Q1 2026 MasterLeague Doubles Ladder (rotating partners)

Two things that are often commented on from MasterLeague players are 1) the sportsmanship often seen and absence of “aggro” during league rounds, and 2) the way players are improving across the board.

In the spirit of both this things, one of our players has pointed out a duplicate match result which gave him and his partner an extra win - and his opponents an extra loss - in last Sunday’s DUPR rating session.

This could make the difference to the end-of-quarter rankings, as well as players’ DUPR ratings. Thanks for pointing this out!

The ladder has now been adjusted as follows:

3rd
Craig Cilliers 71.011 > 70.888

5th
Oscar Graham 69.815 > 69.695

6th
Kent Watene 69.689 > 69.885

7th
Michael Coutts 69.594 > 69.731

We have a very tight race for final placings for Q1, and this could make a significant to the top ten!

Big changes to DUPR for MasterLeague players!

Dear players,

You may have noticed that we have not submitted any scores to DUPR since 1st Feb. This is because we will now only be submitting results to DUPR from designated DUPR rating sessions.

These sessions will feature a maximum of 5 players on each court, so that a) each player can partner with each other on that court, and b) so that we have time to play win-by-2 which also works better with DUPR. They will also have a minimum existing rating of 2.5.

Lessening the number of matches to be submitted will also allow us to send results directly, which will allow matches to be identified as rally scoring or standard scoring (DUPR treats these slightly differently when they are differentiated, but GPN does not allow this distinction when sending results to DUPR).

There is also a “DUPR reset” window coming from 1st March to 17th May, during which players will have the opportunity to have their ratings set to the higher of a) their rating as at 1st January or b) a new rating based solely on matches during this period. Our dedicated rating sessions will be one way you can get the required number of matches, in a format that is optimised for DUPR.

The MasterLeague points system does not require all players to have a DUPR rating, which is why we have been able to accommodate players as soon as they created a DUPR account. From now on, we will also be able to accommodate those who do not have a DUPR account, or do not wish to have their results uploaded.

For the time being the dedicated DUPR rating session will be the first indoor session of each month, including 1st Feb and 1st March. Some months it will be on a Sunday morning and sometimes on another day.

Going forward, this will put us in position to add a skinny singles ladder (skinny singles matches cannot be uploaded to DUPR) as well as our planned outdoor sessions which can produce fickle conditions for pickleball and less reliability of results.

Uploading each match to GPN will continue, as MasterLeague points are impacted by each player’s win/loss differential to date. We know that doing this via GPN is quite painful, but help is on its way - our new platform is being designed to make for a more intuitive and user-friendly experience for all.

Apologies if your ladder points are not showing correctly (or not at all - sorry Jackie!). I have just made a correction to about 8 players’ points after noticing the issue for Jackie in this evening's recap email.

As always, refer to the MasterLeague website (www.masterleague.nz - you have to enter www at the moment as only .com domains can be “naked” with Google Sites). We’ll get a proper website later this year, and we’ll also work on www.pickleballauckland.nz as well. I’ll go back to posting longer tables on these sites rather than pointing to GPN for the full version.

This is a known issue with GPN and tends to happen more as the ladder gets bigger. It can happen even to ladders that have been completed despite nothing being touched.

We still have your correct points on our spreadsheet and your points should therefore be corrected each time you play, as that is when we update your points manually. Our pending Web app will go further with instant updates so you don’t have to wait for me to do anything!!

Cheers and thanks for your understanding.

After our first month of 2026, congratulations to our most-improved so far over Q4 2025:

1) Mimi LONG: 28.239 (68.37%)
2) Ann-Marie LeClair-Johnstone: 47.433 (49.72%)
3) Alex Leow: 57.030 (43.41%)
4) Bridget Sudmann: 36.919 (32.19%)
5) Sonya Bel: 20.328 (30.75%)
6) Stephanie Graham: 27.807 (19.97%)
7) Ross M: 44.835 (19.76%)
8) Zia Su: 17.417 (19.39%)
9) Rachel Jane: 35.198 (14.52%)
10) Suresh Bose: 49.522 (13.52%)

This is a great result! Well done all.

The most improved player each quarter in 2026 receives $100 cash from Next Level Property Management! (www.nextlevelrealty.co.nz)

Hi all,

I had lots of fun yesterday evening on my first master league. I'm on the wait list for Sunday morning, however, https://www.pickleballauckland.nz/ also lists an evening session. I don't see that listed in the events, is that still on?

Thanks,

Roeland