, splitting time with Atlanta’s two females DiMuzio & Rettger.

Now Glozman takes the right-side (?) teaming up with Callie Smith for Chicago, while David forces DiMuzio to play left and ramps up the pressure even more. There were reports of major team chemistry issues on Atlanta already, and this trade seems to make them worse. Meanwhile, Glozman remains in PPA contract purgatory, and is not getting any regular tournament reps at a time when the tour is rapidly improving.

– Last week we tried to take note of all the bench players who got into the action, but it proved to be too difficult to keep up. Daytona Beach also saw a slew of bench players replacing the “starters,” sometimes for absence and other times for performance (especially on the 2nd division teams). If notable, we’ll call out bench players and their contributions day by day. On Friday both onsite subs were already called into action, and I wonder if the back-to-back nature of these events is starting to wear down the players.

News and Noteworthy

Ahead of the event, here’s some news and noteworthy items for MLP.

– 6/3/25: Word comes out that MLP did no paddle testing at its Arizona event …. because the testing machine was stolen somewhere between the Austin and Arizona events. This leaks out on various podcasts with two questions: Who would steal a paddle deflection testing machine, and why isn’t there a backup?

– 6/4/25: MLP shares slight tweaks to its Waiver period, moving up the challenger period and also clarifying that anyone signed to a UPA deal is now eligible to be picked. This is a slight change from the beginning of the year, where a deadline was initially imposed that players had to sign by in order to be eligible for the season. Clearly that’s been relaxed, as teams have signed players a few minutes before they played.

Premier League Recap

Day 1 Observations

• Utah starts out its weekend with a 4-0 drubbing of the undermanned NY Hustlers, who played two subs in Madonia & Kong. Utah is playing with “bench player” Genie Erokhina this weekend instead of Safdar, perhaps a strategic performance decision.
• The first major upset of the MLP season occurs, as 1st place St. Shock get taken out in a topsy-turvy match by the LA Mad Drops. LA’s Parenteau dominated while the Shock’s No. 1 player Bright struggled to send the match to the Dream Breaker. There, LA dominated, winning 21-12, as LA’s singles prowess may be the best in the league with top ranked singles players like Hunter, CP, and Duong leading the line.
• Another shocker to open the event, as Utah comes back from 0-2 to sweep mixed and then crush NJ in the DB. NJ was missing Dizon so was a bit undermanned, but all due credit to Utah for playing spirited singles to surprise the 5’s. This is the first time this year that a top 8 team has lost to a bottom-8 team.

Day 2 Observations

• Perhaps embarrassed by their loss yesterday, St. Louis blasted Utah 4-0 to open Friday play, exposing Erokhina along the way.
• After dropping both gender doubles and having the Johns brothers again looking disinterested, Carolina swept Mixed and then dominated the DB, exposing the weaker singles players on Texas’ team for a 3-2 upset win, Carolina’s first of the season.
• A third surprising result for the week, as the undermanned Hustlers shock the newly promoted Hard Eights in a battle of the two teams favored to finish last. This would be NY’s only win on the weekend.
• Chicago’s new acquisition Glozman did her part, but the energizer bunny that is Hovenier did his too, as SoCal surprised Chicago in the DB for their only win of the weekend as they remain bottom.
• One of the weekend’s marquee matches turned into a laugher, as Texas ground out a win over Utah 4-0 in a match that was a lot closer than the score line appeared. The first three matches all went 11-9 the Ranchers’ way.

Day 3 Observations

• St. Louis reminded everyone why the entered the weekend tops with a sweep of the newly configured Slice.
• Utah won the first three matches over Carolina, including a 12-10 defeat of the Johns brothers by Loong & Garnett, before dropping the meaningless final.
• Finally full strength after injuries and suspensions, LA got a statement win over Texas with its singles specialists putting on a show in the DB.

Day 4 Observations

• The best match of the weekend by standings turned into a laugher, as St. Louis destroyed Texas 4-0. After a 12-10 win in Women’s, they won out 3,3,2 to put a bow in their weekend.
• LA finished off their undefeated statement-making weekend with a 4-0 sweep of fellow mid-table Chicago, distancing themselves from the Slice in the playoff standings.
• Chicago held on for a topsy-turvy DreamBreaker win over Utah, who nonetheless had a successful weekend.
• One last indignation for SoCal, dropping yet another 4-0 loss to a Texas team playing both its bench players.

Team Standings Update post Event

Here’s the teams who made moves up or down the Standings in this event. Reminder, thanks to the unbalanced schedule I refer points per match as the rankings determiner, not total points earned.

In Premier

• St. Louis fell out of first place with their loss on the weekend. They’re not 13-1 for the season, behind 14-0 Dallas.
• LA made a huge run up the board, rising from 8th to 5th overall.
• The PPM standings tightened at the bottom, with Carolina and SoCal now tied for last place.

Player Standings/Stats Analysis for the Weekend:

In Premier

• Meghan Dizon was outstanding on the weekend, going 8-0 in games and winning an astounding 80% of her points for New Jersey.
• A slew of players broke the coveted 60% points won barrier, including the entire NJ team and the entire STL team. Also in this club were both ladies from the LA Mad Drops Parenteau and Jade Kawamoto.
• It was a rough weekend for SoCal’s ladies, who went a combined 1-23 and who sat in in the 30% range for points won.

What did we learn this weekend?

What were our top Takeaways from the competition this weekend?

1. LA Mad Drops are a lot better than I thought. They got wins over both St. Louis and Texas and finished undefeated. They might be the best team outside the big three (though Brooklyn wants something to say about that).
2. Utah is dangerous. I still can’t quite believe they beat New Jersey. They’re basically the best of the rest, sitting in 9th place kind of on an island of PPM by themselves.
3. If you’re SoCal, and you’re losing 4-0 to another team’s two bench players, are you grabbing them on the waiver wire? Judit Castillo went 0-12 on the weekend, and is now just 3-25 overall this season. Ryan Fu isn’t much better, sitting 4-24 for the season. The Waiver period for Premier is this week, and a couple of the GMs may have some decisions to make.

Media Pick’ Em Contest Update

MLP Super-Fan Matty Pickles (aka Matt Klitch) runs a season-long Media MLP Pick’em Contest on Twitter, where all the pundits in the sport are participating. Here’s how we did this week, and where we stand overall.

Summary: it was a brutal prediction weekend, with a slew of upsets. I count at least six major upsets this past weekend, fewer if you believed from the get-go that the LA Mad Drops were better than they were presenting early. I went just 4-4 for the weekend but remain in 1st place in the Pick’em contest through five weeks with a 32-8 overall record.

Next up on the Pickleball Calendar? According to my Master Pickleball Schedule, MLP takes a small hiatus for the third PPA Major of the year on the 6/22/25 weekend in San Clemente. Then, the MLP keeps the UPA players at the same facility for a second week with the 6th event of the MLP event the following weekend.

Before then, MLP will have another waiver period and we’ll cover it in this space.

All match stats quoted in this article are courtesy of PickleWave. Visit picklewave.com for the premier source of Pro Pickleball data, including match replays, highlights, stats, and discussion. PickleWave has more than 22,000 matches in its database across all the pro tours.

Also, a great thanks to The Dink’s Erik Tice, who maintains a fantastic MLP detailed data breakdown and makes it publicly available at this Google XLS link. Tice’s data has proved invaluable this year as MLP does not make match data available at this detailed level at present.