PPA Masters: Tue Jan 9 - Sun Jan 14, 2024
The PPA Masters is the first Grand Slam of the year for PPA, and it features the new progressive draw format.
Since this is a progressive draw, pro qualifiers began earlier this week, the morning of Tue Jan 9, with the "round of 128" played later that evening, and the "round of 64" on Wednesday morning. (None of these matches were broadcast.)
The broadcast began on Wednesday afternoon with the "round of 32."
Center Court matches were streamed to PickleballTV, and the Grandstand Court to PPA's YouTube.
<Begin long-winded side note / rant...>
The easiest way I've found to watch PickleballTV is clunky, but here it is: If you have a smart TV, open the Amazon Prime Video app, then navigate to "Live Sports", then scroll through the long list of sports channels until you find PickleballTV.
In my experience, if you open the app and just search for "PickleballTV", Amazon will only display the old 2023 PPA tournaments, not the channel. Not sure why.
A faster / easier method is to browse to the PickleballTV.com website on your phone, but AirPlaying from my phone to my TV has been unreliable. (And btw the commercials you have to sit through on the website are even worse than the ones you have to sit through on Prime Video. Why the commercials are different, I don't know.)
Another major downside of PPA airing Center Court on this new PickleballTV platform (compared to YouTube) is that PBTV is a "live only" broadcast.
That means you can't rewind and fast forward like you can with the YouTube livestream. So it's impossible to rewind and watch Center Court matches that happened earlier in the day. It's also impossible to skip through annoying commercials.
It's like stepping into a time machine and going back to circa 2001, before the days of TIVO.
To account for this "live only" problem, PPA has taken the time to upload Center Court matches to their YouTube channel after they happen, and generally within 24 hours.
But to anyone keeping track of the brackets throughout the day, these replays are old news.
<End long-winded side note / rant...>
So that brings us to today's match-ups. Sat Jan 13 will be the Semi-Finals for all pro events.
The following order of play was posted on Pickleball.com:
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