Hunter Johnson takes Nationals as the new rankings go live

Hunter Johnson won men's singles at the Veolia Pickleball National Championships in Cary, North Carolina, beating Federico Staksrud 7-11, 11-3, 11-0 in a final that stopped being competitive after the first game.

It was Johnson's ninth career singles title and his first since March. To get there he went through the top seed, Chris Haworth, 11-9, 11-1 in the semifinal — a scoreline that reads like two different matches, because it was.

The week

The event ran August 31 to September 6 and opened the 2026-27 Carvana PPA Tour season. It was the first of four majors, worth 2,000 ranking points, with a $1,648,641 payout and more than 1,400 players across the pro and amateur draws.

Men's doubles went to Ben Johns and Gabriel Tardio over Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu, 11-8, 11-8, 5-11, 11-5. Johns and Tardio have not lost as a pair since the spring season. Alshon and Daescu were playing together for the first time since 2025.

Women's doubles went to Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright over Tyra Black and Jorja Johnson, 11-5, 11-6, 11-3. The number worth sitting with: Waters and Bright outscored their first three opponents 66-7 combined.

Women's singles went to Waters over Kate Fahey, 11-1, 11-9. The second game was the closest anyone came. Waters is now past 830 days without a singles loss.

Mixed doubles produced the upset of the week. Top seeds Ben Johns and Waters lost the semifinal to JW and Jorja Johnson 4-11, 11-9, 11-6, which opened the draw for Hayden Patriquin and Anna Bright to take the title 11-9, 11-3, 11-7 — their second together as St. Louis Shock teammates.

The rankings changed underneath it

Cary was also the first event played under the PPA's new World Pickleball Rankings, which replace the old per-discipline tables as the headline number. The composite weights gender doubles at 50%, mixed at 35% and singles at 15%, drawn from a player's best 14 results over a rolling 52 weeks.

That weighting has a consequence worth naming: singles is now the smallest input into the number most people will quote. Hunter Johnson can win the national singles title and still sit outside the top ten of the composite table, because the composite is mostly a doubles ranking wearing a general-purpose name.

The post-event movement was steep, because a 2,000-point major landing on a table with only 52 weeks of memory moves people a long way at once. Quang Duong went 19 to 6 in men's singles. Jack Sock entered at 10, Haworth at 12, Patriquin at 18, Roscoe Bellamy at 19. In men's doubles, Dekel Bar went 16 to 9 and Alshon 20 to 12.

We rechecked every profile in our players directory against the new tables the day after the event. A fair number of the numbers we had been showing were wrong, and some of them had been wrong for a while — more on that in a separate post.

Coming up

The next major is the second of four on the 2026-27 calendar. Between now and then the composite table will mostly sit still, because it takes a major to move it much — which is the design working as intended, and also the reason a single bad week no longer wrecks a season.

Frequently asked questions

+−When and where were the 2026 Pickleball National Championships?

August 31 to September 6, 2026, in Cary, North Carolina. It was the first of four majors on the 2026-27 Carvana PPA Tour season and carried a $1,648,641 total payout across more than 1,400 players in the draw.

+−Who won the pro singles titles?

Hunter Johnson took men's singles over Federico Staksrud, and Anna Leigh Waters took women's singles over Kate Fahey 11-1, 11-9.

+−What are the new World Pickleball Rankings?

A single composite table per gender that weights gender doubles at 50%, mixed doubles at 35% and singles at 15%, using a player's best 14 results over a rolling 52 weeks. Cary was the first event contested under it.

+−Did Anna Leigh Waters lose anything at Nationals?

Only in mixed doubles, where she and Ben Johns went out in the semifinals to JW and Jorja Johnson. Her singles streak passed 830 days without a loss.