Recently, the St. Louis Shock swept the New Jersey Fives in the MLP Mid-Season Tournament. Both teams entered the event undefeated, making it one of the most anticipated matchups of the season.
The format was women's doubles, men's doubles, mixed doubles #1, and mixed doubles #2 (if necessary). The Shock never needed the fourth match. They won the first three contests to complete a convincing sweep.
The biggest surprise came in the opening women's doubles match.
Anna Bright and Kate Fahey defeated Anna Leigh Waters and Jorja Johnson 11-6. On paper, this looked like one of the toughest assignments in professional pickleball.
Waters and Johnson had not lost together all season and are widely regarded as one of the strongest women's doubles teams in the sport. Yet the Shock controlled the match from the opening rally.
They built a 10-3 lead, never trailed, and never allowed Waters and Johnson to establish their normal rhythm. Their strategy couldn't have been much clearer:
Don't hit the ball to Anna Leigh Waters.
Instead, Bright and Fahey consistently directed the majority of their dinks, resets, and speed-ups toward Jorja Johnson. It wasn't accidental. It was a deliberate attempt to neutralize the best player on the court by largely keeping the ball away from her.
That raises an interesting strategic question: is avoiding the best player actually a good strategy?
Let's talk about it ...
Most recreational players are taught to "make the better player beat you." The traditional approach is to challenge the stronger player, force difficult decisions, or pressure them into making spectacular shots.
The Shock took the opposite approach. By freezing Waters out of rallies, they forced Johnson to shoulder a much larger share of the workload.
Even though Johnson is one of the best women's players in the world, asking one player to absorb that many consecutive balls increases both the physical and mental burden.
Every dink exchange, every reset, and every speed-up decision starts to flow through the same player.
When one player becomes the target, the pressure compounds. Every missed dink reinforces the strategy.
Every ball that comes back to you feels like confirmation that your opponents have made the right decision. Escaping that cycle isn't nearly as easy as it sounds.
But the pressure doesn't only fall on the player receiving most of the balls.
The strategy also tests the patience of the player being intentionally taken out of the match.
During the broadcast, the commentators suggested that Anna Leigh can become visibly frustrated when opponents consistently keep the ball away from her.
That's understandable. Great players want to influence the outcome of a match, and when they're consistently excluded from rallies, they naturally look for ways to get more involved.
That's understandable. Great players want to influence the outcome of a match.
Great players want to influence the outcome of a match, and when they're consistently excluded from rallies, they naturally look for ways to get more involved.
That often means poaching more aggressively, shading farther into the middle, or covering extra court in an effort to create opportunities.
The commentators even summed up the Shock's approach with a simple statement: "Make her partner beat us today."
It was a clear acknowledgment that St. Louis wasn't trying to outplay Anna Leigh, they were trying to minimize her impact altogether.
That raises another interesting question: What can a player like Anna Leigh do when opponents consistently direct the ball away from her?
We're talking about arguably the greatest female pickleball player ever - someone who has built a career on taking over matches.
Yet even a player of that caliber can't force herself into every rally if the opposing team remains disciplined. She can look for chances to poach or pressure the middle, but every extra step comes with risk.
Overcommit, and you leave openings elsewhere on the court. That leads to perhaps the biggest takeaway from this match.
Discipline Was the Real Difference
Targeting one player sounds simple. Executing it against two of the best women in the world is anything but.
Bright and Fahey resisted the temptation to change plans when opportunities appeared.
They continued hitting high-percentage balls to the same side, trusted their dinking consistency, and waited for the right ball to attack instead of forcing offense too early.
They also absorbed Johnson's attacks with remarkable composure.
Their success wasn't simply about deciding to target Johnson - it also seemed like that it was about having the patience and discipline to stick with that plan from the first point to the last.
Could This Become the Blueprint?
The obvious question is whether other MLP teams will copy this game plan. And perhaps the bigger question is whether teams at every level of pickleball should start reconsidering this approach.
The answer is probably yes - but with an important caveat. Simply deciding to target one player doesn't guarantee success.
The strategy only works if your own team can sustain long dink rallies, avoid unforced errors, and resist the temptation to attack the wrong ball.
Against the best teams in the world, one impatient decision can undo an entire game plan.
It's one thing to decide to avoid Anna Leigh Waters.
It's another to maintain the consistency required to do it without giving away free points.
Miss a dink by a few inches or leave one ball too high, and the entire strategy falls apart. The Shock didn't win simply because they targeted Jorja Johnson.
They won because they executed that plan with remarkable discipline, patience, and precision.
Whether this becomes a trend - or whether the New Jersey Fives develop an effective counter - will be one of the most interesting tactical storylines to watch for the rest of the MLP season.
One Final Thought
Every doubles team faces the same strategic question at some point:
Do you play against the stronger player, or do you play away from them?
This match suggests that you can beat a great team by largely playing to one player - but only if your team has the discipline, consistency, and patience to execute that strategy from beginning to end.
The St. Louis Shock didn't beat Anna Leigh Waters by outplaying her shot for shot. They won by limiting the opportunities for the best player in the world to influence the rallies.
It was a bold strategy, suggested by the Shock's coaching staff and executed with remarkable discipline by the players.
So, can you beat a team by targeting just one player? This match suggests the answer is yes.
Whether it's the best way to measure which team is truly better is another debate entirely.
I don't love this style of play, but if the goal is to win a professional match, I completely understand why the Shock did it.
The Shock came to win - not to settle that debate - and they executed the game plan that gave them the best chance to do exactly that.
Whether it becomes the blueprint for beating dominant teams - or simply a one-match success story - is something the rest of the MLP season will answer.
To watch the women's doubles game and full match, click here (but make sure to come back to the newsletter for our 'Around the Web' section below!)
This article was taken from our 'Control the Kitchen' Newsletter, if you're interested in receiving more content like this, please feel free to sign up using the subscribe section located at the bottom left of this page (or underneath the article if you're on mobile), thanks!
