​Waters wins her 200th in the Windy City.PPAHot on the heels of last week’s Rate Vegas Open, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) tour visited the Windy City for the first time for the 2026 Veolia Chicago Cup. This 1500-point event drew the regular cast of characters on tour, but thanks to the proximity to the big Australian cup event coming up and the end of the 2026 year, we continue to see strategic absences and new-looking partnerships throughout the divisions.By the time the event was over, the sport’s greatest player Anna Leigh Waters had achieved an astounding accomplishment, winning her 200th career gold medal on tour. She is as dominant in her sport as perhaps any individual professional has ever been at theirs, and at just 19 seemingly has years to add to her accomplishments.Click here for the PickleballTournaments.com home page for the event, where you can get tournament details, draw sheets, and results.Let’s recap the action. Reminder, the PPA has eliminated Bronze medal matches starting in September, 2026.Men’s Pro Singles RecapA breakthrough win for Southern California’s Roscoe Bellamy.PPAMost of the top eight was in this draw, which also included some WPR assisted players like Ben Johns, JW Johnson, and the like, who benefitted from just a one round bye instead of a two-round bye in Open events. Johns wasn’t long for the event, withdrawing before playing his round of 16 match (this is a common occurrence so far this season, where players report that they’re being auto-added to draws and have to manually remove themselves, and often forget to do so).The big story of this draw was the superb play of Emilien Burnel, the French D-1 tennis player turned aspiring pickleball player, who advanced out of qualifying, then beat (in order) Hunter Johnson, Mota Alhouni, JW Johnson, and Cam Chaffin to get to the semis of the event. No. 1 Haworth waxed him 0,1 there, but that was a serious run by Burnel playing in (I believe) his first ever PPA event. From the bottom half, No. 2 Staksrud was taken out 7,0 by two-time winner John Lucian Goins in the quarters, but Goins fell in a barn burning 3-game marathon against No. 4 Roscoe Bellamy in the semis. In the final, Bellamy cruised past a frustrated and error-prone Haworth 4,5 to claim his 2nd career gold.Gold: Roscoe Bellamy. Silver: Christopher Haworth. Women’s Pro Singles RecapA near full-strength women’s singles field featured a few edge-case upsets into the quarters, but no major runs from unknowns. No. 12 Isabella Dunlap took out both Rane and Jansen before falling to No. 4 Brooke Buckner in the quarters. Allyce Jones, who rarely plays singles these days and was seeded No. 39, beat No. 6 Chao-Yi Wang but then fell at the next juncture to No. 10 Liz Truluck, giving her a spot in the quarters. The noteworthy social media match of the early rounds was No. 31 Maria Ford taking out No. 11 Genie Bouchard, who refused to shake hands at the net post-game over line