PickleWave ELO: Pro Pickleball's First Cross-Tour Rating System
February 2026
DUPR will tell you how good a recreational player in Phoenix is. We're here to define which pros are genuinely the best in the world, across all tours. Today we're launching ELO ratings on PickleWave.
What Makes This Different
There are existing rating systems in pickleball. DUPR is the most well-known. But DUPR is built for the full player ecosystem that includes recreational leagues, clubs, and open tournaments.
PickleWave ELO is built exclusively for the professional game. Every rating is calculated from pro tournament match results only: PPA, APP, and MLP. No recreational data. No open divisions. No club play diluting the signal.
And unlike any other system, we combine all three tours into a single rating pool. A win over a top APP player counts the same as a win over a top PPA player. The tours may be rivals, but the athletes compete across both. Our ratings reflect that.
The Cross-Tour Problem Nobody Solved
Until now, there was no way to compare players across tours objectively. PPA and APP operate independently. We solve this by treating all three tours as one continuous competition. When an APP player beats a PPA player (which happens at events where both tour players enter) the rating update flows both ways. Over time, a shared scale emerges naturally from the data.
This also means our ratings are the only place to compare doubles partnerships across organizations. If you want to know whether the top APP doubles team would give a top PPA doubles team a competitive match, ELO gives you the most honest answer available.
Pro Data Only
PickleWave ELO only processes matches from sanctioned pro events. Every data point in the model is high-quality competition.
Who's at the Top
| Rank | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christopher Haworth | 2,079 |
| 2 | Hunter Johnson | 2,061 |
| 3 | Federico Staksrud | 2,008 |
| 4 | Christian Alshon | 1946 |
| 5 | Roscoe Bellamy | 1,941 |
| Rank | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Leigh Waters | 2,353 |
| 2 | Kate Fahey | 2,037 |
| 3 | Parris Todd | 2,017 |
| 4 | Sofia Sewing | 1,965 |
| 5 | Kaitlyn Christian | 1,962 |
| Rank | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Johns | 2,362 |
| 2 | Gabriel Tardio | 2,268 |
| 3 | JW Johnson | 2,227 |
| 4 | Hayden Patriquin | 2,210 |
| 5 | Andrei Daescu | 2,184 |
| Rank | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Leigh Waters | 2,676 |
| 2 | Anna Bright | 2,235 |
| 3 | Hurricane Tyra Black | 2,229 |
| 4 | Jackie Kawamoto | 2,180 |
| 5 | Megan Fudge | 2,142 |
| Rank | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Leigh Waters | 2,459 |
| 2 | Ben Johns | 2,375 |
| 3 | Anna Bright | 2,365 |
| 4 | Jorja Johnson | 2,201 |
| 5 | Andrei Daescu | 2,186 |
A Note on What ELO Can't Do
ELO is powerful but not perfect. A few things worth knowing:
- It's backward-looking. Ratings reflect past results. A player coming back from injury or a rising young pro breaking through may be underrated until the results accumulate.
- Provisional ratings need time. Players with fewer than 20 matches have a "Provisional" label.
- Separate ratings per format. Singles, doubles, and mixed doubles are tracked independently. Being elite in doubles doesn't inflate your singles rating. Men's and women's singles also live on separate scales, meaning a 2,000-rated men's singles player and a 2,000-rated women's singles player are the best in their respective fields, not directly comparable to each other.
What's Coming
- Head-to-head predictions: Before a match, see the calculated win probability for each player based on their current ratings.
- Rating history on match pages: See exactly how much a match moved each player's rating at the time it was played.
- Cross-tour comparisons: Because we're the only platform combining PPA, APP, and MLP, we're in a unique position to show what a top APP player's rating looks like relative to the PPA field.
The leaderboards are live. Check out our updated rankings below:
Thanks for reading and if you have any feedback, feel free to email us at [email protected].
– The PickleWave Team