Hunter Johnson
At a glance
- Tour
- PPA
- Age
- 32
- Handedness
- right
- Hometown
- Taos, NM
- Slams won
- 0
- Men's world rank
- Not confirmed
- Singles rank
- Not confirmed
- Doubles rank
- Not confirmed
- Mixed rank
- Not confirmed
- Paddle sponsor
- HIT Pickleball — Hand Cannon HC-01
Rankings checked against the PPA on Sep 7, 2026. Fields marked “Not confirmed” are ones we could not verify at that date, not evidence the player is unranked.
Hunter Johnson held PPA men's singles World No. 1 starting in August 2025 before Chris Haworth overtook him in early 2026. He currently sits at #3.
Career
Johnson played Division I tennis at SMU alongside his twin brother Yates, where he reached a career-high #15 in doubles and #30 in singles. He won his first PPA Tour singles title at the 2024 Atlanta Slam, climbing to #1 the following year on a stay-back baseline approach widely described as "mini-tennis" — a divergence from the kitchen-line scramble most pros default to.
He signed with HIT Pickleball for their Hand Cannon line; his twin brother Yates is also on the HIT roster, making them one of the only sibling-pair sponsorships in the sport.
Playing style
Right-handed. The poster child for tennis-style singles construction in pickleball: stays deep, uses depth and angles to pull opponents off-balance, and only engages the kitchen battle once he's earned the position. Effective enough to take him to #1 — but the move toward all-court aggression by Haworth and the rising-star cohort is testing whether the style still has another title cycle in it.