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

Forbes

2 days ago

Quang Duong (R) and Hunter Johnson (L) led the LA Mad Drops to an undefeated weekend, raising ... More eyebrows around the sport.
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.
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.
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.
Will Howells (R) goes airborne for a backhand flip volley alongside New Jersey 5's teammate Zane ... More Navratil (L).
Day 1 Observations
Day 2 Observations
Day 3 Observations
St. Louis Shock's Hayden Patriquin makes a nifty little backhand cross court shot.
Day 4 Observations
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
In Premier
What were our top Takeaways from the competition this weekend?
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.