Chris Beaumont
What happened: Ben Johns, the No 19 seed, lost 11-8, 11-8 to No 9 Noe Khlif in the men’s singles round of 32 at the Opendoor Pickleball World Championships on Wednesday. Sixth seed Tama Shimabukuro and 10th seed Zane Ford also went out, although doubles stars JW Johnson and Jack Sock remain in Thursday’s last 16.
Dallas has not suddenly discovered that Ben Johns is ordinary. That would be an absurd conclusion about a player with 189 career titles. What Wednesday did reveal, with unusual clarity, is that a famous name no longer buys time in a singles draw.
Johns is out after Khlif’s two-game win. Shimabukuro went out to Donald Young, while Luc Pham dismantled Ford 11-1, 11-3. Three of the top 19 seeds disappeared in one session.
Yet this is not simply an upset story. It is a specialism story: modern singles is exposing the gap between being an exceptional pickleball player and owning a repeatable singles game.
Khlif made the scoreboard look routine
The most striking thing about Johns’s exit is how untheatrical the numbers are. There was no deciding-game collapse and no marathon. Khlif won the same score twice, 11-8 and 11-8, and moved into Thursday’s match against seventh seed John Lucian Goins.
Johns had beaten Brandon French 11-7, 1-11, 11-5 in his opening match. He also arrived with a conspicuous new option: a left-handed forehand. In Will Daughton’s report for Pickleball.com, published on Wednesday, Johns explained that the modern ball and spin-friendly paddles have changed the old drive-and-pass calculus.
“Back in the day when people played singles, it was pretty much all drives,” he said. His alternative used to be dropping and following the ball forwards, but he believes that approach is now much harder to sustain.
“You can hit drops occasionally just to stay in the point, but you’re not gonna drop and come in very often,” Johns explained. “When I do play singles, you can expect to see it.”
The intention is clear. The result against Khlif shows that adding a shot is not the same as owning the whole pattern around it.
There is an important distinction here. The score alone cannot tell us which tactical adjustment Khlif made, and we should not invent a rally-by-rally explanation. What it does tell us is that the ninth seed never allowed the contest to become a third-game test of Johns’s problem-solving.
Khlif also arrived with credible current form. The PPA Stats Desk’s Worlds preview lists him as a semi-finalist at the previous tour event in Hong Kong, where Hunter Johnson beat Shimabukuro in the final. His victory over Johns is a surprise because of the names involved, not because Khlif appeared from nowhere.
The numbers beyond the headline
The other exits made Johns’s result part of a broader correction. Young, seeded 34, beat Shimabukuro 12-10, 11-7. Pham’s win over Ford was even more emphatic: Ford scored only four points in two games.
Rafael Lenhard, seeded 17, beat 16th seed Dylan Frazier 11-8, 8-11, 12-10. Harrison Brown, at 20, defeated Grayson Goldin 11-7, 8-11, 11-2. JW Johnson came from a game down to beat Jaxon Madsen 8-11, 11-1, 11-6.
The official results also record Hong Kit Wong advancing against Eric Oncins without a score, a withdrawal rather than a completed match. That distinction matters in a draw already full of tempting narratives: not every advance is an upset, and not every upset means the same thing.
The picture is certainly not a purge of every celebrated doubles player. Johnson and Sock are both still standing. Christian Alshon and Hunter Johnson also reached the last 16. “Specialists” is therefore a description of the skills being rewarded, not a claim that nobody with a doubles reputation can survive.
That nuance matters because the tournament publishes the World Pickleball Ranking model alongside its draw information: gender doubles accounts for 50%, mixed doubles 35% and singles 15%. That is a ranking model, not proof of how every seed in this draw was calculated. But it does illustrate why broader pickleball eminence and singles prospects can diverge.
Johns’s Worlds record has been warning us
Johns’s own Worlds history underlines the point. The PPA Tour’s Stats Desk preview lists a singles round-of-32 defeat to A Crum in 2025, a round-of-16 loss to Michael Loyd in 2024 and a defeat to Christopher Haworth in 2023. In those same three years he collected three mixed gold medals and a men’s doubles title.
His career breakdown is more revealing still: 42 singles titles, 65 in men’s doubles and 82 in mixed. Those are extraordinary numbers, but they are not interchangeable evidence. Wednesday was another data point in a three-year Worlds pattern, not an isolated embarrassment.
It also offers a useful corrective to the way pickleball discusses greatness. A doubles player covers half the court and builds exchanges with a partner. A singles player owns every metre of recovery, every choice of direction and every consequence of a short return. The sports share a scoring system and a kitchen; they do not share the same decision tree.
Johns remains capable of solving those problems, of course. His 21 triple crowns prove that he has solved them at the highest level. But the last was in April 2024, according to the PPA, and a World Championship draw is an unforgiving place to rediscover patterns against opponents who rehearse them continuously.
What the last 16 tells us now
Thursday’s men’s singles round of 16 begins at 11:00 Central Time, 17:00 in London, according to the official tournament schedule. Start times can move as earlier courts finish.
The eight pairings are:
| Match | Round-of-16 pairing |
|---|---|
| Top half | Christopher Haworth (1) v Adam Harvey (14) |
| John Lucian Goins (7) v Noe Khlif (9) | |
| Christian Alshon (4) v Harrison Brown (20) | |
| JW Johnson (26) v Jaume Martinez Vich (12) | |
| Bottom half | Federico Staksrud (2) v Jack Sock (13) |
| Roscoe Bellamy (5) v Luc Pham (18) | |
| Hunter Johnson (3) v Rafael Lenhard (17) | |
| Donald Young (34) v Hong Kit Wong (11) |
There are several stories inside that draw. Top seed Haworth has another opportunity to turn consistency into the title that eluded him in last year’s final against Staksrud. The defending champion must now negotiate Sock, whose serve-and-return quality makes him much more than a celebrity entry. Young, the former professional tennis player, has already shown why a deep return and disciplined passing shots remain valuable.
And Khlif now carries the particular burden that follows a famous win: proving it was a route into the tournament rather than the tournament itself. Goins conceded only seven points against Max Freeman in his round-of-32 match, so there is little time to enjoy the applause.
The wider draw warns against declaring the seeds obsolete. Twelve of the 16 higher seeds won their men’s singles round-of-32 matches. In the women’s event, 12 of 16 did likewise. Wednesday was dramatic because the exceptions included Johns, not because the bracket descended into randomness.
That is also why Ford’s four-point defeat deserves attention beyond its place in the upset list. A lower seed winning narrowly can be a matter of a few choices. A lower seed winning 11-1, 11-3 suggests a much larger tactical or performance gap on the day, even if the match itself offers no public diagnostic data.
Johns is still in Dallas
His week is not over. Johns remains in men’s doubles with Gabriel Tardio and mixed doubles with Anna Leigh Waters. Those partnerships have entirely different geometry, movement demands and margins from singles. A defeat in one discipline should never be lazily used as evidence of decline in the other two.
The mixed and doubles draws may now receive more of his attention, although no schedule inference should be mistaken for a statement from the player. What we can say is that Johns’s 101-tournament medal streak, cited by the PPA before Worlds, remains the more appropriate measure of his wider dominance.
There is a global lesson here, too. As pickleball expands beyond its established American circuit, players and federations often borrow the reputations attached to doubles rankings when assessing singles. This draw shows why national programmes should measure serve quality, return depth, movement and singles results separately.
For the Dallas field, Johns’s departure changes the atmosphere. A title route that might once have been described through him now runs through Haworth, Staksrud, Hunter Johnson, Khlif and a cluster of players comfortable constructing points without a partner.
That is the real significance of Wednesday. The singles court keeps asking its own questions: can you serve and return with purpose, change direction repeatedly, turn a drive into court position and finish without somebody covering the other half?
Khlif, Young and Pham supplied the cleaner answers. Their rewards are places in the last 16, not a coronation. Johns’s defeat simply makes the lesson impossible to ignore: at Worlds, reputation crosses no lines for you.
Chris Beaumont
Founder and Editor-in-ChiefChris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine, published by World Pickleball Media Ltd. He follows the global game closely, reporting on news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball…
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