Teenager John Lucian Goins is in pole position to qualify for his first Tour Finals event.
We’re getting close to the end of the 2025-26 Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) schedule, and the prestigious Tour Finals will wrap it up in Mid May before we pivot to Major League Pickleball. There’s just one event remaining to qualify for the Tour finals, and it all comes down to the final event of the PPA regular season: the 2026 Veolia Atlanta Pickleball Championships, starting this week and ending on Sunday, May 3rd 2026.
In September of 2025, the PPA announced a major shift in its seasonal structure going forward, to align with the “summer schedule” of MLP. With that shift was a change in the way players are ranked (top 16 results in the sample size of events) and a cancellation of the original Tour Finals date in December 2025.
Now, as we get to May, the race to lock down the final slots in the Tour Finals event to be held in San Clemente is nearly complete. Will Daughton from pickleball.com just released his final pre-Atlanta points race analysis, and if you follow the tour on X or IG there’s a series of excellent graphics that show who’s qualified and who still has work to do. With just one tournament remaining, here’s a quick look at where things stand and what’s left to play for in Atlanta for those on the edges of qualification.
Reminder: the top 8 singles players, the top 8 in mixed, and then the top 16 in each gender doubles category qualify, then there’s a “draft” of partners for the doubles component that seems to always leave us with some “interesting” pairings.
Another reminder; if you’re on pickleball.com or ppatour.com looking up the rankings, remember that players are qualifying into the Tour Finals based on their points in “The Race” standings, whereas seedings for tour events is still done from “The Ranks.”
We’ll run through the singles divisions first. Rankings and points are as of this writing just after the Sacramento points have posted, and we’ll take a peek at who’s entered into Atlanta to identify notable missing players and what that may mean. I’ve also included the fields from the last time they held a Tour Finals, to show the churn and evolution of the game just in the last 1.5 years.
(note: throughout this post, instead of cluttering up the list of players in the “qualified” and “near-locks” sections with their current rankings, just note that they’re all listed in the exact current ranking within “The Race” standings.)
Qualified: Haworth, Staksrud, H.Johnson, Alshon, Garnett
2024 field: Staksrud, Johns, Garnett, H.Johnson, Duong (replaced by Tellez), Frazier, Vich, McGuffin
There’s not a lot of intrigue at this point in Men’s Singles. Goins at No. 8 has 800 more points than the No. 9 ranked Gabriel Joseph, meaning that Joseph (or any of the next few players in the 10-12 range) would have to out-perform Goins by 800 points in the Atlanta event to surpass him. That’s a tall order; making the quarters at a slam is worth 400 points, meaning Joseph would have to get the Bronze medal (1200 points) or better to surpass him. Ironically, Joseph would play Goins in the round of 16, but then would have to beat both Haworth AND Alshon in order to even have a chance at surpassing him. A tall order.
What about Ben Johns? He currently sits ranked 14th but is an astonishing 23rd in the race and was out of contention months ago. He certainly has it in him to win a singles title at a Slam to jump his points up quickly if he wanted to, but at this juncture he’s not even entered into Singles in Atlanta, signaling a major shift in his career.
The projected field looks to have just three repeating players from the 2024 finals, a great indicator of how volatile the Men’s Singles division is at present. McGuffin has fallen all the way to 46th in singles at this point; remember, he was the long-time Robin to Ben Johns’ Batman in Men’s pro singles in the years leading up to the pro tour age.
Prediction: Joseph gets left out and the three “near-locks” fill out the field.
Qualified: Waters, Fahey, Christian, Buckner, Jansen, Parenteau
8th spot up for grabs: between Castillo, Truluck, or Bouchard
2024 field: Waters, Buckner (replaced by J.Johnson), Parenteau, Fahey, Devidze (replaced by Schneemann), Christian, Todd, Brascia.
Right now, Judit Castillo has the inside track for finishing in the No. 8 spot and securing the last Tour Finals place. Parris Todd sits 9th in the race, but is not even in the Atlanta field (she has not played Singles on tour since January). It’s possible that Truluck or Bouchard could make a run to the semis and get in, but that seems highly unlikely. Bouchard would have to top Wang, Christian, and Fahey for a semis run, while Truluck would have to beat the red-hot Kunimoto, Buckner, and then Waters. Not happening.
When looking at the churn from the 2024 field, the name that stands out to me is Salome Devidze. She was ranked 5th in December 2024 and has a head to head win over Anna Leigh Waters, but has played just eight of the 20+ PPA events since.
Prediction: The six already qualified are joined by Wang and Castillo for a solid San Clemente field.