By Matthew Schwartz
April 24, 2025
(This is an updated version of the cover story that appeared in the January/February issue of Pickleball Magazine)
The greatest pickleball player ever is always thinking ahead.
On the court Ben Johns is thinking about his opponent’s next shot. It’s one reason he became the top-ranked player when the Professional Pickleball Association unveiled its first official rankings six years ago. Johns has won approximately 150 tournaments in mens singles, men’s doubles and mixed doubles since turning pro in 2018. He has over 100 more titles than any other male player. In 2019, Johns won an astonishing 108 consecutive singles matches and 22 straight mixed doubles tournaments. He became the first player ever to win the triple crown (gold in singles, men’s doubles and mixed doubles) at the prestigious Tournament of Champions.
Johns also thinks ahead off the court about his next business venture and life beyond pickleball. He has a sense of self that is atypical for most 26-year-olds. Johns has diverse plans that include retiring from playing sooner rather than later.
“The range is from three to eight years,” Johns says when asked when he will retire. “I’d say five is realistic.” Then he adds, “It could be two [years] less, who knows?”
Johns makes it clear he loves pickleball and is privileged to be one of the sport’s first transcendent stars. He’s appreciative of the $2.5 million he makes from endorsements, his pickleball related businesses and tournament purses. While still in college, Johns signed his first deal with a major sporting goods company, which named a paddle after him. He knew a lot about paddle construction, having majored in materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland.
Johns says his knowledge of materials sciences “did happen to cross over kind of well in terms of pickleball paddle design. It was certainly an interest to me at the time [in college] that I could both learn something about materials science and engineering that may apply to paddle design. I was pretty much entirely involved. I told them what materials I wanted used, the paddle dimensions and paddle shape.”
With all his success on the court, Johns sounds more excited discussing venture capital, artificial intelligence and his entrepreneurial endeavors than he does dinks and drives.
Johns speaks from his sister Lilly’s home in Tampa. He’s the middle of seven children. His former doubles partner Collin, 31, is the oldest; Hannah, 29, is the PPA Tour’s TV reporter and a front office executive; Lilly, 27, is a dentist; Maggie, 23, is getting her doctorate in piano performance at the Cleveland Institute; Georgia, 21, works in supply chain management and manages Ben’s pickleball getaways company, and 8-year-old Violet is being home-school by their mom.
The kids are close and Ben is relaxing at Lilly’s pad on one of his six off days per month. He spends 14 days a month drilling and 10 days playing in tournaments.
“I do think that doing the same thing in terms of [the] same tournaments, seeing the same people all the time, all of that, it does get wearing and repetitive,” Johns says.
In a wide-ranging phone interview, Johns also discusses replacing his brother Collin as his doubles partner; the pressure of being the best; his pregame routines; his girlfriend (and one big reason he loves her), his obsession with a trading card game and the fantasy genre, the only person he idolizes, his favorite food (he’s a major foodie) and TV shows.
Johns embraces being the best. When he emerged as the top-ranked player, his father, Mark, told him, “There are very few people that ever get to be on the verge of a sport that’s burgeoning and you get to ride that wave of a sport becoming a very big thing from a very small thing, and that’s rare for anyone to experience.”
His pregame physical routine is mostly warmup based, as he puts it. “Movement, lateral, forward, backward, various band work, dynamic stretching. I don’t really have any mental routines other than to be prepared.”
Johns says he doesn’t feel pressure to win every match. “It’s more that I know I can win every match and to some extent I expect to win every match. You of course cannot be perfect and you cannot win every match, but those are my expectations in any given match.”
When Johns loses, pickleball pundits looking for a chink in his armor say he’s on the way down. “I personally don’t really read or watch or care about any of that,” he says. He says that not in an arrogant or cocky way, more matter of fact. “It doesn’t really matter what other people think or what other people want,” he adds.
Johns is currently ranked 1st by the PPA in men’s mixed doubles (partnering with the world’s best female player, Anna Leigh Waters), 3rd in men’s doubles and 4th in men’s singles.
Despite the Johns’ brothers’ success in men’s doubles, there were calls in 2024 from critics who said Ben should drop Collin as his partner. They claimed opponents were targeting Collin and that the 32-year-old former tennis pro was the main reason the brothers lost several matches.
When I asked Johns in our late September phone conversation if he would drop Collin as his doubles partner, he answered, “Nope. It’s ride or die [together].”
However, Ben announced in mid-December while vacationing in Vienna that he was replacing Collin. Later he announced his new partner for most matches would be 19-year-old Bolivian sensation Gabe Tardio. In a statement to Pickleball Magazine sent by his sister Hannah, Ben said, “We’ve achieved so much as a team together, and I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished. Change-ups in life and in sports can be a refreshing thing. We feel like this decision will help us find new purpose, create variety, and reengage us in the sport we love so much. This is not necessarily the end of our partnership for good, just a healthy adjustment for the time being. We’ll always be brothers first and part of each other’s pickleball legacy. We’re excited to see what 2025 holds for both of us.”
Ben is figuring things out about his future. Playing pickleball is only part of the plan.
“I have a theory that the more variety of experiences you have, the more you’re living life, so I never want to spend too much time doing the same thing, even as amazing as pickleball is,” he says.”
Johns grew up in the small Maryland town of Laytonsville (population 572) on a 12-acre lot that included a dirt tennis court and tennis practice facilities in a barn. His father is a software designer. The seven Johns children were home-schooled by their mother, Heather, who stressed reading, nature and organic learning.
Johns earned college credits at a community college as a 16 and 17-year-old, then enrolled in business school at Maryland. After one year, he changed his major to Materials Science and Engineering. “I figured out that in business school they do emphasize it’s who you know, not what you know, and I understand that’s definitely true, but I came to school to learn things, not meet people necessarily,” he said. “I want to learn very real things and I thought, ‘This major is going to do that for me.’” He graduated in 2022 with a 3.81 GPA.
Johns lives in Austin with his girlfriend of nearly two and a half years. Collin and Hannah live nearby. Ben is a major foodie and says of his girlfriend, “She is the best cook I’ve met. She makes the best dinners.” He adds with a laugh, “It’s why I date her.” They met through mutual friends. She didn’t know who Johns was and he liked that. “She doesn’t play pickleball and doesn’t really watch it or know anything about it, to be honest.”
Johns’ enjoyment of researching how things work extends to his eating habits. He not only reads restaurant reviews on Yelp and Google, he keeps a list of his favorite restaurants in every city in which he plays. “I’m a big fan of reviews and making sure your meals are good. There’s never a reason to have a bad meal.” Asian food is his favorite. Although he lives in barbecue mad Texas, Johns says, “I don’t love barbecue mostly because it’s all similar and it’s pretty heavy.” He enjoys making spinach dip and chili that his sister Hannah raves about. He mostly avoids junk food and at 6’1” keeps his weight at 190 but admits to having a longtime addiction to Goldfish crackers.
When I met up with Johns during the Tucson PPA tournament in February, I handed him a bag of Goldfish crackers. He cracked up.
When Johns returns home after a tournament, he says he and his girlfriend don’t discuss pickleball. “She’s like, ‘Hey, I’m ready to make dinner and then let’s do something fun.’ You know, that’s what I appreciate.” He says marrying her “could be in the cards.”
Speaking of cards, Johns has a longtime obsession with the fantasy trading card game “Magic: The Gathering.” He says, “It’s a very complex, complicated game that I picked up when I was 11. I was pretty much obsessed with it and played it non-stop from like 11 to 16 or 17.” He still plays when he can. The game is played online and his opponents have no idea they’re playing against him.
His taste in television shows and books skew heavily towards the fantasy genre. His favorite show is Game of Thrones. He’s read all the books in the Throne series. “I’m a very thorough fantasy book reader,” Johns says. For lighter fare he enjoyed the sitcom, New Girl.
Johns’ taste in music is unusual for his age. “I like late 70’s and early 80’s classic rock,” he says. “My favorite artist is Fleetwood Mac. I like tons of songs from them. I also have a considerable amount of Taylor Swift [on my playlist].”
Johns says there is only one person he idolizes and wants to meet: the world’s wealtiest person, Tesla CEO and de facto DOGE ((Department of Government Efficiency) head, Elon Musk. “I know maybe some of his ideas seem crazy to people, but he has a knack for getting things done, so I admire that,” Johns says. “You need people with crazy ideas to do crazy things.” When asked if he would go up in space in one of Musk’s rockets, Johns says, “If Elon invited me to do almost anything I would do it.” Johns drives a 2021 Tesla S and says, “I think electric cars will continue to get more efficient, cheaper, and more predominant.”
Johns adds, “I like entrepreneurship, I like people who are entrepreneurs.” He is one himself. He co-owns three companies: Pickleball 360, an instructional video subscription service; Pickleball Getaways, which provides vacations with pickleball instruction, and Johns Design & Consulting, which designs and plans pickleball courts.
Being into cryptocurrency, Johns chose to be paid a portion of his nearly $10,000 in prize money in Ethereum when he won the PPA Tour’s Orange County Cup in 2023. He was the first pickleball player to be paid that way.
Johns says as he gets older he will play in more promotional pickleball events rather than competitive tournaments. After our phone call, even though it was his day off, he had to go.
He needed to think about his next move.
Thoughts of the week, not all pickleball
· The greatest song ever written is “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys. At least that’s the opinion of a guy who’s written a few hits himself, Sir Paul McCartney.
· The pitch timer has worked great in speeding-up Major League Baseball games, but the ghost runner rule is a joke. Starting a runner at 2nd base beginning in the 12th inning would be better.
· I can’t be in the minority in being disappointed by how often Facebook discussions start with intelligent, well-written posts and become angry name-calling threads simply because you disagree with someone’s opinion, can I?
· If you’re interested in terrific reporting, high-quality writing and compelling stories, CBS Sunday Morning, which has been on the air since 1979, still delivers.
· I have played with pickleball paddles that cost $333 (borrowed) and many that cost $100-$170, and at my level (3.5), have not played any better with the outrageously over-priced paddles.
If you buy any Hudef paddle that costs $169.99, use my discount code MS30 to knock down the price by 30%, to $119.99. Any less expensive paddle, the code is MS15, giving you 15% off.
