Pickleball Pro Tours Explained: PPA, APP, and MLP

The PPA Tour: the flagship pro circuit

The PPA Tour (Professional Pickleball Association) is the most prestigious individual-format pro pickleball circuit. It runs a full season of events across the United States, offering the highest prize money in the sport (events typically have six-figure prize pools) and featuring the top-ranked players in the world.

PPA events follow a gold/silver/bronze bracket structure across men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles. The top players — Ben Johns, Anna Leigh Waters, Tyson McGuffin, Catherine Parenteau — all compete on the PPA.

PPA had a period of exclusivity contracts that prevented players from competing on other tours simultaneously, which caused significant controversy. The exclusivity landscape has evolved and loosened in recent years, but checking current player status is worth doing because tour affiliations change frequently.

PPA events are streamed on YouTube and have had TV partnerships with CBS Sports and Tennis Channel. The PPA website lists the current event schedule, and most events are available to watch free on PPA's official YouTube channel.

The APP Tour: the accessible grassroots circuit

The APP Tour (Association of Pickleball Players) operates at a slightly different level — still professional, but structured more as an open tour where amateur players can compete alongside pros in the same event bracket system. This makes it more accessible for serious recreational and semi-pro players who want to test themselves against professional-grade competition.

APP events are typically smaller than PPA events in prize money and field size, but they're the entry point for many players moving from top-level amateur into the professional game. An amateur who wins their bracket at an APP event has genuinely competed against professionals.

The APP has been more permissive about players competing across multiple tours, making it a common second circuit for players whose primary home is the PPA. APP events are also streamed online, and the tour has been expanding its event footprint year over year.

Major League Pickleball: the team format

Major League Pickleball (MLP) is structurally different from both the PPA and APP. Rather than individual brackets, MLP is a team-format league in the mould of tennis's World TeamTennis — franchises own teams, players are drafted onto those teams, and teams compete in a round-robin and playoff format.

MLP attracted significant investment from professional athletes, celebrities, and sports ownership groups after its 2021 launch. Tom Brady, LeBron James, and others have been associated with MLP ownership groups — a level of mainstream attention that no other pickleball circuit has reached.

The team format changes the strategic and social dynamic. Players who might be competitors on the individual tours are teammates in MLP, and the team atmosphere makes it more entertaining for new fans who aren't yet invested in individual players. The league uses a "dreambreaker" singles tiebreaker format (one player per team plays a first-to-one point series) that has created some of the most dramatic moments in pro pickleball.

MLP seasons are broadcast on several streaming platforms and have had coverage deals that brought pro pickleball to audiences who had never seen it before.

The players to know

Ben Johns is the name in men's pickleball — consistently ranked world number one, dominant across singles and doubles, and widely credited with pushing the technical ceiling of the sport. His court coverage and soft-game mastery are the benchmark for what elite pickleball looks like.

Anna Leigh Waters (ALW) is the equivalent on the women's side — a generational talent who turned pro at 15 and has dominated the women's circuit in a way that hasn't been seen in any era of the sport. She regularly partners with her mother Leigh Waters in women's doubles.

Tyson McGuffin brings an aggressive, crowd-pleasing style with power that differs from Johns' more precision-driven approach. Catherine Parenteau, Jessie Irvine, and Callie Smith round out the top tier of the women's circuit. JW Johnson is widely considered the best player to watch for pure athleticism and creativity in shot-making.

You can find full profiles, career stats, and current rankings for all of these players in our player profiles section.

How to watch pro pickleball

The most accessible way to follow pro pickleball is YouTube — both the PPA Tour and MLP have official channels with full match replays, highlight compilations, and tournament streams. Most major events are streamed free.

For live events, the PPA's website lists the full schedule. MLP's website has franchise information and season schedules. Many events are also available on Tennis Channel or CBS Sports, particularly for final-round coverage.

If you want to use pro footage to improve your own game, watch doubles matches and pay attention to NVZ exchanges specifically — the dink selection, reset decisions, and attack timing at the kitchen line. You'll see the attack-vs-reset framework play out in slow motion. Ben Johns in particular is worth studying for his reset mechanics and shot selection; he rarely attacks a ball that isn't clearly above the net tape.

What the pro tour means for your game

The most practically useful thing about following the pro tour isn't the entertainment value — it's the visual model. Watching how top players handle transition zone balls, reset under pressure, and communicate in doubles directly improves your mental model of what correct pickleball looks like.

Many recreational players have never seen a high-level reset executed properly in person. Watching pro footage fills that gap: you see what a genuine soft-game exchange looks like, how the pros position themselves, and how rarely they attack low balls — which recalibrates your sense of what an 'attackable' ball actually is.