Two Hundred: Waters Makes History in Chicago

Two hundred. Say it out loud. Two hundred professional titles.

That is what Anna Leigh Waters did on Sunday at the Chicago Cup. She is nineteen years old. She has already won more PPA Tour titles than anyone in the history of professional pickleball. And she did not ease into the milestone. She swept all three golds on Championship Sunday — singles, women’s doubles, mixed doubles. Her forty-fifth career Triple Crown. On the day she made history, she made it three times over.

Let us go through it, because the numbers deserve a slow read.

Singles first. Waters beat Kate Fahey 11-1, 11-7. That first game was not a match, it was a message. Fahey is a real player. She got one point. Then Waters closed it out in the second, the way she always does: no drama, no wasted motion, just the next ball, then the next.

Women’s doubles next, alongside Anna Bright. This one was the fight. Catherine Parenteau and Tyra Black took the first game 11-2. Two-eleven. In a final. Most teams would start negotiating with themselves at that point — is this our day, do we have an answer, what do we change? Waters and Bright changed nothing except their patience. They took the second game 11-3. They took the third 11-4. That is what champions do when they get punched: they hold their shape, and they wait for the other team to miss twice.

Then mixed doubles, with Ben Johns. They beat JW Johnson and Jorja Johnson 11-4, 11-4. Clean. Businesslike. Title number two hundred.

Here is what I want every rec player reading this to take away. Waters is not winning because of one magic shot. She wins because she does not beat herself. She does not rush. She does not sulk after a bad game. She plays the next point like the last one never happened. You can copy that part today. You do not need her hands. You need her amnesia.

Now the other story of the weekend, and honestly my favorite kind of story: the surprise.

Roscoe Bellamy, the fourth seed, reached the men’s singles final. He got there through a three-game semifinal against John Lucian Goins — the kind of match that leaves both players’ legs gone and the crowd standing. Waiting across the net was top seed Chris Haworth, who had won the Arizona Open two weeks earlier and had just destroyed Emilien Burnel 11-1, 11-0 in his own semifinal. Eleven-one, eleven-zero. That is not a win, that is a weather event.

Bellamy against Haworth is the matchup that makes this sport fun. The favorite who crushes everyone, against the guy who was not supposed to be there. I coach players who will never see a PPA final, and I tell them the same thing Bellamy proved in Chicago: the draw does not know your ranking. Show up, survive the long match, and you get your shot at the giant.

And then there is the team that just keeps rolling: Federico Staksrud and Hayden Patriquin in men’s doubles. The pair that has been beating everybody, all season. Every week there is a new plan to stop them, and every week the plan lasts about two games. If you want to study modern doubles, study them. They do not do anything fancy. They do everything right, at full speed, for three games straight. That is the whole secret, and nobody has cracked it yet.

A word about the setting, because firsts matter. This was the PPA Tour’s first visit to Chicago. The Veolia Chicago Cup ran October 5 to 11 at Life Time North Shore Sport & Racquet, a Cup-level event worth 1,500 ranking points to each champion. Chicago showed up. The crowds were loud, the tennis club turned pickleball club worked, and the tour will be back. When a city hosts its first big pickleball event and the weekend ends with a history lesson, that city becomes a pickleball city.

And the season is not over. The year-end PPA Tour Finals are already under way in San Clemente, with the top players grinding through pool play. Chicago was the exclamation point. San Clemente is the final exam.

So here is your homework, from your coach. Watch one Waters game this week — any game, any gold-medal match from Chicago. Do not watch her winners. Watch what she does after she loses a point. Watch her face. Watch her feet. Watch how fast she is ready for the next one. Then go to your next open play and steal exactly that. Two hundred titles started with that one habit.

See you on the court. Bring water.