Why the best singles player in the world is ranked 17th.
Chris Haworth is the best men’s singles player in the world. On his own tour’s official ranking he is World No. 17. Ben Johns, who Haworth beat 11–6, 11–6 in a final this year, is World No. 1. Neither number is a mistake — and once you see the formula, the whole 2026–27 season reads differently.
The formula
The PPA launched its World Pickleball Ranking on 5 August 2026 for the new season. It produces one number per player, built from their best 14 results over the trailing 52 weeks, weighted like this:
| Discipline | Weight |
|---|---|
| Gender doubles | 50% |
| Mixed doubles | 35% |
| Singles | 15% |
Singles is worth fifteen per cent. A player who wins every singles title on tour and plays no doubles is structurally capped — not by form, by arithmetic. That is why Haworth, who only began competing full-time on the PPA in August of last year and has since taken the singles title at the Mesa Cup and the Greater Zion Cup, sits at No. 17 with 3,131.875 points while Johns sits at 18,837.5.
This is not a scandal and it is not an error. The PPA has decided that the best all-round player should be No. 1, and it says so — Connor Pardoe framed the launch as “one number and one global standard.” But it does mean the headline ranking answers a different question from the one most fans think they are asking.
The official ranking
This is the PPA’s own composite, men and women. It is the ranking that actually decides things: event entries, byes for top-ranked players and teams, and qualification for the season-ending PPA Finals, where the top eight men and top eight women compete across all three disciplines.
Men
| # | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Johns | 18,837.5 |
| 2 | Gabriel Tardio | 13,443.8 |
| 3 | Christian Alshon | 11,682.5 |
| 4 | Hayden Patriquin | 10,857.5 |
| 5 | Federico Staksrud | 10,620 |
| 6 | JW Johnson | 10,380.6 |
| 7 | Andrei Daescu | 10,130 |
| 8 | CJ Klinger | 6,280 |
| 9 | Eric Oncins | 5,753.8 |
| 10 | Noe Khlif | 4,138.8 |
Women
| # | Player | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Leigh Waters | 21,555 |
| 2 | Anna Bright | 16,390 |
| 3 | Jorja Johnson | 11,226.3 |
| 4 | Hurricane Tyra Black | 10,010 |
| 5 | Catherine Parenteau | 8,465 |
| 6 | Parris Todd | 8,170 |
| 7 | Rachel Rohrabacher | 7,630 |
| 8 | Kate Fahey | 6,352.5 |
| 9 | Tina Pisnik | 5,571.3 |
| 10 | Kaitlyn Christian | 5,454.4 |
There is no “updated on” anywhere on it. That means nobody — us included — can honestly write “as of” when quoting these figures. We captured them on 3 September 2026; we cannot tell you when the PPA last recalculated them. The tour also describes a per-discipline “Current Seed” number, and The Dink reported at launch that discipline leaderboards would still exist, but we could not find them published at any public URL.
Who actually leads each discipline
Because the PPA does not publish per-discipline leaderboards, the only free source covering all five — and the only one that date-stamps itself — is PickleWave. What follows is PickleWave’s ELO rating, not an official PPA ranking. It is calculated from 30,000-plus professional matches across the PPA, APP and MLP, and it ranks doubles by individual player rather than by team, which is a different unit of analysis from the PPA’s.
Men’s singles — PickleWave ELO, current 3 September 2026
| # | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Christopher Haworth | 2115 |
| 2 | Federico Staksrud | 2038 |
| 3 | Hunter Johnson | 1994 |
| 4 | Roscoe Bellamy | 1962 |
| 5 | Zane Ford | 1939 |
| 6 | Christian Alshon | 1917 |
| 7 | Ben Johns | 1909 |
| 8 | Jack Sock | 1909 |
| 9 | Noe Khlif | 1898 |
| 10 | Connor Garnett | 1857 |
Johns is seventh here. Haworth leads by 77 points over Staksrud — a wider gap than anywhere else in the top ten.
Women’s singles — PickleWave ELO, current 31 August 2026
| # | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Leigh Waters | 2398 |
| 2 | Kate Fahey | 2114 |
| 3 | Parris Todd | 2020 |
| 4 | Kaitlyn Christian | 2020 |
| 5 | Lea Jansen | 2000 |
| 6 | Sofia Sewing | 1966 |
| 7 | Katerina Stewart | 1948 |
| 8 | Brooke Buckner | 1931 |
| 9 | Seone Mendez | 1882 |
| 10 | Somer Dalla-bona | 1858 |
Men’s doubles — PickleWave ELO, current 3 September 2026
| # | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Johns | 2461 |
| 2 | Gabriel Tardio | 2372 |
| 3 | Andrei Daescu | 2246 |
| 4 | Hayden Patriquin | 2187 |
| 5 | JW Johnson | 2130 |
| 6 | Christian Alshon | 2038 |
| 7 | Federico Staksrud | 2026 |
| 8 | Dylan Frazier | 2009 |
| 9 | Carson Klinger | 2001 |
| 10 | Will Howells | 1977 |
Women’s doubles — PickleWave ELO, current 31 August 2026
| # | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Leigh Waters | 2715 |
| 2 | Anna Bright | 2272 |
| 3 | Tina Pisnik | 2209 |
| 4 | Hurricane Tyra Black | 2191 |
| 5 | Jackie Kawamoto | 2183 |
| 6 | Parris Todd | 2161 |
| 7 | Megan Fudge | 2146 |
| 8 | Jade Kawamoto | 2132 |
| 9 | Catherine Parenteau | 2121 |
| 10 | Rachel Rohrabacher | 2117 |
Mixed doubles — PickleWave ELO, current 3 August 2026
| # | Player | ELO |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anna Leigh Waters | 2501 |
| 2 | Ben Johns | 2418 |
| 3 | Anna Bright | 2372 |
| 4 | Andrei Daescu | 2233 |
| 5 | Christian Alshon | 2204 |
| 6 | Hurricane Tyra Black | 2189 |
| 7 | Jorja Johnson | 2149 |
| 8 | Gabriel Tardio | 2140 |
| 9 | JW Johnson | 2062 |
| 10 | Kate Fahey | 2032 |
Note the date on that last table. PickleWave’s mixed ratings are a month staler than its singles and doubles ratings. We show the date on every table for exactly this reason.
A third number that disagrees with both
DUPR, which brands itself the official rating of the professional and amateur tours, puts Ben Johns top of open men’s singles at 7.121, ahead of JW Johnson and Hayden Patriquin — with Haworth outside the top three. Its leaderboard was last updated 15 July 2026.
DUPR is not wrong so much as measuring something else: it is a rating that blends amateur and professional match results, not a tour ranking. It is the right tool for working out who to play at your local club and the wrong one for arguing about who leads the pro game. We are not going to reconcile three systems that are answering three different questions — but you should know all three exist before you quote any of them.
What to take from this
If you want to know who the tour will seed and who qualifies for the Finals, read the PPA composite. If you want to know who is the best singles player alive, read PickleWave and remember it is one analyst’s ELO model. If someone quotes you a ranking without saying which of the three it is, they have told you nothing.
Sources
PPA World Pickleball Ranking · PPA: the ranking explained · PPA: how it works · PickleWave rankings · DUPR · Haworth beats Johns, Mesa Cup · The Dink on the launch
More: pro coverage · MLP 2026 rosters · control paddles
About this page. Pickleball Insiders is an independent publication, not affiliated with, endorsed by or authorised by the PPA Tour, PickleWave, DUPR, or any player named here. Official PPA figures were captured on 3 September 2026 from a page that carries no update date; PickleWave figures carry the dates shown on each table. PickleWave is a third-party ELO model across PPA, APP and MLP matches, not an official tour ranking, and we label it as such every time. Rankings move; if a table here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it in place. Contact · How we work
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