Who's at the Top
The talent pool is deepening fast. Here are the four players defining the sport right now.
Ben Johns
Johns does not overpower opponents. He dismantles them. His game runs on the most precise soft game at the kitchen line in pickleball, dinking with placement that routinely forces errors from players twice his speed. When the opening appears, he accelerates with a backhand roll volley he is credited with popularizing.
He holds the most PPA gold medals of any male player, with a 108-match singles winning streak that spanned multiple seasons. In mixed doubles, he and Anna Leigh Waters have won more than 30 PPA golds together. He studied materials science and engineering at Maryland, and it shows in how methodically he breaks down an opponent's structure.
Anna Leigh Waters
Waters turned professional at twelve, became the youngest-ever world number one, and has held the position since. Her career win rate sits at 93.8 percent across nearly 900 matches, a record nobody else in the sport comes close to touching.
She has won 181 gold medals and 39 Triple Crowns, more than any player in history. She plays women's doubles with her mother, Leigh Waters, making them the only mother-daughter team competing at the professional level. Her planted-feet forehand drive is the most feared shot in the women's game, and she signed with Nike before she could legally vote.
Tyson McGuffin
McGuffin reached the ATP top 1500 in tennis before discovering pickleball in 2015 at the Yakima Tennis Club, where he was the head teaching professional. He went full-time within six months and never looked back.
His two-handed backhand drive, carried over from his tennis days, is one of the heaviest groundstrokes on tour. He pairs it with court coverage that borders on reckless — the diving forehand volley is his signature, and the reason he draws the loudest crowds at every PPA event. Among the first wave of tennis crossovers, and still one of the most dangerous.
Lea Jansen
Jansen grew up in eastern Washington, played college tennis at Washington State and then Aquinas College (where she made NAIA All-American), and earned degrees in accounting and healthcare management. Her childhood friend Tyson McGuffin talked her into trying pickleball in 2019.
By 2022 she had reached world number two in women's singles — one of the fastest climbs in the sport's history. Her crosscourt drive, built on thousands of hours of tennis baseline rallies, is her go-to weapon. She has stepped away from singles more than once, citing the physical toll, but keeps coming back.
More Players to Watch
