Ask ten people who the best pickleball players are and you will get ten different lists, because professional pickleball does not have one ranking — it has several, and they disagree with each other by design. The short answer: the men’s and women’s professional tours rank players separately in singles, gender doubles and mixed doubles, and a player can sit near the top of one list while barely appearing on another. Names that recur at the top of the men’s game include Ben Johns, Federico Staksrud, Andrei Daescu, Christian Alshon and JW Johnson — but the standings move week to week, so the only current answer is the official leaderboard on the day you look.
This guide explains what the rankings actually measure, why singles and doubles produce different names, how to read a men’s pickleball ranking without being misled by it, and how the qualities that separate elite players translate to your own game.
On this page
- Who are the best pickleball players?
- How pro pickleball rankings are calculated
- Men’s pickleball rankings: how to read them
- Famous pickleball players and why their names stuck
- Singles, doubles and mixed are three separate races
- What separates elite players from strong club players
- How to find your own level
- Frequently asked questions
Who are the best pickleball players?
There is no single roster of “the best pickleball players,” and any article that gives you one — including this one — is showing you a snapshot of a leaderboard that changes weekly.
What is stable is the shape of the answer. The professional game is organised around tour points: players earn them at sanctioned events, and the points race produces a ranking for each discipline. A player who dominates men’s doubles may be a mid-table singles competitor, and the person leading mixed doubles may appear on neither list. That is not a flaw in the rankings; it reflects that the three formats reward genuinely different skills.
Names that appear repeatedly near the top of the men’s professional game include:
- Ben Johns
- Federico Staksrud
- Andrei Daescu
- Christian Alshon
- JW Johnson
Treat that as a list of players worth watching, not as an order of merit. For the standings as they are right now, go to the official pickleball.com rankings and read the discipline you actually care about.
How pro pickleball rankings are calculated
Professional rankings are points races, not opinion polls. A ranking position is the sum of what a player earned at counted events over a rolling window — which is why a single tournament win rarely moves someone to the top, and why a few missed events can drop a strong player several places.
The inputs that carry the most weight:
| Tour results and points races | The primary input. Points scale with how far a player advances and how strong the event is. |
| Gender doubles performance | Weighted at roughly 70% of a combined doubles standing. |
| Mixed doubles results | Weighted at roughly 30% of the same combined standing. |
| PPA Tour outcomes | Generally prioritised over MLP results when the two are compared. |
| Event difficulty | A deep run at a major counts for more than a title at a small draw. |
Two consequences follow, and both are worth internalising before you read any leaderboard. First, rankings reward availability as much as ability — a player who enters everything accumulates points a selective player does not. Second, head-to-head results do not override the points table. A player can hold a winning record against someone ranked above them and still sit below them, because the ranking is counting accumulated results across a season, not settling individual rivalries.
Men’s pickleball rankings: how to read them
“Men’s pickleball rankings” is one phrase covering at least three different lists, and most confusion about who is the best comes from comparing across them without noticing.
- Men’s singles. One player per side. Rewards movement, serve and return depth, and the ability to construct a point alone. The physical demands are closest to tennis.
- Men’s doubles. Two players per side, and the deepest field in the professional game. Rewards soft-game control, patience at the non-volley line, and partnership chemistry.
- Mixed doubles. Ranked separately again. Strategy, targeting and stacking matter enough that specialists exist who rarely feature in the other two lists.
When you read a men’s ranking, check three things before drawing a conclusion:
- Which discipline is it? A combined ranking blends doubles and mixed at roughly 70/30 and will not match a pure singles list.
- What window does it cover? Rolling twelve-month tables and current-season tables produce different orders from the same results.
- Whose ranking is it? Tour standings, sanctioning-body ratings and journalist rankings are separate instruments that are not meant to agree. The bodies that govern and organise the sport each publish for their own purpose.
Famous pickleball players and why their names stuck
Being famous and being top-ranked are related but not identical. Players become widely known for reasons the points table does not measure:
- Sustained dominance in one discipline — the player everyone had to beat for several seasons running.
- Crossover from another racquet sport, which brings an existing audience and a recognisable style of play.
- A distinctive technical signature — a shot or a pattern that gets named after the person who made it standard.
- Visibility in team formats, where televised, personality-driven coverage reaches viewers who never look at a leaderboard.
- Coaching and content, where a player’s instructional work outlives their competitive peak.
This is why a recreational player can often name several pros but could not say who currently leads men’s singles. Recognition tracks narrative; rankings track points. If you are curious how the sport produced recognisable names this quickly in the first place, where pickleball originated explains a good deal about how fast its culture formed.
Singles, doubles and mixed are three separate races
| Format | Decides matches | Rewards |
| Singles | Court coverage and serve/return pressure | Speed, endurance, aggressive baseline play |
| Gender doubles | The soft game at the non-volley line | Patience, hand speed, resets, partner chemistry |
| Mixed doubles | Targeting and positioning | Strategy, stacking, disciplined shot selection |
The common misreading is that singles success should predict doubles success. It does not. Singles rewards a player who can cover ground and hit through opponents; doubles frequently rewards the player who refuses to speed the ball up until the right ball arrives. Plenty of elite doubles specialists would be unremarkable singles competitors, and the reverse holds too.
What separates elite players from strong club players
Watch a high-level match after a session of club play and the difference is not power. It is restraint, and it shows up in five places:
- The third shot. Elite players drop it and advance. Club players drive it, stay back, and hand over the net.
- Patience in the kitchen. Top players will dink twenty times waiting for a ball above net height. Most club rallies end because someone attacked a ball that was never attackable.
- Resetting under pressure. The ability to take pace off a hard-driven ball and drop it back into the non-volley zone is the single clearest marker of level.
- Targeting. Elite players hit to a person and a seam, not to an empty area of court.
- Unforced error rate. At the top, points are won by construction far more often than they are ended by a winner.
None of that requires professional athleticism. It requires repetition against players slightly better than you — which is the argument for structured play over casual games. At Pickleball Athletic Club we run leagues, clinics and DUPR-rated tournaments on nine temperature-controlled indoor courts with 25-foot ceilings, and because the club is entirely indoors, a session in Thousand Oaks is not cancelled by weather or shortened by wind. Consistent conditions matter more than they sound: a soft game built outdoors in a crosswind does not transfer cleanly, and the reset you are trying to learn is the shot the wind ruins first.
Want to play against people who will expose these gaps? See the ways to play at PAC — open play, leagues, clinics and tournaments — or book court time at book.playatpac.com.
How to find your own level
Professional rankings are not the number that matters for your own game — a player rating is. The two are different instruments, and mixing them up is the most common mistake in this topic.
- Pickleball skill levels explained — what 3.0, 3.5, 4.0 and above actually describe.
- How to get rated in pickleball — the practical route to a first rating.
- How brackets, seeding and DUPR integration work — what happens once you enter an event.
- Choosing a paddle — equipment matters far less than the five habits above, but it is worth getting right once.
- New to the sport entirely? Start here.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the number one pickleball player?
It depends on the discipline and the day. Men’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles each have their own number one, and the positions change as tour points accumulate. Check the official standings for the discipline you mean rather than relying on any published list.
Do singles and doubles rankings use the same points?
No. They are separate races. A combined doubles standing blends gender doubles at roughly 70% with mixed doubles at roughly 30%, while singles is ranked on its own.
Why do different sites give different rankings?
Because they are measuring different things over different windows — tour points, sanctioning-body ratings and editorial rankings are separate instruments. Two lists disagreeing usually means they are not answering the same question.
Is DUPR the same as a pro ranking?
No. DUPR is a player rating derived from your match results and is the number relevant to recreational and competitive amateur play. Pro tour rankings are points races among professionals. Most players should be tracking a rating, not a ranking.
Does watching pro pickleball actually improve your game?
It helps if you watch the right thing. Follow one player for a whole game and watch only their third shot and their first three kitchen exchanges. The patterns are far more copyable than the highlight-reel speed-ups.
Play where the level pushes you
The gap between a 3.5 and a 4.5 is not talent; it is the number of reps against better players, in conditions consistent enough that the soft game transfers. PAC runs open play, leagues, clinics and DUPR-rated tournaments indoors year-round in Thousand Oaks, serving the Conejo Valley and east Ventura County. See what a membership includes, or get in touch with a question about which format fits your level.
Citations
pickleball.com — official rankings
The Kitchen Pickle — Top 20 men’s pickleball players, ranked by an anonymous pro
