WALKER Australia Cup: Johnson wins singles, Dikosavljevic takes home gold, Tardio and Black each win two titles

The PPA Tour's Australian arm staged the biggest event in its short history over the weekend, and a lot of the sport's best-known names flew across the Pacific to be part of it. The WALKER Australia Pickleball Cup, played at the Queensland Tennis Centre in Brisbane, was the first 1500-point tournament ever held in the country. It clashed with the 1000-point Virginia Beach Open back in the United States, and plenty of American pros decided the bigger points haul and the trip were worth it.

The result was a draw that mixed the tour's regulars with the strongest players from Australia, Japan, Vietnam and Hong Kong. The Americans took most of the late rounds, but the local and regional players got closer than they used to, and one of them walked away with a title.

Johnson outlasts Alshon in men's singles

Top seed Hunter Johnson won the men's singles gold. In the final he beat third seed Christian Alshon 11-8, 5-11, 11-8, a match both players spent driving the ball back and forth rather than resetting. Johnson's route there included a quarterfinal win over Hong Kong's Hong Kit "Jack" Wong, who has collected nine PPA singles titles in Asia and Australia since April 2025, and a semifinal win over Grayson Goldin, 11-9, 11-3. Goldin has been working his way back to form after a stroke and is again going deep in draws.

Alshon had the tougher bracket path in one sense. Vietnam's Hien Truong, seeded seventh and already a two-time winner in the region, took the first game off him 11-7 before Alshon got through in three. Alshon then beat second seed Tama Shimabukuro in straight games to reach the final. Johnson's title adds to a strong autumn: earlier this month he beat Ben Johns in straight games at the Las Vegas Open.

Dikosavljevic gives Brisbane a home champion

The women's singles draw belonged to Andie Dikosavljevic, who lives in Brisbane and was playing in front of a home crowd. She beat Judit Castillo 11-6, 11-6 in the final, using long baseline rallies to wear down an opponent who had just knocked out top seed Kaitlyn Christian. A former college tennis player at Auburn, Dikosavljevic now has around ten singles titles on the Asia-Pacific tour.

Her semifinal was the match of the weekend. She lost the first game 11-5 to fellow Australian Sahra Dennehy, won the second 11-1, then held on 12-10 in the third. Elsewhere in the draw, Yufei Long and Japan's Rika Fujiwara, both regular winners in the region, pushed higher seeds before going out. The regional players are no longer just filling the early rounds.

Tardio and Black each win two golds

Gabe Tardio and Tyra Black were the doubles story. They teamed up in mixed doubles as the third seeds, beat Jorja and JW Johnson in the semifinals, and then beat Parris Todd and Christian Alshon 7-11, 11-6, 11-7 for the title. Alshon, who also lost the singles final, left Brisbane with two silver medals.

Tardio also won men's doubles with St. Louis Shock teammate Hayden Patriquin. The top seeds lost the first game 3-11 to JW Johnson and Tama Shimabukuro, then won the next two, 11-6 and 11-7. The result extends Tardio's lead at the top of the men's doubles individual ranking.

Black won women's doubles with Jorja Johnson, the pair that went 30-7 together for the Dallas Flash in MLP in 2025 before Johnson was drafted by New Jersey. They beat Todd and Australia's Danni-Elle Townsend 11-5, 11-6 in the final. Todd and Townsend, who were briefly Columbus Sliders teammates, had knocked out Dennehy and Jessie Irvine in the semifinals.

The visa problem and the substitute partner

One of the odder footnotes came in men's doubles. Alshon's intended partner, Federico Staksrud, could not get into the country because of visa problems, so Alshon entered with Benjamin Bramblett, who is better known as his social media manager. They won two rounds before losing to Australian veterans George Wall and Joey Wild, with Wild owning four doubles titles on tour, and the pair went on to reach the semifinals. It was the deepest run by a regional men's pair.

What changed this year

Spectators will also have noticed a structural change. The PPA stopped playing bronze medal matches in September 2026, so semifinal losers leave without an extra match. That affects both the schedule and how often fans see losing semifinalists back on court on the final day.

What it means for the tour

The Brisbane event shows what a 1500-point label does to a field: it pulls top players away from a competing domestic stop, and it hands regional players a real shot at beating them in a high-stakes match. The standard outside the United States is rising quickly, and Australia now has both an elite local player in Dikosavljevic and a deep bench of doubles specialists.

Next on the calendar is the Hong Kong Slam, another first-of-its-kind 1500 event in Asia, with Worlds 2026 further down the line. If Brisbane was a test of whether the PPA can hold a major event this far from its home market, the answer for now looks like yes.

Sources checked 20 Oct 2026.