Hunter Johnson
At a glance
- Tour
- PPA
- Age
- 31
- Handedness
- right
- Hometown
- Taos, NM
- Slams won
- 0
- Singles rank
- #3
- Doubles rank
- Unranked
- Mixed rank
- Unranked
- Paddle sponsor
- HIT Pickleball — Hand Cannon HC-01
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.