Ben Johns is considered to be the greatest male pickleball player of all time and held the #1 ranking in all three divisions for the vast majority of 2020-2024. His dominance includes a 108-match winning streak in singles, over 150 PPA titles (gold medals), and more Triple Crowns (a gold medal in all three divisions at a single tournament) than any other male in professional pickleball history (The only other male player to capture even a single Triple Crown is Tyson McGuffin with 1).

Johns and his set partner Anna Leigh Waters hold the most consecutive doubles titles in history, where they won 16 events in a row together from March, 2023 to February, 2024. Johns also has over 100 more titles than any other male player besides his brother, Collin Johns. Collin Johns is also a top pro on tour, was formerly World #1 in men’s doubles, and was B. Johns’ doubles partner from 2021 to 2024. The two racked up 43 medals and 33 titles together as a team and logged a legacy that is unlikely to ever be broken.

Johns has been featured in major publications such as Forbes, MSN, SBJ, CNN, and many others, and his pickleball play has been showcased on all of the Big Five TV networks. He was one of pickleball’s first professional players to become a multimillionaire through his tour salary as a PPA Tour contracted pro, tournament winnings, and sponsorship endorsements.

Known for his quiet energy, methodical game play, and impassive demeanor on court, Johns is not a loud or flashy player, preferring to let his game do the talking. He is credited with having created shots such as the backhand roll and helped initiate important changes on the professional tour such as single elimination, progressive draws, and randomized seeding. Johns identifies as a visual learner and has stated that his eclectic game style is “Frankensteined” together from a various of skills and sources that he was exposed to over the course of his life. He has voiced his desire to see pickleball grow internationally and make it to the Olympics and to the NCAA-level, while also touting the health and social benefits of purely recreational pickleball.

Johns graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Materials Science & Engineering while also balancing full-time competition on the PPA Tour. Johns founded UMD’s pickleball club during his time there and graduated with a 3.75 GPA. His hobbies include traveling, reading, weightlifting, investing, and playing various other sports/games like padel, table tennis, badminton, spikeball, golf, Fortnite, Magic: The Gathering, and chess.

Johns is the co-owner of three pickleball businesses: Pickleball Getaways (all-inclusive vacations with pickleball instruction), Pickleball 360 (instructional video subscription service), and Johns Design & Consulting (signature court design and facility planning). He published a pickleball masterclass with Pickleball Hub and helped his primary sponsor, JOOLA, develop his signature Perseus paddle in 2023. He continues to help evolve the new paddle generations that are released annually.

Johns grew up in Laytonsville, Maryland, was homeschooled K-12th grade, and is the middle child of seven children. His older sister, Hannah Johns, is the PPA Tour’s sports reporter/senior chief editor and his younger sister, Georgia Johns, is his tour manager and director of Johns’ company, Pickleball Getaways.

Johns discovered pickleball back in 2016 during a family vacation in Estero, FL after the community’s recreation center converted a tennis court into pickleball courts. Three months later, Johns played professional pickleball's first-ever U.S. Open where he took 4th place in men’s singles. He has been hooked on the sport ever since. Johns grew up playing baseball as a pitcher, but converted over to tennis in middle school after his older brother Collin began training to go pro in tennis and needed Ben as a consistent drilling partner. The two also played high-level table tennis for most of their childhood in the family basement and at the Maryland Table Tennis Center, a junior and Olympic training center.

Johns bounced between Maryland and Florida in his early days on tour, before moving to Austin, TX in 2022. In 2025, he moved back to Florida, this time to Boca Raton, to have access to a larger pro player cohort and his steady mixed partner, Anna Leigh Waters, for training purposes.

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