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The March 2026 issue of World Pickleball Magazine is now live, featuring global league developments, tournament analysis, exclusive interviews, and stories from across the international pickleball community.
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The APP Tour returns this week in Seattle. New season, familiar names, and a deeper field chasing them. The question is not who is here. It is who starts fastest.
Key takeaways
- Jack Munro and Sofia Sewing arrive as the leading forces after dominant 2025 campaigns.
- Megan Fudge continues her pursuit of all-time records.
- A deeper field across all divisions raises the stakes from the opening rounds.
The season opens in Seattle, but this is not just a reset. It is a continuation of momentum built over the past year.
The APP Tour arrives at Side Out Tsunami Pickleball Club for the first time, bringing its eighth season into a venue designed to handle the scale of a full professional event. From Thursday through Sunday, hundreds of players will compete across professional, amateur, and age-group divisions, with ranking points and prize money immediately on the line.
That matters, because the players at the top are not starting from neutral. They are defending positions they earned across a long, demanding 2025 season.
5 Players to Watch
Jack Munro
The benchmark coming into 2026. Fourteen gold medals last season, and the top-ranked men’s and mixed doubles player on tour. The expectation is not whether he contends. It is whether anyone can disrupt him early.
Sofia Sewing
The No. 1 in women’s singles and coming off a season that set the standard. Thirteen gold medals and control across the year. The challenge now is maintaining that level as the field tightens.
Megan Fudge
Eighty-five career medals and counting. Three golds away from tying Simone Jardim’s all-time record. Every match carries historical weight.
Richard Livornese Jr.
Consistency defined his 2025 season. Now paired with Munro as the top men’s doubles seed, he moves from contender to expectation.
Bobbi Oshiro
One of the clearest risers on tour. Seventeen medals last season, more than double her previous year. If that trajectory holds, she becomes a serious factor across the week.
3 Storylines That Matter
1. Can dominance hold?
Munro, Sewing, and Fudge set the tone in 2025. The question now is whether that control carries forward or whether the field begins to close in.
2. The middle tier is pushing closer
Players like Katerina Stewart, Seone Mendez, and Shelby Bates are no longer emerging names. They are established threats. That shifts early rounds from routine into risk.
3. Experience versus momentum
Veterans such as Ryler DeHeart, coming off his first men’s singles gold, face a different type of pressure. Success brings expectation, and expectation changes how matches are played.
1 Prediction
A top seed will be forced into a deciding game before the quarter-finals and will not recover from it.
Not because of a single upset, but because the cumulative pressure of a deeper field and a packed schedule will create moments where control slips.
That is where this event will be decided.
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Seattle is the starting point. What happens here will tell us how secure last season’s hierarchy really is.
Further Reading
- Latest pickleball news from around the world
- Tournament coverage and results
- Rankings and player profiles
- Regional pickleball coverage
Chris Beaumont
Founder and Editor-in-ChiefChris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at…
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