7 Tactics That Beat Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters at the PPA National Championships
The PPA National Championships just handed us one of the most instructive doubles matches of the season. If you watched it without paying close attention, you missed a genuine clinic in competitive pickleball strategy — the kind that applies to every level of the game, not just the pros.
Jorja Johnson and JW Johnson took out top seeds Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters in three games. They did it with flying Ernes, short hop lobs, relentless kitchen line pressure, and a level of physical aggression that kept two of the best players in the world consistently uncomfortable from the very first point to the last.
This breakdown covers the seven specific tactics the Johnson siblings used, what made each one effective, why the top seeds couldn’t adjust in time, and how you can actually apply pieces of this game plan to your own doubles play. The full match was broadcast by the PPA Tour on YouTube, and it’s absolutely worth watching alongside this breakdown if you want the full picture.
For Those Who Are New to Pickleball: Here’s What You Need to Know
If you’re newer to pickleball or just starting to follow the pro scene, here’s a quick rundown of the names and concepts that make this match so significant. Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters are widely considered two of the best pickleball players in the world. They are dominant, consistent, and rarely lose to anyone. Jorja and JW Johnson are siblings who have been rising steadily through the professional ranks. When they beat Ben and Anna Leigh at a major championship event, it’s the kind of result that gets the entire pickleball community talking.
Pickleball doubles is played on a court similar to a badminton court, with a low net in the middle. The kitchen, also called the non-volley zone, is a seven-foot area on each side of the net where you cannot volley the ball in the air. Most high-level doubles play is dominated by what happens at the kitchen line — the soft, strategic exchange of shots called dinking, mixed with sudden explosive speed-ups designed to catch the opponent off guard. The tactics you’ll read about below — Ernes, lobs, body targeting, middle court control — are all part of this game at its highest level, and they’re also things you can start working on no matter where you play.
What Actually Won This Match?
The easy narrative is that Ben and Anna Leigh had an off day and made uncharacteristic errors. That’s partially true. Their unforced error count was unusually high, approaching double digits before the halfway point of the match, with several errors coming from positions that would normally be routine for players of their caliber.
But that framing gives the Johnsons far too little credit. They arrived with a specific game plan, executed it under pressure, and had a real answer for every adjustment the top seeds attempted. They didn’t just survive the mistakes from their opponents — they forced them. Here is exactly what that looked like, tactic by tactic.
Tactic 1: Jorja Attacked Cross-Body and Held the Kitchen Line
Jorja Johnson came into this match with a clear understanding of how JW Johnson tends to attack cross-body. Her response was not to back off or give herself more reaction time by retreating. She locked her feet at the kitchen line and countered from there, using the pace of the incoming ball against the attacker rather than trying to absorb and redirect from a passive position.
This is the critical detail that most players miss. The instinct when you sense a big hitter loading up is to take a step back, buy yourself time, give yourself room. That instinct costs you the point. When you retreat from the kitchen line, you hand your opponent the most valuable real estate on the court. Jorja did the opposite. She stood in, trusted her hands, and won those exchanges more often than not.
If you want to build this kind of discipline, you first need to understand why most players lose hands battles in the first place. It usually comes down to footwork and contact point, not speed. Getting that sorted is step one before you can hold the line the way Jorja did here.
Tactic 2: The Flying Erne at Critical Moments
Jorja hit two Ernes in this match, and they were not the same shot. One was a traditional Erne — stepping around the post and volleying outside the kitchen boundary. The other was a full flying leap through the air, connecting with the ball mid-flight while her opponent was mid-swing and completely out of position to respond.
The flying version worked because of timing. The opponent had already committed to a shot path, and Jorja’s movement disrupted the entire read. That’s the whole point of the Erne as a weapon — you are taking time away from your opponent and creating a contact angle that simply does not exist from a standard kitchen position. When it works, there is genuinely no answer for it. When it doesn’t, you look wild and give away the point. The difference is in the setup.
Before you try to fly across the court, make sure you actually understand how to hit the Erne correctly. The setup is everything. If your opponent doesn’t read a dink coming before you break toward the post, the Erne won’t catch anyone by surprise and you’ll just be out of position.
Tactic 3: Short Hop Lobs With Perfect Disguise
The short hop lob is one of the most criminally underused weapons in recreational pickleball, and Jorja Johnson demonstrated at the highest level exactly why it works so well when executed correctly. The disguise is entirely the point. Your opponent reads the setup as a dink or a drop — the body language is identical — and then the ball sails over their head before they’ve had a chance to reset their weight and recover backward.
Ben Johns tracked one of these down but couldn’t get back into a usable position afterward. That’s the secondary damage the shot does even when the opponent runs it down. You’ve forced them behind the baseline, you’ve broken their rhythm, and you’ve reset the geometry of the point in your favor.
This shot pairs directly with patience. You build the pattern with predictable soft exchanges, make your opponent comfortable reading drops and dinks, and then flip the script at the right moment. It only works because you’ve earned the trust of the pattern first. Learn how to execute the short hop at the net without telegraphing it early, because if your paddle face or body lean gives it away before you release the shot, you’re just hitting a slow lob into an overhead.
What Were Ben and Anna Leigh Doing Wrong?
Ben Johns struggled with his third shots throughout the match. The midcourt ball kept popping up at a height that gave the Johnsons clean opportunities to attack, and against a team with this level of hands speed and court awareness, a high midcourt ball is essentially a free point for the other side. His crosscourt attack patterns on JW were mixing well at moments, but the consistency wasn’t there when it needed to be.
Anna Leigh Waters settled into an unusually passive crosscourt dinking pattern and held it longer than the situation called for. Her speed-up percentage was solid when she did choose to attack, but the extended stretches of passivity handed the Johnsons free rhythm and allowed them to dictate the pace and direction of rallies without facing meaningful pressure. At the pro level, those stretches of passivity compound quickly, and by the time a player recognizes the pattern and tries to shift gears, the other team has already built momentum that’s hard to stop.
Tactic 4: JW Started Lobbing and Created an Unsolvable Problem
JW Johnson introduced lobs deeper into the match, and the timing was deliberate. The first one was a hint — a signal to the opponents that this weapon was now on the table. By the time he committed to it with consistency, Ben and Anna Leigh had no reliable read on what was coming off JW’s paddle on any given exchange. Was it a dink? A drive? A lob? The uncertainty forced them to hedge, and hedging at this level means giving away your positioning before the ball is even struck.
Adding a lob to your doubles game doesn’t mean hitting it constantly. It means threatening it with enough frequency and conviction that your opponent has to respect the possibility, which in turn opens up every other shot you have. The threat does the work, not just the execution. If your lob coverage is weak, you’re giving opponents a free pass to go over your head all day. Working on your lob coverage is just as important as learning to hit the lob itself, because in doubles, your partner’s vulnerability becomes your shared problem instantly.
Tactic 5: Speed-Up Targeting Directly at Ben’s Hip
This was one of the most consistent and deliberate tactical decisions Jorja Johnson made throughout the firefights. She went straight at Ben Johns repeatedly, targeting his right hip and left hip alternately rather than firing at the same location twice in a row. The commentary called it out directly: right hip, left foot, left hip, down the line. Jorja cycled through those locations in sequence, never giving Ben the chance to settle into a reliable defensive paddle position for the exchange.
Hip targeting is one of the most effective tools in a speed-up arsenal because it forces the opponent to make a last-second decision about backhand versus forehand, and that decision window gets shorter and shorter as the pace of the exchange increases. By alternating sides of the body rather than repeating the same spot, you eliminate the ability to anticipate and load up on the counter.
This kind of precision targeting takes real practice. Fast hands in pickleball are built on mechanics and placement discipline, not on swinging harder or faster. If your speed-ups are going to random locations based on where the ball happens to be rather than where you’ve decided to put it, you’re leaving a lot of points on the table.
Tactic 6: JW Dominated the Middle With Threat Positioning
This shift happened in game two and defined game three. JW Johnson repositioned himself to become a constant and credible threat in the middle of the court. He didn’t have to poach every ball to make this work. His presence in the right spot was enough to force Anna Leigh Waters to adjust where she was placing her first volley, and that overcorrection opened up angles for Jorja that hadn’t been available earlier in the match.
The commentators noted what was happening in real time: Anna Leigh was thinking about keeping Jorja back while simultaneously processing JW lurking in her peripheral vision. That kind of split-focus decision making breaks down rapidly at the speed of pro play. When you’re uncertain about where the danger is coming from, you start guiding the ball instead of committing to shots, and guided shots at the pro level get punished every single time.
Here’s what JW’s middle control actually looked like in practice during this match:
- He created a poach threat without actually committing, which made Anna Leigh hesitate on placement decisions she would normally make automatically
- He cut off two consecutive crosscourt angles that had been going through the middle freely in game one
- Once Ben started going to the corner to avoid JW, Jorja had a much easier read on shot selection and could load up accordingly
- Both siblings tracked the second, third, and fourth ball after each speed-up exchange rather than relaxing after the initial attack
Middle court control is one of the most powerful tools in doubles pickleball and one of the least practiced at the amateur level. Most recreational players drift toward their side of the court and cede the middle entirely without thinking about it. That’s a structural problem in your doubles positioning that costs points across the entire match.
Tactic 7: Staying Patient Until the Right Ball Appeared
This is the tactic that most recreational players skip entirely, and it’s arguably the one that tied everything else together for the Johnsons in this match. Jorja Johnson passed on several attackable balls early in rallies, waiting for a look that was genuinely clean and decisive rather than marginally attackable. She didn’t force the issue when the ball wasn’t quite right. She reset, stayed in the rally, kept the pressure on through positioning and dink placement, and waited.
When she finally went, the commitment was total. No tentative rollover. No guided shot hoping to find a corner. She attacked fully and ended the point cleanly. That difference between a tentative attack and a fully committed one is enormous at any level of pickleball. A tentative attack gives your opponent a manageable ball to counter. A committed attack gives them almost nothing.
Patience of this kind requires you to trust your defense enough to stay comfortable in long rallies without feeling the urge to force something. If you’re hitting unforced errors in the middle of rallies because you can’t tolerate another five dinks, the problem isn’t your attack — it’s your reset and your defensive composure. Getting your reset mechanics solid is the foundation that makes selective, patient attacking possible in the first place.
How Did the Match Turn in Game Three?
The Johnsons trailed 6-2 early in the deciding game and then went on a run that completely flipped the momentum. They closed it out 11-6. The turning point wasn’t a single shot or a single moment — it was three things converging at the same time.
First, Jorja’s cut drop volley landed short and came back sharply, forcing Ben to play a ball that was already sailing wide. Second, JW started lobbing with greater frequency, and neither top seed had a reliable or comfortable answer to it. Third, Ben’s third shot drops stopped finding their window consistently, and he popped up multiple balls that the Johnsons punished without hesitation or mercy.
Once the Johnsons grabbed the lead, they protected it by going right back to the exact same tactics that had built it. There was no panic. No change in strategy. No attempt to suddenly become conservative when they had something to protect. Just execution of the plan that had already proven it worked. That is the discipline that separates teams who close out matches from teams who hand them back when they’re ahead.
What Can You Actually Take From This?
You are not going to walk onto the court this weekend and hit flying Ernes through the air. That’s not the point of watching and breaking down a match like this. The point is the framework underneath the specific shots.
Pick a target. Vary the location within that target. Stay patient and disciplined through the rally. Commit completely when you decide to attack. That four-part framework applies at every single level of this game, from beginner rec play to the top of the pro rankings.
Most amateur players do the exact opposite. They attack randomly based on whatever ball shows up, vary nothing because they’re already at the edge of their capacity, and guide the ball toward a corner hoping it goes in rather than driving it with intent. The Johnsons showed you over three games what structured, intentional aggression looks like when it’s executed well against the best players in the world.
The other thing worth taking directly from Jorja’s game is kitchen line discipline. She stood in. She countered from contact, not from two steps behind the line where you’ve already given up the angle and the pressure. Use the kitchen line as a strategic asset, not just a boundary, and your defensive positioning will improve faster than almost anything else you can work on.
