New Jersey 5s sweep MLP Columbus 2026 with a perfect 5-0 record

The New Jersey 5s won the second stop of the 2026 Major League Pickleball season at MLP Columbus, going 5-0 over the four days of competition at Pickle & Chill in Columbus, Ohio. Per MLP's own event messaging the team's run was "all gas, no losses," and the 25 standings points earned put New Jersey near the top of the season-long ledger heading into the summer.

The event in brief

Per the MLP event page:

• Dates: May 28-31, 2026.
• Venue: Pickle & Chill at 880 W Henderson Rd, Columbus, OH 43214. The Columbus Sliders are the host franchise; MLP runs each stop on a home-team court.
• Format: eleven teams across two groups. Group A: Atlanta Bouncers, California Black Bears, Chicago Slice, Columbus Sliders, Miami Pickleball Club, New Jersey 5s. Group B: Carolina Hogs, Florida Smash, Las Vegas Night Owls, St. Louis Shock, Palm Beach Royals. Days 1-3 are group play; day 4 is cross-group matchups between same-seeded teams to settle final standings.
• Stream: All matches on Pickleballtv and the Pickleballtv app.
• Points: Stop placement returns 0-25 standings points; the event winner earns the full 25.

The 5s win, framed by MLP

MLP's own social and event-page copy is the cleanest summary of the run. Quoting MLP directly:

Your #MLPColumbus 1st Place Finishers: The New Jersey Fives. They came to #MLPColumbus and didn't lose once. A 5-0 record with a heavyweight belt to prove it.Major League Pickleball, MLP Columbus 2026 event page

Two reads on the dominance. First, the 5-0 record is the maximum possible at a single MLP stop under the current format. There is no margin for "team of the weekend" interpretation; New Jersey beat every team it played and the season points reflect it. Second, MLP's framing ("heavyweight belt") signals the league sees New Jersey as the team to watch for the rest of the regular season.

The Anna Leigh Waters anchor

The New Jersey 5s have been the most visible MLP franchise this season in large part because of their roster anchor, Anna Leigh Waters. Waters is the current world #1 in women's singles, doubles, and mixed doubles per the PPA Tour's player ranking, and her MLP roster spot has been the season's most reliable fixture.

For Waters specifically, MLP Columbus is the latest beat in a 2026 storyline that already includes her singles withdrawal from the PPA Finals in May, which we covered in our load-management brief. A clean MLP team-format win, after she opted out of singles at the most marquee individual event of the spring, reinforces the read that Waters and her team are calibrating around the team format and the long season rather than every individual event.

Where this fits in the 2026 pro story

MLP Columbus is the second stop in MLP's 2026 calendar, after the season-opening Dallas event earlier in May. The MLP standings drive the summer schedule's playoff seeding. A 25-point sweep puts New Jersey near the front of that race.

The bigger structural backdrop is the same one we've been covering all spring: Apollo Sports Capital's $225M investment into Pickleball Inc. made MLP and the PPA Tour subsidiaries of the same corporate parent in May. The PPA Finals concluded with all five top seeds winning their brackets, the cleanest "seeding holds" signal in the tour's history (covered in our recap brief). MLP Columbus produced a similar pattern at the team level: the league's star-anchored franchise won every match it played.

What rec viewers should know

Three takeaways:

1. The 5s are now the team to beat through the summer. If you have time to watch one MLP team's matches over the next month, this is the one. A clean Columbus sweep on top of the season-opener positions New Jersey as the franchise that will set the bar at every remaining stop.
2. The team format rewards depth, not just star power. MLP runs four match types per matchup (men's doubles, women's doubles, mixed doubles, and a dreambreaker tiebreaker). A 5-0 stop record means every position in the lineup held up. That is harder than carrying a singles bracket.
3. Watch how Waters paces herself. Between the PPA Finals singles withdrawal and the MLP Columbus sweep, Waters is publicly demonstrating a season-management approach that prioritizes peak performance at the events that count for standings. Our how-to-watch-pro-pickleball guide walks the broader "intent-loaded viewing" frame.

What's next

The next MLP stop is St. Louis (June 4-7), followed by Austin (June 11-14), St. Petersburg (June 17-21), and New York (June 25-28). New Jersey will defend its position in the standings across each of those events. The Veolia Pickleball National Championships (PPA Tour) follows August 31 through September 6 in Cary, North Carolina, the next major individual-format event on the unified Pickleball Inc. calendar.

For the corporate context behind why MLP and the PPA Tour now operate under one parent, see our Apollo Sports Capital brief. For the season-arc framing on Anna Leigh Waters, see our load-management brief and the PPA Finals recap.