Anna Leigh Waters opts out of singles at the 2026 PPA Finals

Anna Leigh Waters, the #1 ranked women's singles player on the PPA Tour and the reigning leader in career Triple Crowns, announced late May 4 that she would not contest the women's singles draw at the 2026 Toys R Us PPA Finals running May 4-10 at Life Time Rancho San Clemente. Liz Truluck, who finished the regular season ranked ninth, stepped into the singles bracket to fill the spot.

The headline is the load management, not anything bigger. Waters is still competing in women's doubles (partnering Anna Bright) and mixed doubles (partnering Ben Johns) at the same event. The Finals weekend is the season-capping bracket; reducing one of three event commitments to better protect the other two is a standard top-of-tour move when the schedule has been demanding.

The 2026 record context

The decision lands at the end of a season where Waters has been almost untouchable on the women's tour:

• 39 career PPA Triple Crowns as of the start of Finals weekend (the rare feat of winning women's singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles at a single event), more than any other woman in pro pickleball history
• 2026 Triple Crown at the PPA Masters in her first event repping Nike + Franklin (her new sponsor lineup), the kind of debut that doesn't usually come with three titles in one weekend
• 2026 PPA Atlanta Triple Crown earlier in the spring
• Top seed in singles entering the Finals despite the withdrawal, by virtue of her year-long ranking

That production tracks across a tour calendar that ran more than 25 events through the spring. Pro pickleball does not have an off-season the way tennis or golf do; the top women's tour player is on the road and on a court roughly every other weekend year-round.

What "load management" looks like at the top of the tour

The cycle: a typical Waters tournament weekend is 9 to 12 matches across three brackets, with main-draw rounds running back-to-back across two and sometimes three days. Singles adds the most fatigue per match (no partner to share court coverage). Players who chase Triple Crowns at every event burn through their bodies faster than the calendar allows for; the tour-level convention is to pick spots, sometimes withdrawing from one bracket to keep the other two sharp.

Waters herself made the same call earlier this season at the NC PPA, citing court-surface concerns rather than load management at that time. The pattern is consistent: at 18, two seasons into a fully professional schedule, the strategic withdrawal from one bracket to protect the broader campaign is what every veteran sport-physiology framework recommends. Tennis pros have done the same on hard-court swings for decades.

What it means for the women's singles draw

Liz Truluck stepping into the singles bracket gives the Finals an opener that wouldn't have existed otherwise. With Waters' year-long dominance in singles, the bracket without her becomes a more open field; players ranked 2 through 8 (Bright, Fahey, Parenteau, and the rest of the women's top group) have a clearer path to the title than they would otherwise.

The doubles brackets are where the cameras will still go. Bright and Waters together in women's doubles remains the field's #1 seed, and Waters and Johns in mixed are at the top of that bracket as well.

The broader pro-pickleball calendar context

The 2026 PPA Tour ran a tighter, more streamlined calendar than 2025, per the schedule the tour announced in November and refined through the spring. The Finals cap the PPA portion of the year. The MLP regular season picks up after the Finals weekend and runs through August, so most top players (Waters included, on Carolina) shift bracket focus rather than going dark. Decisions like this one (rest one bracket of three, finish the PPA season) make more strategic sense at the Finals than at any earlier PPA event, particularly when MLP play follows immediately after.

For broader corporate context on what's funding the tour at this scale, see our Apollo $225M brief from earlier this month. For the new Prime Video docuseries that follows Waters and the rest of the top group across an entire PPA season, see our Partners brief from yesterday.

Where to watch the Finals

The Toys R Us PPA Finals run May 4-10 at Life Time Rancho San Clemente, broadcast on PickleballTV, FS1, FS2, and Fox depending on the round. Semifinals and championship matches get Fox network coverage. The full schedule is on the PPA Tour tournament page.