PPA Las Vegas Open – Live Random Thoughts

Small tournament so we’re not going with the full live blog. We’ve been thinking more about this tournament and beyond the double Las Vegas tournaments, there are two factors that are likely creating these small fields. The first is the negative cycle these fields create, which is that lower end pros or amateur aspiring pros have no incentive to register for a likely 0-2 or 1-2 day. The second is the prize money, or lack thereof. The PPA, unlike the APP, is not transparent with their prize payouts and we could not find anything publicly available in our little dive on this. Logic would dictate that after paying out their appearance fees for a tier 3 tournament, there can’t be much money leftover for actual prize money.

You can look at our tournament preview here.

Sunday, September 26th – Mixed Doubles

6:00 pm EST (Gritty) – Before Ben and Simone withdrew, regular reader Grant Harris had Loong and Parenteau as his bronze medalist team and he is proving to be right. Two very nice wins, especially over the Newman’s, to put them in the gold match.

3:15 pm EST (Gritty) – Irvine and Koller are both playing at a very high level right now. Koller keeps getting results and it’s impressive that in really his first true go with high end partners, he is getting big results. Stock continues to be down for Jeff Warnick, who has gotten no results with Jessie this year, really.

1:42 pm EST (Gritty) – Big win for Jansen and Bar as they beat the Newman’s. Jansen played very solid and it looked like they were not afraid to dink cross court with Riley on his forehand. We have stated not to be on board with that approach when Stratman and Pat Smith played them at US Open, but it is a bit different with Dekel across from Riley as opposed to Pat. Bar is such a monster over there and Riley doesn’t have the speed ups on his forehand that he does with his backhand. As we always mention, Lindsey doesn’t have the weapons to scare. Bar’s results were bound to come in mixed.

11:20 am EST (Gritty) – Not sure how I missed Simone and Ben being out of the draw. That is odd. Was very curious to see how that was going to go today.

10:15 am EST (Gritty) – First look at the draw and it looks like AJ Koller is filling in for DJ Young in the Jessie Irvine partnership. I’ll be interested to see how they do together. Koller’s mixed and men’s partnerships will be something to watch in 2022. Wonder what’s going on with DJ. Have to presume he is hurt but that’s speculation only.

Saturday, September 25th – Men’s Doubles

10:08 am EST (Sunday) (Gritty) – A couple thoughts on the gold match. Quite interesting that Riley gets his W against the Johns brothers without Tyson. I’m not sure what the reason for it was but seemed like a lot less of the cross court game with Collin during this match, and going cross with Riley doesn’t allow for Ben to be as dangerous with the way Riley dinks on his backhand. There also appears to be respect for AJ’s hands from Ben as he didn’t just try to take over by speeding him up. Obviously a surprising result and it continues to be a question as to whether the game overall is getting better to catch up to Ben, or is this merely a brief dip?

3:46 pm EST (Gritty) – A lot of forehand dinking between AJ and Rob Nunneey, but Koller/Newman are able to outlast them. A few sub-par speed ups that Koller and Newman did a really good job of letting go out from Dekel Bar. That’s a very solid win for the pair and AJ doing a fantastic job as Riley’s beta, especially when it’s not AJ’s nature really to be the secondary player.

10:26 pm EST (Gritty) – Johns go down to Austin and Gridley. Slim said that he could see them upsetting a team but not this. We keep making excuses for Ben but late night in Vegas? There is a back draw but that is an early exit from the winners side.

Friday, September 24th – Women’s Doubles

8:24 pm EST (Gritty) – Got a chance to catch up on the gold match and interesting to see Jardim stick on that right side. Lindsey just doesn’t have the weapons to punish Simone when she is being grinded and that is a matchup for Simone that was probably better than Jansen/Tereschenko. A lot of lobs on Lindsey too. Jardim staves off another non-gold performance but not without some questions.

3:12 pm EST (Gritty) – So it looks like they are having the 1 and 2 teams play for gold and 3 and 4 seeds for bronze. That is probably the best format for this draw size. It is a 3 way tie in terms of record for the 3 top teams so Jansen/Tereschenko are going to get cut from the list as they played McGrath/Smith only 10 and 10. Tough feeling to not play for gold after knocking off Jardim/Parenteau, but they must not have played all that well against Irvine/Newman as losing the first game 11-2 was killer from a points perspective.

12:10 pm EST (Slim) – The whispers about Simone Jardim’s fall aren’t going to remain whispers for long as, she drops another match. Simone and Catherine Parenteau lost to Lea Jansen and Irina Tereschenko 8-11, 12-10, 11-4. We know Simone is battling an injury as she has posted about it, but you still have to wonder if the other women in the game aren’t starting to not just catch her but pass her. This is heading into uncharted territory for Simone, and it will be interesting to see how she responds. Irina and Lea, are a relatively new partnership, that I believe we will be seeing more of in the future, so this result has to be promising for them, but we will have to see if they can close out the gold with a couple more wins here.

10:04 am EST (Gritty) – They are actually doing a round robin for a PPA event. It is a simple, one game against each team round robin with matches played at best 2 out of 3 it appears. It’s pretty anti-climatic not to even have a gold match if that is the case.