Virginia Beach

Here’s the thing about a depleted field: somebody still has to win, and the people who win are never nobodies.

The Mojo Energy Pouches Virginia Beach Open wrapped Sunday after seven days, $1,063,327 in prize money, and 1,000 ranking points per title. The big names were in Brisbane for the Australia Cup — Anna Leigh Waters, Ben Johns, Federico Staksrud, the Johnsons, Christian Alshon, all of them gone. So the next players up stepped in, and five of them left with the biggest titles of their careers.

Let’s start with Kate Fahey, because she started and finished the week. The No. 1 women’s singles seed beat No. 21 seed Helena Jansen Fink 11–1, 11–9 for her 8th singles title. That was title one. Title two came in mixed doubles, where Fahey and Eric Oncins — the No. 3 seeds — beat Catherine Parenteau and Riley Newman 11–13, 11–4, 11–9. Down 2–8 in game three. Ended on a 9–1 run. First PPA doubles title of Fahey’s career, and the first time she has ever won two titles at one event — the day before she turned 30. You can’t script that. Actually, you could, but nobody would believe it.

For Oncins, it was his second mixed title. For Parenteau and Newman, the losing side of the best match of the tournament.

Jansen Fink deserves her own paragraph. First PPA final, ever. She got there by upsetting Sofia Sewing 12–14, 11–2, 11–9 in the semifinal. Read that first game again: 12–14, and then she ran away with it. That’s the mark of a player who doesn’t rattle. Remember the name.

Men’s singles belonged to John Lucian Goins. The No. 5 seed beat Jaume Martinez Vich 11–5, 11–3, and here’s the line that matters: he didn’t drop a game all week. First title since his back-to-back wins in 2025. When a player goes through a whole draw without dropping a game, that’s not a hot streak. That’s a level.

Women’s doubles: Catherine Parenteau and Sofia Sewing, the No. 1 seeds, beat Alix Truong and Layne Sleeth 11–8, 11–6. Two storylines here. First: Sewing joined the PPA Tour earlier this year, and this is her first PPA Tour title. First of many, probably. Second: it was Parenteau’s 55th career gold — her first of 2026 — and it keeps alive a streak only three players on earth can claim: a title every year since 2021. Her, Waters, and Johns. That’s the list. That’s the whole list.

And the semifinal was the real test: Parenteau and Sewing saved three match points against Mari Humberg and Zoey Weil, 9–11, 11–9, 13–11 — after an eight-hour rain delay on Saturday morning. Eight hours. Sit in a locker room for eight hours, then come out and save three match points. That’s coaching gold right there. That’s what you tell your players about.

Men’s doubles gave us the tournament’s best surprise: Jaume Martinez Vich and Elliott Schupp, playing their first tournament together, beat Noe Khlif and Riley Newman 11–4, 4–11, 11–4. First career PPA titles for both of them. First final for Schupp. Martinez Vich’s 11th final. First time playing together and you take home gold. Some partnerships just work.

The mixed semifinal worth noting: Fahey and Oncins beat the top seeds, Andrei Daescu and Meghan Dizon, 11–4, 11–6. Clean. Businesslike. A preview of the final, which was anything but businesslike — but that’s the fun of this sport.

One more result, because you’ll hear about it: Jack Sock lost in the round of 16 in singles to George Rangelov, 11–5, 11–6. Sock’s crossover to pickleball has been one of the year’s stories, and every loss like this gets talked about. Fair enough. Rangelov played a great match.

So what did we learn? When the field thins out, the tour doesn’t get boring — it gets interesting. Fahey announced herself as a multi-discipline threat. Goins looks like a player who has leveled up. Sewing and Schupp got their first golds, and there’s nothing like the first one. The Australia Cup crowd will come back with their rankings intact, but 1,000 points each just landed in five new trophy cases.

Next up: the PPA World Championships, November 2–8 in Farmers Branch, Texas, and the APP Arizona Open starting the same week. The stars come home. The points get bigger. And Fahey turns up with two titles in her bag.