PPA Tour Men’s Doubles Shakeups: Can Anyone Actually Beat Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio?

Men’s doubles pickleball just went through one of its biggest reshuffles in recent memory. Three of the four best teams from the first half of the season are splitting up, partnerships are being rebuilt from scratch, and the entire professional landscape is reorganizing itself around one very uncomfortable truth: nobody has figured out how to beat Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio.

Not once. Not in nine tries.

This piece breaks down every significant partner switch heading into the PPA Tour’s second half, rated honestly, and asks the only question that actually matters right now: did any of these new pairings build something capable of beating the best team in the world on Championship Sunday?

First, Some Context for Anyone New to Pro Pickleball

If you’re newer to following professional pickleball, here’s what you need to understand before any of this makes sense. At the highest level of the sport, men’s doubles is played in a format where two players compete together as a team across a full tournament bracket. Partners matter enormously. The chemistry between two players, which side of the court each person plays, how aggressive each person is, and how well their styles fit together determines whether a team wins gold or keeps finishing second.

The PPA Tour is the premier professional pickleball circuit in the United States, and the top men’s doubles teams compete across multiple tournaments throughout the year. When we talk about partner switches, we’re talking about players deciding to stop competing with their current partner and form a new team with someone else. These decisions happen between tournament seasons or mid-season, and they can completely reshape the competitive landscape.

Ben Johns is widely considered the best pickleball player in the world. Gabe Tardio is his current men’s doubles partner. Together, they went a perfect 9 for 9 in tournaments during the first half of the season. That means every single time they entered a tournament together, they won it. That kind of dominance is what’s driving every other team to shake things up and search for a combination that can actually challenge them. You can read more about Ben Johns’ game to understand just how technically advanced his approach really is.

The analysis below draws from Zane Navratil’s breakdown on YouTube, where he cuts through the noise on each of these partnership changes with sharp, honest takes.

The Real Problem Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud

Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio didn’t just have a great first half. They were historically dominant. Going 9 for 9 in professional pickleball tournaments isn’t a hot streak. It’s a structural problem for everyone else in the draw.

Consider this: the top four men’s doubles teams this year accounted for 24 of the 27 available medals across the season’s first half. That’s an incredibly closed system at the very top of the sport. The field isn’t weak. The competition underneath the top tier is real and growing. The issue is that no specific team has cracked the code on Ben and Gabe in particular. You can learn more about pro medal counts to get a clearer picture of just how concentrated success has been at the top.

When a team wins every single tournament they enter, finishing second stops feeling like an accomplishment. Players aren’t making these moves because they want a fresh challenge or because they got bored. They’re making them because collecting silver medals week after week stops feeling acceptable when gold is theoretically within reach. The honest question every team has to ask themselves heading into the second half is whether their new partnership gives them a realistic shot at beating Johns and Tardio in a final. Not just reaching the final. Actually winning it.

That’s the filter every shakeup in this article should be evaluated through.

Shakeup 1: Hayden Patriquin and Federico Staksrud Are Back Together

Hayden Patriquin and Federico Staksrud are reuniting, and on paper it’s a reasonable decision. Hayden is one of the most consistent left side players in the game. He plays with composure under pressure, keeps his partner mentally locked in across a full tournament, and has real shot-making ability when he needs it. Fed is a natural right side setup player who fits cleanly alongside Hayden’s left side game.

This pairing made five finals together in 2025. They were clearly the second-best team in the sport during that stretch. Their chemistry is established, their roles are defined, and there’s no awkward adjustment period required. For a lot of teams, that kind of comfort and familiarity would be a major asset heading into a new tournament run.

The issue is that comfort and familiarity don’t beat Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio. Going back to what worked before answers the question of how you find consistency. It doesn’t answer the question of how you actually take down the best team in the world. Hayden and Fed getting back together makes them a lock for podium finishes again. It probably makes them the second or third best team in the draw. But there’s a meaningful gap between “second best team in men’s doubles pickleball” and “team that can win a final against Johns and Tardio.” You can explore doubles strategy to understand why style fit at the elite level determines so much of how matchups play out.

Reuniting with Fed is the comfortable move. It’s probably not the bold move that changes the balance of power.

Shakeup 2: Christian Alshon and Andrei Daescu Reuniting

This one has real logic behind it. Andrei Daescu plays best alongside an aggressive right side player who can force the pace of points rather than just sustaining dink rallies. That’s not a guess or a theory. When Andrei partnered with Gabe Tardio earlier in his PPA career, their combination was aggressive enough to force Ben Johns and Collin Johns to split up as a team. That’s a significant benchmark. It means Andrei’s style, when paired with the right right-side weapon, creates genuine problems even for elite teams.

Christian Alshon is a known quantity alongside Andrei. They’ve played together before, they’ve reached podiums together, and Christian brings real attacking ability from the right side. He can create offensive opportunities, he understands when to drive and when to reset, and his forehand attack is a legitimate weapon at the professional level. If you want to understand what Christian brings on that side, his forehand attack mechanics are worth studying.

The honest assessment is that Christian and Andrei should be a genuine podium threat in the second half. They have the style fit, the chemistry, and the individual talent to make deep tournament runs consistently. The harder question is whether Christian can bring the same level of right side aggression that made Andrei’s previous pairings threatening at the very highest level. There’s a difference between being a dangerous right side player and being the specific kind of relentless attacker that forces Ben Johns to adjust his game plan. Whether Christian can operate at that specific level is what determines whether this team is competing for silver or actually pushing for gold.

The Move Nobody Made: Why Didn’t Hayden and Andrei Partner Up?

This is the question that should bother you most if you genuinely want to see competition at the top of men’s doubles pickleball. Because on paper, Hayden Patriquin and Andrei Daescu together would have been the most interesting new partnership of the entire offseason, and it didn’t happen.

The obvious objection is that both players are natural left side players, which creates a positioning conflict. But that objection isn’t as strong as it sounds. Hayden has played the right side before with Fed during parts of their partnership. He can make that adjustment. It requires work and adaptation, but it’s not structurally impossible. Andrei, for his part, was an absolute force on the right side when he and Ben Johns played one tournament together in March 2025 and won the whole thing. He’s proven he can operate effectively from that side when the partnership demands it.

Think about what this pairing would actually bring to a tournament draw. You’d have two of the three best men’s doubles players outside of Ben and Gabe on the same team. You’d have Andrei’s aggression as a right side weapon, which has already been proven to work at the highest level. You’d have Hayden’s ability to maintain composure and keep a partner mentally sharp through a full five-game bracket. And you’d have a combination with the raw firepower to actually push Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio to a fifth game in a final. That’s more than most teams can say right now.

Understanding how Ben Johns controls points from the transition zone makes it clear why you need two genuine weapons capable of disrupting his rhythm at multiple spots on the court. One isn’t enough. You need pressure from both sides simultaneously to take away the comfortable patterns he creates. Hayden and Andrei together might have been able to generate that kind of two-sided pressure. Without that pairing happening, the path to dethroning Ben and Gabe got significantly harder for everyone else in the field.

Shakeup 3: JW Johnson and Tama Shimabukuro

JW Johnson taking a chance on Tama Shimabukuro is an interesting experiment, and there’s genuine upside in the idea. Tama is young, explosive, and clearly has a ceiling that nobody has found yet. His athleticism and shot variety make him one of the most watchable players in men’s doubles right now, and pairing him with an established veteran like JW gives him a stable platform to develop from.

The problem is style fit, and it’s a real one. Tama is at his best when he’s dictating play from the left side. He’s aggressive, creative, and comfortable controlling points from that position. JW Johnson doesn’t play the right side naturally, which means one of these two players is operating outside their most comfortable positioning from the very beginning of their partnership. That adjustment period costs time and tournament results while teams figure out the kinks.

There’s already data on this. Tama’s numbers on the right side during MLP with the Black Diamonds were notably weaker than his performance on the left. It’s not that he can’t play from that side. He clearly can. It’s that he becomes more passive there, he’s less willing to attack aggressively, and he’s less able to create the disruptive offensive pressure that makes him so dangerous when he’s fully comfortable. That passivity on the right side is a structural problem against elite men’s doubles teams, because opponents can exploit a passive right side player by attacking that zone repeatedly without fear of punishment. Understanding right side offense mechanics makes it clear why a passive player in that role creates predictable patterns that good teams will hunt down immediately.

JW and Tama will be competitive. The ceiling of this pairing depends on whether Tama can develop real aggression from the right side or whether JW can adapt his positioning enough to let Tama play where he’s most dangerous.

Shakeup 4: CJ Klinger and Will Howells as the Sleeper Pick

This pairing deserves more attention than it’s getting. CJ Klinger is coming out of a stretch where results didn’t match his talent level, and Will Howells is still finding his footing in his first full PPA season. Neither of those things is a permanent condition. Both players have upside that hasn’t fully translated into results yet, and there’s real stylistic compatibility here that could develop into something significant over a full tournament slate.

Will is a genuine fit for CJ’s style of play. He understands pressure points, he moves well, and his composure in tight situations is better than you’d expect from someone still establishing themselves at the tour level. The combination has the ingredients to surprise people in the second half if they develop quickly.

The concern that exists right now is the same one that limited CJ’s partnership with JW Johnson: the middle. When neither player on a team has a reliable speed up off the bounce from the middle of the court, opponents can dink into that zone all day without any real fear of being punished. It becomes a comfortable, low-risk place for elite teams to operate against you. Understanding when to speed up off the bounce is genuinely one of the most important skills in modern men’s doubles, and its absence at the middle creates a pattern that smart teams identify and exploit quickly.

Here’s what CJ and Will need to develop to become a genuine threat at the top of the draw. First, at least one of them needs to build a reliable middle speed up off the bounce as a real, consistent weapon. Second, they need pressure points that take away the comfortable dink zones opponents settle into against them. Third, they need an aggressive transition game that prevents opponents from resetting through the middle safely. If either player adds that middle speed up as a genuine weapon, the entire dynamic of playing against this team changes. That one addition unlocks the ceiling of this partnership in a meaningful way.

Shakeup 5: Eric Oncins and Noe Khlif

Eric Oncins is playing some of the best pickleball of his career right now, and when he’s locked in, he has the ability to beat anyone on any given day. That’s not hype or optimism. That’s what the results show when you watch him compete at full intensity. His back-to-back Asia gold medals prove he can sustain elite-level performance across full tournament runs when conditions are right.

The challenge with this pairing is positioning. Noe Khlif primarily plays the left side, which means he and Eric need to sort out who adapts and who plays where. That’s a conversation every new partnership has, but when both players have strong left side tendencies, the answer requires real compromise and adjustment rather than just slotting into natural roles.

There’s also a practical reality about the pace of partner changes in the second half of the season. If this pairing struggles early, the market for available partners shifts quickly. Players like Federico Staksrud or Christian Alshon could become available if their own new pairings underperform in the first few events back. Eric Oncins is too good a player and too disciplined a competitor to stay in a suboptimal partnership for long. His tournament preparation habits show just how seriously he approaches getting every detail right, which means if the fit isn’t working, he’ll move to fix it fast.

Women’s Doubles: Still Anna Leigh and Anna Bright’s World

The women’s doubles landscape is worth mentioning here because the shakeups are real, even if the competitive picture is clearer than men’s. Anna Leigh Waters and Anna Bright are on a 13-tournament winning streak, having lost just six games across all of those events combined. That’s not dominance in the normal sense of the word. That