Ben (left) with older brother Collin
Meet the king of pickleball
BEN JOHNS
On Sunday, September 10, Ben Johns lost an epic men’s final matchup against Federico Staksrud at the PPA’s Baird Wealth Management Cincinnati Open. Winning has become so routine for Johns that when he takes a rare loss, it’s almost shocking. We were set to sit down with him in our New York City offices just two days later and interview the quiet and reserved superstar.
To explain the breadth of his pickleball dominance, the No. 1-ranked men’s player on the planet currently owns 18 PPA triple crowns–winning singles, gender doubles and mixed doubles in the same PPA event. Only one other male player has ever won a triple crown (Tyson McGuffin) and he’s only done it once. Johns wasn’t playing that weekend. At one point, the 25-year-old phenom boasted a 108 game winning streak. His trophy room is home to a ridiculous 101 PPA gold medals, which is 15 more than the next five male players combined (86). He has 30 or more gold medals in every category: singles, doubles and mixed doubles. No other male player has 30 career gold medals total.
The craziest thing about all of this success is that Johns only picked up a pickleball paddle for the first time about seven years ago.
BEN MEETS PICKLEBALL
"I'd say the thing I enjoy most about pickleball is playing with the other best players—winning, losing, competing with them. Them pushing me is what I enjoy most."
BEN JOHNS
THE HISTORY
Ben is one of seven siblings (a brother and five sisters), and he grew up mostly playing baseball with his brother Collin, who is six years older than him. Collin took up tennis at the age of 14, eventually making it all the way to the ATP Tour. The two also loved to play ping pong in their basement. Ben credits those table tennis battles with helping to shape his future pickleball game.
“We had a table tennis table in our basement,” Johns says from the ONE37pm studio in Manhattan. “It was placed in such a way where one side had room on both sides and the other side had room on the forehand side. But on the backhand side, there was a bookshelf. And at a higher level of table tennis, you basically are running around your backhand and dominating with your forehand frequently. You're trying to get forehands all the time—what we call a forehand loop. I couldn’t do that because there was a bookshelf in the way.
“So my forehand loop was not good, but I had a lot of backhands, and my backhand for table tennis was quite good and it covered a lot of court. And the shots that you hit with that backhand—kind of backhand drives, I guess you'd call it in table tennis—transferred really well to what we'd call a backhand roll in pickleball, which is, I guess what I'm known for most prevalently in pickleball.”
“In the rapidly evolving world of professional pickleball, there are two main leagues, the PPA and MLP. The two recently merged to form a unified pickleball organization.
The PPA Tour features a more traditional, bracket-style tour format that showcases the individual athletes in singles, gender doubles and mixed doubles. Major League Pickleball (MLP) is a team-based, coed league format that features high-profile team owners and a wildly fun crowd atmosphere.
In PPA, players can join forces with whoever they want in gender and mixed doubles. Ben has two very interesting partnerships.
All seven siblings were homeschooled by their mother, which made it possible for the family to spend half the year in Laytonsville, Maryland and the other half in a small city in the southwest Florida city of Estero. This is where Ben learned about the sport of pickleball. His rise to the top happened almost overnight.
At the age of 17, just five months after playing the sport for the first time, he entered the 2016 U.S. Open Pickleball Championships in Naples, Florida and came in 5th place in Men’s Pro Singles.
BEN'S PARTNERS
“At that time, to me, it still wasn't a professional sport,” says Johns. “It was more just a game that I enjoyed and they had a pro division, but it was my first time and I got fifth in the pro division. I was like, ’If I can get fifth in the first couple months of playing, then I don't really consider it a real sport, right?’ Just like most tennis players, I kind of had my nose up at it. I really enjoyed it. So I wasn't like, ‘Oh, it's not a great sport.’ It was just, like, there's not a lot of players essentially.”
The following year, Johns returned to Naples and took first place in Men’s Pro Singles. He’s been dominating the sport ever since.
“There wasn't really a real defining moment to where I kind of realized I was good. I just wanted to be as good as I could be because I enjoyed playing,” he says. “And that just happened naturally via me playing a lot. And then I guess you could say I started taking it more seriously as a professional sport with my first big sponsorship, which was with Franklin Sports in 2019. That was one of the first brands outside of Pickleball that was getting seriously into pickleball. And then the inception of the Pro tour in 2020 was also another big factor.”
In mixed doubles, Ben linked up with the No. 1 female player in the world, 16-year-old Anna Leigh Waters, whose level of dominance over women’s professional pickleball is almost a carbon copy of his, boasting 18 PPA triple crowns of her own and 80 PPA Tour titles, second only to Johns. Imagine any two random NBA players having to play prime LeBron James and Michael Jordan in a game of 2 on 2. Good luck with that.
“She's phenomenal, and not just because she's so highly skilled,” Johns proudly boasts about his partner. “I think a lot of people will say she's very mentally resilient and stuff, but they usually give it the qualification for her age. And I like to say it's not a ‘for her age’ thing. She's just mentally resilient, period. If you compare her to just about anybody else in the women's game, I'd say she's probably mentally stronger than just about everybody as well as being extraordinarily skilled. So I think it's remarkable everything that she's accomplished.”
“When Ben and I started to partner together in mixed doubles, we were having a lot of success in gender doubles and singles so it only made sense to play together,” Waters shares with us. “That being said, you and your doubles partner have gel on the court, and even though Ben and I were the best in the gender divisions that didn’t necessarily mean that we would be the best mixed doubles team. In this case, we ending up being pretty good! I’m confident going into every tournament playing with Ben and we always have so much fun.”
In men’s doubles, after a lifetime of competing against each other in sports, the Johns brothers finally saw an opportunity to play together.
“The fun thing with him is, we grew up playing all sports together, but we never really got a chance to compete together because he was six years older,” says Ben. “So, for instance, tennis, where you could play doubles together, I was never good enough when I was 12 and he was 18. I would never be able to play doubles with him because it just wasn't even comparable on the same level. And even once I had gotten older, I took tennis less seriously and he was playing professionally. So it never really coincided there. But then we got the opportunity to play pickleball together after he was done with pro tennis, where I'd already kind of gotten ahead in pickleball and I could catch him up kind of quickly. And it turns out we were able to play a sport together that we never had thought we would have the opportunity to do. So that that part is super special.”
LOOKING BACK
Obviously all of the success that Ben has had on the PPA Tour has already created a legacy that may never be topped on the men’s side. As the fastest-growing sport in America continues to expand and more players enter the pool, it will naturally become harder to dominate on that level. But has Johns ever really had time to reflect on his accomplishments?
BEN JOHNS
“I think I take every achievement in pickleball with a little bit of perspective.”
While he’s been having all of that fun and success on the court, Johns is also building quite a reputation as an entrepreneur. He recently completed his degree in Material Sciences and Engineering at the University of Maryland, owns three businesses, has a lifetime sponsorship deal with JOOLA, and has plans to get into the world of venture capital in the near future.
1. Pickleball Getaways:
"Pickleball Getaways was the first one I started with Dekel Bar, another pro player and long time friend. We realized there was a hole in the pickleball market. It’s so addictive that when people go on vacation, they don’t want to stop playing. So we just bundle the two. We’re like, ‘Alright, you can go on vacation with us with pickleball.’ And everyone was like, ‘We’re in!’ That expanded super rapidly and honestly, we sell out every trip we put up and we can't expand fast enough."
2. Pickleball360:
"Pickleball 360 was started during Covid because we didn't have much to do and we were like ’there seems to be a lack of instructional content on pickleball, so let's film some videos and do it right and do it well with a nice videographer and provide more content.’"
3. Elog:
"I'm also still into cryptocurrency and that kind of stuff quite a bit. And one of the other things I started was elog, which is a cryptocurrency trading algorithm, I guess you could say. I got interested in that because I kind of had a background in algorithmic stuff a little bit, and obviously with crypto being where it is, it was a little struggle for a little while, but it was more of a hobby and something I was just interested in. So that was fun. I still have that going".
4. JOOLA signature Hyperion Series paddle:
"They've been so great. Their design process, the people that work there, they're innovative, they're really cool, they're flexible with everything. And they definitely listen. We work together and definitely feels like a team thing. So I've enjoyed every minute of working with them. And I'm sure it has a very bright future because, you know, in pickleball, when it's expanding so rapidly, a lot of people, including myself, are wary to get into longer term deals with people. But just a year into working with them, I was like, this is where I want to stay. So I actually ended up signing a lifetime deal with them".
ANNA LEIGH WATERS
“I’m confident going into every tournament playing with Ben,
and we always have so much fun.”
BEN JOHNS,
THE ENTREPRENEUR
“Your objective is always to win, of course,” says Johns. “And when you lose, it's highly upsetting for a short amount of time where you're just like, 'How could this happen? You should have been better' and all that stuff.”
Now Johns speaks to the positives of an L. “I'd say the thing I enjoy most about pickleball, especially now, is new challenges,” he says. “If I wasn't challenged, if I wasn't losing occasionally then I would get bored. I wouldn't be fully engaged. And of course I want to be dominant, but it's a lot easier to push yourself when somebody else is pushing you, right? So I'd say, for instance, just this year we had an influx of a lot of new players, a lot of skilled players, and kind of a combination of tours where all the players were playing together, whereas the year before that wasn't quite true. And I've never felt better. I've never felt like I played better, I've never felt more dominant. And I think that's due to other players pushing me. And the occasional loss absolutely does push that forward. And again, to reemphasize, I'd say the thing I enjoy most about pickleball is playing with the other best players—winning, losing, competing with them. Them pushing me is what I enjoy most. And I wouldn't enjoy pickleball as much if it wasn't hard.”
“I think I take every achievement in pickleball with a little bit of perspective. I look at tennis—Novak (Djokovic) just won his 24th grand slam. I was like, you know, he's dedicated his whole life to that. And he's, without a doubt, the best tennis player of all time. I try not to take it all too seriously because I really only started playing pickleball six or seven years ago. So, you know, as fun as it is to be on the forefront of a sport, I guess you could say, I don't take the achievements quite so seriously. And of course, some other people, namely my family, helped me put that in perspective, both with a sense of humbleness, but also a sense of appreciation like, hey, it's cool that I get to even be a part of that, so you should be grateful for that.”
With an outlook like that, it’s no wonder that when he takes an occasional loss, like the one in Cincinnati last weekend to Federico Staksrud in the men’s singles finals, it fuels him to be even greater.
So what’s next for Ben Johns? Just how impossible will his pickleball legacy be to top when it’s all said and done? Can he win 200 gold medals? 500? That remains to be seen. However, for the humble 25-year-old superstar from Laytonsville, Maryland, the sky seems to be the limit both on and off the court, and his story has only just begun.
THE FUTURE
Ben Johns officially earns his 100th gold medal alongside Collin taking down Dylan Frazier and JW Johnson in four games on September 10, 2023 at the Baird Wealth Management Cincinnati Open.
Ben Johns comes in 5th in the 2016 Pickleball US Open, returns in 2017 to take the gold
Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters take the gold in mixed doubles at the Vulcan Kansas City Open Aug 27, 2023. Both secured Triple Crowns at the event.
Ben (lef) with older broher Colilin
Ben Johns secures the 18th Triple Crown of his career at the Vulcan Kansas City Open Aug 27, 2023.
Ben Johns secures the 18th Triple Crown of his career at the Vulcan Kansas City Open Aug 27, 2023.
Imagery courtesy of PPA / Ben Johns
By: Jason Koeppel
Ben (left) with older broher Colilin
Ben (left) with older broher Colilin