Hong Kong Slam Recap: Waters Wins Twice, Staksrud and Patriquin Stun the Field, and Andie D Goes Back to Back
The PPA Tour Asia wrapped up its 2026 season in spectacular fashion at the Hang Seng Bank Hong Kong Slam, held at Kai Tak Arena in Hong Kong. With 1,500 ranking points and a record-breaking prize pool of up to $1.1 million on the line — the largest professional pickleball prize pool ever offered in Asia — the stakes couldn’t have been higher. The tournament also served as the concluding event of the 10-event PPA Tour Asia season, with five gold medals handed out on Championship Sunday. What followed was a mix of dominant performances, shocking upsets, and emerging stars making their mark on the international stage.
If you’re newer to the pickleball world and wondering why this matters, we’ll break it all down for you below. But first, let’s get into the biggest stories from Hong Kong.
Anna Leigh Waters Does It Again — Two Gold Medals in Hong Kong
If there’s one thing the pickleball world has come to expect from Anna Leigh Waters, it’s that she wins. And at the Hong Kong Slam, she did exactly that — twice. Waters left Kai Tak Arena with two gold medals, one in women’s doubles and one in mixed doubles, cementing her status as the most dominant player in the sport right now.
In women’s doubles, Waters teamed up with Anna Bright and the pair was simply untouchable. They cruised past the team of Hurricane Tyra Black and Jorja Johnson in the final, winning convincingly 11-4, 11-6. It wasn’t even close. Waters and Bright controlled the tempo from the opening point, rarely giving their opponents a chance to settle into a rhythm.
Later in the day, Waters switched partners and teamed up with Ben Johns for the mixed doubles final. Their opponents? None other than Anna Bright and Hayden Patriquin — the same duo that had beaten Waters and Johns at the Las Vegas Open earlier in the month. This time, the result was completely different. Waters and Johns delivered one of the most dominant championship performances of the tournament, dismantling Bright and Patriquin 11-4, 11-3. It was a statement win — the kind that sends a message to the rest of the field heading into the postseason.
Two finals. Two dominant victories. Waters leaves Asia having reminded everyone exactly why she sits at the top of the world rankings. According to The Dink, her performance was consistent with the high standard she’s maintained throughout the entire international season.
Staksrud and Patriquin Pull Off the Biggest Upset of the Tournament
If you had to pick the single most surprising result from Championship Sunday, it would have to be the men’s doubles final. Federico Staksrud and Hayden Patriquin walked into the championship match as the underdogs against the world’s top-ranked men’s doubles partnership — Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio. What happened next was one of the most significant results of the entire PPA Tour Asia season.
Staksrud and Patriquin won 11-6, 11-8. It wasn’t a fluke. They controlled the match from start to finish, executing their game plan with precision and never allowing Johns and Tardio to find their footing. The result denied two of the sport’s biggest names a gold medal at the first-ever PPA Asia 1500 event, which made the upset even more significant in terms of both prestige and ranking points.
For Patriquin, the win was the highlight of an already impressive tournament. He had also reached the mixed doubles final alongside Bright, meaning he competed for gold in two separate events on Championship Sunday alone. That kind of consistency across multiple disciplines is rare, and it suggests that Patriquin is stepping into a new level of performance as the season heads into its final stretch. The PPA Tour has been tracking his rise all season, and this result feels like a defining moment.
For Johns, the men’s doubles loss was a tough pill to swallow, though he did manage to recover later in the day with the mixed doubles gold alongside Waters. Still, losing a 1500-point event in men’s doubles to a team you’re expected to beat is exactly the kind of result that shifts the competitive landscape heading into the World Championships.
Hunter Johnson Keeps Rolling — Another Singles Title
Hunter Johnson has been one of the hottest players on tour over the past few weeks, and the Hong Kong Slam did nothing to slow him down. Johnson claimed the men’s singles title with a 11-4, 6-11, 11-7 victory over 15-year-old Tama Shimabukuro in the championship match.
The match itself told an interesting story. Johnson dominated the first game, looking every bit the top contender he’s become in the singles format. But Shimabukuro refused to go away, responding with a strong second game to force a decider. That kind of resilience from a 15-year-old, on the biggest international stage pickleball has seen in Asia, is remarkable on its own. But Johnson, to his credit, regrouped and closed out the third game to secure the title.
This win continues what has become a genuinely impressive hot streak in singles for Johnson. Earlier this month, he defeated Ben Johns in straight games to win the Las Vegas Open. He then followed that up by winning the Australia Cup the week before Hong Kong. Now he’s added the Hong Kong Slam to his resume. Three major singles titles in a matter of weeks — that’s the kind of run that forces the pickleball world to take notice. Singles pickleball is one of the most physically and mentally demanding formats in the sport, and Johnson is handling it better than almost anyone right now.
Andie Dikosavljevic Claims Women’s Singles Gold in an Unexpected Final
The women’s singles draw at the Hong Kong Slam didn’t go according to plan — at least not for the top seeds. Neither of the top two seeds made it to the semifinals, which opened the door for a final that many wouldn’t have predicted at the start of the week. What we got was a final between Andie Dikosavljevic and Judit Castillo, and Dikosavljevic made the most of the opportunity.
She defeated Castillo in straight games to claim one of the biggest titles of her career, going back to back in women’s singles after a strong showing the previous week as well. The victory was a reminder that the depth in women’s singles pickleball is real and growing. As international players continue to accumulate experience against established PPA Tour professionals, the days of predictable draws are becoming a thing of the past.
Castillo herself had a notable run to the final, having eliminated top-seeded Kaitlyn Christian in the quarterfinals 11-9, 5-11, 12-10 — a result that ended Christian’s bid for a third consecutive Asian singles title. Second seed Chao Yi Wang was also eliminated before the semis, taken out by eventual champion Dikosavljevic. The bracket chaos in women’s singles made for compelling viewing, and Dikosavljevic deserves full credit for navigating it and coming out on top.
Johns and Waters Get Their Revenge in Mixed Doubles
Context matters in sports, and the mixed doubles final at the Hong Kong Slam had plenty of it. At the Las Vegas Open earlier this month, Anna Bright and Hayden Patriquin defeated Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters in the mixed doubles final 11-9, 11-7. That loss stayed with Johns and Waters, and their performance in Hong Kong looked very much like a deliberate, focused response.
Their 11-4, 11-3 victory over Bright and Patriquin in the Hong Kong final was the kind of performance you put together when you have something to prove. Johns and Waters were sharper, more aggressive, and more consistent than their opponents from the opening game. By the time it was over, there was no question about who the better team was on this particular day.
For Johns, the mixed doubles gold was also a way to salvage Championship Sunday after the earlier men’s doubles loss to Staksrud and Patriquin. Ending the day with a gold medal — especially against the team that had beaten you just weeks before — is a much better feeling than going home empty-handed.
Other Stories Worth Knowing From Hong Kong
Beyond the five championship matches, there were several other storylines from the Hong Kong Slam that deserve attention. One of the biggest was Noe Khlif’s upset of world No. 1 Christopher Haworth in the men’s singles quarterfinals. Khlif won 13-11, 11-3, despite Haworth entering the tournament as the top-ranked singles player in the world and holding a 2-0 head-to-head record against Khlif coming in. Upsets like this are what make singles pickleball so compelling — the margin between the best players in the world is razor thin.
Tama Shimabukuro’s run to the men’s singles final at just 15 years old also deserves more attention than it might get. His silver medal completed his PPA Tour Asia Dragon medal collection, an achievement that reflects just how consistent he’s been throughout the entire international season. Losing to Hunter Johnson in the final is no embarrassment — Johnson is one of the hottest players in the world right now. Shimabukuro’s future in this sport looks very bright.
California Black Bears standout Sahra Dennehy also had a strong run, reaching the women’s singles semifinals before falling to eventual champion Dikosavljevic 11-1, 11-3. Dennehy had entered Hong Kong with a chance to complete her own Dragon medal collection, but Dikosavljevic ended those hopes for the second week in a row. The two players appear to be on a collision course for bigger matchups down the road.
For the Pickleball Newcomer: What Did All of This Actually Mean?
If you’re new to pickleball and some of the above felt like a lot to process, here’s the simple version of what went down in Hong Kong and why it matters.
Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States and increasingly around the world. The PPA Tour is one of the top professional pickleball circuits, and the PPA Tour Asia is its international extension — a series of events held across Asia that lets the world’s best players compete on a global stage. The Hong Kong Slam was the biggest of those events, with the largest prize pool ever offered at a professional pickleball tournament in Asia.
Anna Leigh Waters is, by most measures, the best pickleball player in the world right now. She plays both women’s doubles (with a partner) and mixed doubles (with a male partner), and she won gold in both at this tournament. Think of her like the Serena Williams of pickleball — someone who raises the level of every event she enters just by showing up.
The men’s doubles upset was a big deal because Ben Johns is widely considered one of the greatest pickleball players of all time. When someone beats him, people pay attention. Staksrud and Patriquin doing it at a 1500-point event — the highest-stakes tournament the PPA has held in Asia — makes it even more significant.
Hunter Johnson winning men’s singles for the third major event in a row is like a tennis player going on a three-tournament winning streak. In a sport where the competition is fierce and the top players are extraordinarily close in skill, that kind of consistency is genuinely rare.
And the women’s singles outcome was a reminder that pickleball is no longer a sport with just a handful of dominant players. The field is getting deeper, the international players are getting better, and the results are becoming less predictable — which makes the sport more exciting for everyone watching.
What Comes Next: MLP Nations Cup and PPA World Championships
With the PPA Tour Asia season now officially in the books, the focus shifts back to the United States for two of the biggest events of the year. First up is the inaugural MLP Nations Cup, scheduled for October 30 through November 1 at Brookhaven Country Club in Dallas. Eight international teams will compete in a unique format featuring some of the world’s top professionals. It’s a brand new event and the format promises to be something different from the standard tournament structure most fans are used to.
Immediately following the Nations Cup is the 2026 Opendoor Pickleball World Championships, running November 2 through 8, also at Brookhaven Country Club. The World Championships represent the single biggest ranking-point opportunity of the entire season, meaning every top player will be going all out to perform. After everything that happened in Hong Kong — Waters’ dominance, Johns’ men’s doubles loss, Johnson’s singles hot streak, and the emergence of players like Dikosavljevic and Staksrud — the World Championships are shaping up to be one of the most competitive and compelling events of the year.
Keep an eye on The Dink Pickleball for full previews, coverage, and recaps of both events as they unfold. The next two weeks of pickleball are going to be very worth watching.
