How St. Louis Shock iced out Anna Leigh Waters — and won the trophy
Kate Fahey and Anna Bright built a game plan around avoiding the world No. 1 entirely at MLP's Mid-Season Finals, holding her to a fraction of her usual shot count. Pundits are still dissecting it.
The St. Louis Shock beat Anna Leigh Waters and Jorja Johnson's New Jersey Fives in women's doubles at the Edward Jones MLP Mid-Season Tournament Finals in Grand Rapids by simply refusing to hit the ball to Waters. ▶ pickleball.com (news wire) ↗
"We came out with a specific game plan and it started working," Kate Fahey said postgame. "To hit the ball to Anna Leigh is a little bit scary, so we tried to avoid that." ▶ pickleball.com (news wire) ↗
To hit the ball to Anna Leigh is a little bit scary, so we tried to avoid that.
Anna Bright credited discipline over flash: "It definitely requires discipline, patience. I think it also requires perhaps a lack of pride to an extent, just to kind of say, 'We're going to do this, and we're going to commit to this game plan.' It's pretty obvious what we were doing, but it worked." ▶ pickleball.com (news wire) ↗
A shot-by-shot breakdown compiled by analyst Jim Ramsey backs up how thorough the isolation was: Waters hit only 20% of her team's shots and went entire rallies without touching the ball, while Johnson — Waters' partner and, per commentator Zane Navratil, "undeniably a top 5 women's doubles player in the world" — absorbed the load and still got "frustrated the hell out of" doing it. ▶ pickleball.com (news wire) ↗
Veteran broadcaster Dave Fleming called it "a strategic masterclass" that "delivered the trophy to the St. Louis Shock." ▶ pickleball.com (news wire) ↗
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The strategy that neutralized Anna Leigh Waters
pickleball.com (news wire)
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