Team USA Sweeps the First Nations Cup as Pickleball's Worlds Begin

Pickleball's first international team event went to the favourites. Team USA beat Team Latin America 3-0 on Sunday, 1 November, to win the inaugural MLP Nations Cup at Brookhaven Country Club in Farmers Branch, Texas, according to Pickleball.com. The game scores were 11-9, 11-1 and 11-6.

Major League Pickleball's new event brought eight regional, mixed-gender teams together from 30 October, in two pools of four followed by a single-elimination bracket on the final day, according to the official World Championships site. The Americans went through unbeaten.

How the final was won

The Dink reports that the women's doubles opened the final with the closest game, 11-9. Ben Johns and CJ Klinger then took the men's doubles 11-1, and the mixed doubles closed it out 11-6. The US squad was Anna Bright, Kate Fahey, Tyra Hurricane Black, Johns, Klinger and Will Howells, captained by Johnny Goldberg.

"I felt like we were playing our best pickleball in that last match," Goldberg told Pickleball.com. Bright said the crowd's support "really helped us feel like we were playing for more than ourselves."

The rest of the world is closing in

• Asia Domestic took the USA to the tournament's only DreamBreaker in pool play, losing it 21-18, then fell 3-1 to Latin America in the semi-finals.
• Europe East beat Latin America 3-0 in pool play and took a game off the USA in their semi-final, when Andrei Daescu and Daria Walczak won a mixed doubles game 14-12.
• Puerto Rico's Alexa Schull went 6-2 for Latin America, seventh in the player standings, according to The Dink.

Team pickleball finally has a flag on it, and the rest of the world now has a reason to train for the next one.

Worlds week: who to watch

The Nations Cup was the curtain-raiser for the Opendoor Pickleball World Championships, at the same venue until Sunday, 8 November, with main draws from Tuesday. Champions in each of the five pro divisions earn 3,000 ranking points, according to The Dink.

Anna Leigh Waters is top seed in women's singles, in mixed doubles with Ben Johns and in women's doubles with Anna Bright. Christopher Haworth leads the men's singles. In men's doubles Johns and Gabriel Tardio are seeded first, but defending champions Federico Staksrud and Hayden Patriquin beat them 11-6, 11-8 in the recent Hong Kong Slam final. Dallas has joined in: Reunion Tower and Bank of America Tower were lit pickleball yellow on Tuesday night, Pickleball.com reports.