Ben Johns Pickleball: Paddle Setup, Playing Style & Training Breakdown
Inside the gear, technique, and relentless training habits that make Ben Johns the most dominant player in pickleball history.
Ben Johns plays with an elongated carbon fiber paddle built for control over raw power, favors a thicker core for dwell and feel, and adds lead tape at the three and nine o'clock positions to increase twist weight and off-center stability. His setup reflects a game built on placement, spin, and dictating pace rather than overpowering opponents.
- Johns builds his game on soft hands and precise placement, so he chooses equipment that gives feedback and feel rather than the most reactive surface available.
- A longer paddle wins on reach and baseline leverage, but raises swing weight enough that redirecting quickly at the kitchen becomes noticeably harder.
- These three numbers tell you far more about how a paddle actually performs in play than its listed weight or how it feels sitting still in your hand.
- Johns focuses training on third-shot drops, reset dinks, and return patterns rather than unstructured match play, because repetition on specific problems drives faster adaptation.
- The most transferable lesson from Johns is his emphasis on patience and placement; a better paddle will not shortcut the work of building that foundation.
Where to start
X1 Elongated
F1 Elongated
Ben Johns: The Player Who Changed What Pickleball Looks Like
Ben Johns is, by most measures, the most dominant player in professional pickleball history. He held the number one ranking across singles, doubles, and mixed doubles simultaneously, a feat that no other player had managed, and he did it not by being the biggest hitter on the court but by playing a style so technically complete that opponents struggle to find a weakness to exploit.
He came up through tennis, which is obvious when you watch him play. His third-shot drops are precise. His resets from pressure are almost automatic. He dictates pace rather than chasing it, and he uses angles that most recreational players never think to create. Understanding how he plays, and what he plays with, is genuinely useful for anyone trying to improve their own game, not because you can copy it wholesale, but because the thinking behind his choices maps onto decisions every pickleball player eventually has to make.
Ben Johns' Paddle Setup: What He Actually Uses
Ben Johns has been closely associated with Joola as a sponsored player, and he has used paddles from their lineup throughout his professional career. His signature paddle, the Joola Ben Johns Hyperion, comes in multiple versions, and he has been involved in its development. The paddle uses a carbon fiber face and a foam core, which is a combination that has become increasingly standard at the elite level because it offers a balance of pop and feel that polycarbonate faces simply cannot match.
The Hyperion runs on the longer, slightly narrower elongated shape. That shape choice is deliberate. More reach at the net, more leverage on drives, and a higher swing weight that generates pace with less effort. These are tradeoffs that suit his game because he relies on precise placement more than raw arm speed, and the extra length helps him extend into balls that a standard-width paddle would force him to move his feet for.
He also pays close attention to weight customization. Johns has spoken publicly about adding lead tape to specific positions on the paddle face to adjust swing weight and twist resistance without changing the static weight dramatically. This is common practice among touring pros and is something any player can experiment with at home.
What His Equipment Choices Actually Tell You
The more interesting question is not exactly which paddle Johns uses but why he makes the choices he makes, because those reasons translate directly to how any player should think about their own setup. He prioritizes feel and control over raw power. His game is built on soft hands at the kitchen line and the ability to absorb pace, so he is not looking for the most reactive surface possible. He wants a paddle that gives him feedback, one where he can tell the difference between a dink that cleared the net cleanly and one that came off slightly off-plane.
Carbon fiber faces provide that kind of textured feedback, and they also grip the ball slightly more than fiberglass, which adds spin potential. Johns is an exceptionally good spin player, and the surface of his paddle contributes to that. His backhand roll and his serve have been studied and imitated at every level of the game. The material makes a real difference to spin generation, which is part of why carbon fiber faces have largely displaced alternatives at the competitive level over the past few years.
Core thickness matters too. Thicker cores, typically 16mm, produce more dwell time and a softer feel. Thinner cores, around 13mm or 14mm, give more pop but less control. Johns favors a setup that leans toward the control end of that spectrum, which fits perfectly with a game that punishes opponents through placement rather than pace.
The Elongated Shape: Why Johns Plays It and Who Else Should
The elongated paddle shape has been one of the clearest trends at the professional level over the past few years, and Johns is among the players who helped push it into the mainstream. The tradeoff is straightforward: you gain reach and a higher sweet spot on the paddle face, but you give up some maneuverability because the longer shape raises the swing weight. For fast hands at the kitchen line, a standard-width paddle is easier to redirect quickly. For baseline drives and net coverage on a wider return, the elongated shape wins.
Johns manages that tradeoff because his hands are fast enough to compensate, and because his game is built around a kind of controlled aggression where he dictates the pace rather than reacting to it. For most amateur players, especially those coming from tennis backgrounds where elongated grips feel familiar, the shape is worth trying. For players who rely heavily on quick exchanges at the net and are not yet comfortable with the extra length, a hybrid or standard shape might actually suit their style better.
This is exactly the question that players weighing shape against their style of play need to work through carefully, because the answer is genuinely different depending on your game. If you are more of a banger who attacks from the baseline, the elongated shape adds real value. If your game lives at the kitchen and depends on rapid hand battles, the extra length can work against you until you adapt to it.
Ben Johns' Playing Style: A Technical Breakdown
Johns plays a kind of chess at high speed. His most distinctive quality is probably his ability to slow the game down when he needs to and speed it up when he has an advantage. He rarely makes mistakes in transition, which is the moment between the baseline and the kitchen line where most recreational players give away points. His third-shot drops are precise enough that he and his partners can advance almost every rally, and once he is at the kitchen, he is one of the best in the world at keeping the ball low and creating opportunities through patience.
He also uses spin more systematically than most players. His backhand drive has a sharp topspin component that pushes the ball down after it crosses the net, making it harder to defend. His serve generates enough rotation to create awkward bounces, which forces opponents into defensive returns before the point has really started. These are not habits that developed by accident. They are the result of thousands of hours of deliberate practice focused on specific mechanical improvements.
Defensively, Johns is almost impossible to beat with pace. He is exceptionally good at blocking hard shots back softly, resetting pace into unattackable dinks. This is a skill that takes real repetition to develop because it requires you to stop fighting the ball and instead absorb it, which feels completely counterintuitive when something fast is coming at you.
How Ben Johns Trains: What Is Actually Known
Johns has described his training in interviews and through content published by Joola and the professional pickleball tour. A few consistent themes come up. He drills specific situations repetitively rather than playing a lot of unstructured practice matches. Third-shot drops, reset dinks, and serve-and-return patterns are the foundation. He has also talked about the importance of playing with people who are better than you, which forces adaptation in a way that drilling with someone at your own level does not.
He also approaches the mental side of competition with unusual maturity. His on-court composure is well documented. He rarely shows frustration after errors, and he does not visibly change his behavior after winning a long rally or losing one. Sports psychology research consistently finds that emotional regulation during competition correlates with better decision-making under pressure, and Johns is a practical example of that principle playing out at the highest level of the game.
Physically, he maintains a training load that supports his playing schedule, which during peak season involves multiple tournaments per month. He has spoken about off-court conditioning, though pickleball at the elite level still does not have the same public documentation of training protocols that tennis or golf does. What is visible from watching him play is excellent footwork and positioning, which suggests that movement training is part of his preparation even if the specifics are not widely published.
Applying Ben Johns' Approach to Your Own Paddle and Game
Most players who follow pro pickleball go straight to "what paddle does he use" and stop there. That is understandable but only gets you part of the way. The paddle is a tool, and the same tool in different hands produces very different results. What is more transferable is the thinking behind his equipment choices and the priorities that drive his game.
If you are at an intermediate level and trying to improve, the single best thing you can borrow from Johns' approach is his emphasis on the soft game. Recreational pickleball is often dominated by hitting hard and hoping. Elite pickleball is mostly about placement, patience, and forcing errors rather than going for outright winners. A paddle that gives you more control and feel, even at the cost of some raw pop, will support that shift in approach better than a very fast paddle that rewards power.
On the equipment side, a carbon fiber face with a 16mm core is roughly the category that Johns' setup falls into. Among the pickleball paddles available now, you will find a range of options built around that same philosophy. The FLiK Falcon, for instance, uses a core architecture that its designers describe as producing the dwell and feel of a 16mm paddle while matching the speed of a 13mm. That is a different engineering approach to the same end goal: giving a player both responsiveness and touch in one package.
Core thickness choices show up clearly across the FLiK lineup. The X4 Hybrid is offered in both 14mm for more pop and 16mm for more stability, which is a useful illustration of how directly core thickness maps onto the power-versus-control spectrum. Choosing between them is essentially the same question Johns is answering when he customizes his paddle: how much do you want the equipment to do the work, and how much do you want it to respond to your technique?
The Specs That Actually Matter When You Are Choosing
Following the Ben Johns approach means caring about a few specific numbers. Swing weight tells you how the paddle will feel in motion, not how heavy it sits in your hand. A higher swing weight means more momentum behind your drives but slower hands at the kitchen. Twist weight tells you how stable the paddle is on off-center hits, which matters most during fast exchanges when you are not always hitting the middle of the face. Balance point tells you where that weight is distributed along the length of the paddle.
| Model | Shape | Swing Weight | Twist Weight | Balance Point | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1 Elongated |
Elongated | 114.1 | 6.2 | 23.8 | $140 |
 Falcon Elongated |
Elongated | 118 | 6.0 | 24.4 | $140 |
| X1 Elongated |
Elongated | 122 | 6.85 | 23.6 | $140 |
 X4 Hybrid |
Hybrid | 114–117 | 6.5–6.7 | 23.7–23.9 | $140 |
The X1 Elongated has the highest swing weight of the group at 122, which means it generates the most momentum per stroke. Its twist weight of 6.85 is also the highest here, making it unusually stable on off-center contact. Players who want to drive through the ball and do not mind a slightly heavier feel in hand battles will find that spec profile appealing. The Falcon sits in the middle with a swing weight of 118 and a head-heavy balance point of 24.4, which pushes weight toward the face for extra pace on groundstrokes. The F1 is the most player-friendly of the elongated options at 114.1 swing weight, designed to be customized from a lighter base, which is a philosophy similar to what Johns does when he fine-tunes his setup with lead tape.
What Johns' Career Teaches Players at Every Level
One thing that gets lost in discussions about professional players is how long it took them to develop. Johns was playing competitive racquet sports for years before pickleball became his primary focus, and his technical foundation came from that background. Players who are newer to the sport sometimes set unrealistic timelines for improvement and then assume the right equipment will close the gap faster. It does not work that way.
What equipment does is remove unnecessary friction. A paddle that is poorly matched to your game makes certain skills harder to develop. A player trying to build a soft reset game on a very fast, reactive paddle will struggle because the paddle fights their intention. Getting the right tool for your current game and your intended direction is genuinely worth thinking through. For newer players still building fundamentals, starting with a paddle that is forgiving and easy to control makes the early learning curve much less frustrating.
For players further along, the intermediate-to-advanced transition is usually where equipment choices start to matter more. You have enough consistency to feel the difference a paddle makes, and you have enough game to know which areas you are trying to improve. That is the moment to look at specs more carefully and to think about the tradeoffs that Johns himself weighs: reach versus maneuverability, pop versus dwell, power versus control.
Players working on their control game specifically will find it useful to look at paddles built around touch and placement rather than raw power, because the equipment genuinely does support the development of those skills when it is matched correctly. And for anyone spending time on improving at the intermediate level, the most valuable thing is probably not mimicking Johns' exact setup but understanding the logic behind it, then applying that logic to where your own game actually is right now.
The Bigger Picture: Equipment Serves Your Game, Not the Reverse
Ben Johns is worth studying not because copying him is realistic but because he is a clear example of how high-level players think about every part of their setup. Nothing is arbitrary. The shape, the core thickness, the face material, the weight distribution, the customizations added with tape, all of it serves a specific game built on specific priorities. That intentionality is the transferable lesson.
You can also explore options across both pickleball paddles and related reaction training equipment if you are building a broader practice routine that addresses the quickness and hand-speed side of the game alongside your technical paddle work. Johns' edge at the kitchen line is not just technique; it is also the result of training his reactions to operate faster than most players can manage under pressure.
The honest takeaway is that your paddle should match your current game and your development direction, not the game of the best player in the world. Study Johns for the thinking. Then make your own choices based on your own hands, your own style, and where you are actually trying to go.
More pickleball paddles worth a look
Falcon Elongated
X4 Hybrid
Frequently asked questions
Is the Ben Johns playing style and paddle setup relevant to recreational players, or is this only useful for competitive players?▾
The core principles behind Johns' setup translate well to recreational play. His emphasis on control over raw power, feel from the paddle surface, and shape choices based on court position are decisions every pickleball player faces regardless of level. Understanding why a touring pro makes those tradeoffs helps you make more informed choices for your own game rather than just buying whatever looks impressive.
What paddle shape does Ben Johns use, and is it the right choice for most players?▾
Johns plays an elongated shape, which gives more reach at the net and generates more pace on drives without requiring extra arm speed. That said, it raises the swing weight, which can slow down hand exchanges at the kitchen line. Players who live in fast dink battles may find a hybrid shape more manageable, while those coming from tennis or who attack from the baseline tend to adapt to the elongated format more naturally.
How does lead tape customization work, and is it something a recreational player can realistically do?▾
Adding lead tape to the three and nine o'clock positions on the paddle face increases twist weight, which stabilizes off-center hits without significantly changing the static weight of the paddle. It is a low-cost modification that any player can do at home and is genuinely worth experimenting with before deciding to buy a new paddle. A few strips of tape can change how a paddle feels in a way that better matches your playing style.
What role does paddle core thickness play in choosing the right setup?▾
Thicker cores, around 16mm, produce more dwell time and a softer, more controlled feel. Thinner cores in the 13mm to 14mm range generate more pop but give up some touch and feedback. Players who prioritize placement and soft hands at the kitchen tend to prefer the thicker end of that range, while those who rely on pace and aggression often prefer a livelier thinner core. FLiK Pickleball's X4 Hybrid is a practical example, offering both a 14mm option for more pop and a 16mm option for stability.
What is the difference between a honeycomb PP core and a foam core in pickleball paddles?▾
A honeycomb polypropylene core is a structured, rigid material that gives consistent feedback and a well-defined pop. Foam cores tend to offer more dwell time and a softer feel, which some players prefer for control and touch. Both have genuine merit depending on playing style, and the right choice depends largely on whether you prioritize pop and predictability or a softer, more absorbing response at the kitchen line.
How much should a player expect to spend on a quality pickleball paddle, and what do the FLiK options cost?▾
A well-built paddle from a reputable brand typically falls in the range that FLiK Pickleball occupies, with the X1 Elongated, F1 Elongated, Falcon Elongated, and X4 Hybrid all priced at $140 each. That price point puts them solidly in the performance category, well above beginner paddles but accessible compared to some premium options on the market. At that level you are paying for verified construction quality, meaningful testing data, and materials like T700 raw Toray Carbon Fiber rather than entry-level composites.
What maintenance does a carbon fiber paddle face actually need to keep it performing well?▾
Carbon fiber surfaces can wear down over time, particularly the texture that generates spin. Keeping the face clean with a damp cloth after play helps preserve that texture longer. Avoid abrasive cleaners or rough storage conditions that can scuff the surface unevenly. Some players use an edge guard to protect against frame damage from court contact, which is more of a structural concern than a surface one but extends the paddle's usable life noticeably.
What is the most common mistake players make when choosing a paddle based on a professional's setup?▾
The biggest mistake is selecting a paddle based purely on what a touring pro uses without accounting for differences in skill level, hand speed, and playing style. Johns can manage the demands of an elongated, high-swing-weight paddle because his hands are fast enough to compensate at the kitchen line. A recreational player who spends most of their time in soft exchanges might find that same setup working against them. Start with a shape and weight that matches your current game, then adjust from there as your skills develop.
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