World No. 2 Anna Bright has called for significant changes to Major League Pickleball’s DreamBreaker format, arguing that the current structure gives men a greater impact on match outcomes while limiting opportunities for women.
Speaking on her YouTube channel, Bright said DreamBreakers have become predictable and that a new approach could create more strategy, more drama and more opportunities for women to influence results.
“We are going to be talking about Major League Pickleball,” Bright said. “Specifically why women actually don’t matter enough at MLP and how we can make women matter way more and how we can also fix DreamBreakers.”
The St. Louis Shock star explained that while doubles matches are balanced, DreamBreakers create an imbalance because the strongest singles players are usually placed in the opening positions.
“In doubles, everything’s perfectly equal,” Bright said. “But the problem is that in matches that go to DreamBreakers, there is an imbalance.”
According to Bright, the format naturally rewards the players who appear first in the rotation.
“The first two spots are the most important spots in the DreamBreaker,” she said. “The leadoff spot is the most important, then the second and so on just by the number of times they actually play.”
As a result, teams typically place their strongest singles players in those positions.
“For every single team in MLP, your best absolute-level singles players are going to be your men,” Bright said. “So men simply play more than women in DreamBreakers and hence they matter more at MLP, especially from the singles perspective.”
Bright also believes something has been lost as teams increasingly stick to conventional lineups.
“DreamBreakers have gotten a little bit stale,” she said. “We just get male-male, female-female batting orders again and again.”
She pointed to the early years of MLP, when female players regularly challenged top male opponents.
“We had Lee Whitwell taking a lot of points off some of the best men in the game,” Bright recalled. “I’ve played against Riley Newman. I’ve played against Hayden Patriquin. Andrea Koop has played a lot of men. It’s just incredible. The highlights you see from those points are absolutely unmatched.”
Bright highlighted Annalee Waters as an example of a player who embraced those matchups.
“She wanted to be playing against the men,” Bright said. “She played against Riley Newman, Tyler Loong, Tyson McGuffin. A lot of men she played. And she did pretty well.”
However, Bright acknowledged why teams eventually moved away from that strategy.
“She did better than any other woman would have done,” Bright said. “But there’s a reason why even the New Jersey 5s have shifted to having Annalee play third. It’s just not worth it.”
Still, Bright believes MLP should actively encourage more male-versus-female battles.
“Men versus women is the ultimate pressure-ridden, anxiety-filled, David-versus-Goliath type of situation that you can really get in sports,” she said.
“It doesn’t exist in any pro sport, but it can exist in Major League Pickleball.”
“I am arguing with my whole chest that the league should be doing everything that they can to encourage this to happen as much as possible.”
To address the issue, Bright proposed a new DreamBreaker format in which one team announces the matchups and the opposing team determines the order in which they are played.
“My idea is to fundamentally change how home and away is approached,” she explained.
Under the proposed system, teams could strategically place favorable women’s matchups earlier in the rotation, increasing their impact while also creating more varied tactical decisions.
“It would impact DreamBreaker strategy a lot,” Bright said. “We would see a lot more women playing first. We’d see men playing last.”
“It would change so much.”
Bright believes the proposal would benefit both players and fans.
“I think this is definitely a win-win for the league,” she said.
“You would see more male-versus-female matchups and more women playing first.”
“It would be an unsolved meta and more strategy, more head games, more game theory, which is always super, super interesting.”
As MLP continues to grow, Bright’s proposal is likely to spark debate among players, coaches and fans about the future of one of pickleball’s most exciting formats.