Ben Johns admits fashion blindness, then debuts secret left-handed weapon

Ben Johns walked onto the court for mixed doubles at the PPA World Championships looking like he dressed in the dark.

His partner, Anna Leigh Waters, wore a teal skirt and black shirt from Nike.

Johns wore bright blue shorts and a white shirt.

They did not match.

This is unusual for the top seeds.

Waters normally handles the fashion decisions for the pair.

Johns follows her lead.

All season, he has turned out clean, coordinated looks that complement her outfits.

This time, he missed.

Broadcasters Sarah Ansboury and Michelle McMahon noticed immediately.

During the post-match interview, Ansboury asked Johns directly about the mismatch.

“Ben, I don’t think you did your job today with matching Anna Leigh’s outfit, so what’s going on here?” she said.

Johns, Waters and McMahon all laughed.

Johns took responsibility.

“It’s entirely my fault,” he said.

“She told me what to wear in the morning and I think I packed in the dark.

I packed the blue instead of the teal, and somehow, I didn’t have a black shirt.

It was a catastrophe this morning, I take full responsibility.

Blame being color blind and dressing in the dark.”

Then Waters interrupted.

“I’m sorry you can’t blame your partial color blindness,” she said.

“He’s not actually color blind.”

The exchange was lighthearted, but it raised a question.

If Johns is not colorblind, why did he say he was?

He did not explain further in the interview.

The moment passed quickly.

But the fashion drama did not end there.

The next day, during the round of 32, Johns played singles.

He walked onto the court in what many observers called his best outfit of the tournament.

He wore JOOLA’s new green hat.

He paired it with a baby blue shirt.

He added teal shorts.

He completed the look with white compression sleeves, white crew socks and JOOLA court shoes.

The colors — green, blue and teal — worked together.

The all-white accessories tied everything together.

It was a sharp, intentional look.

It was the opposite of the mismatched outfit from the day before.

The turnaround was striking.

Johns went from a fashion disaster to best-dressed in 24 hours.

He did not explain how he managed the switch.

He did not address the colorblind comment again.

But the contrast was impossible to ignore.

This is not the only unusual thing Johns has done at the PPA World Championships.

During the same tournament, he brought back a shot he had not used in years.

In his singles match against Brandon French, Johns hit left-handed forehands.

He is a right-handed player.

He typically uses a two-handed backhand like most players.

But against French, he reached into an old bag of tricks.

He hit several left-handed forehands that caught his opponent off guard.

In a post-match interview, Johns explained that he used to play with two forehands back in his tennis days.

He brought the shot into pickleball early in his career.

Then he stopped using it.

“Back in the day when people played singles, it was pretty much all drives,” he said.

“Then, I started dropping and coming in — the cat and mouse style as we know it today — and that required me to just hit backhand slices, basically backhand drops.

So I stopped using my left hand and I stopped really hitting a bunch of passing shots, as I would just drop and come in… that’s kind of the style I just continued to play for singles after that.”

The game has changed since then.

Equipment has evolved.

The PPA Tour now uses the LT Pro 48 ball.

Paddles have become more powerful.

Johns believes the old drop-and-approach strategy no longer works as well.

“You can’t really drop and come in super well with this ball,” he said.

“You can hit accurate drops, but the ball bounces pretty high and people have a lot of spin on their paddles, so they can just take a drop and do a lot with it, so cat and mouse doesn’t really work very well.”

He added that drops are still useful for staying in rallies.

But they are no longer a reliable way to build his game.

Since he does not generate much power with his backhand, the left-handed forehand gives him an alternative.

He debuted the shot against French and won that match 11-7, 1-11, 11-5.

He exited the singles competition in the round of 32 after losing 8-11, 8-11 to ninth seed Noe Khlif.

But Johns made one thing clear.

“When I do play singles, you can expect to see it,” he said of the left-handed forehand.

The shot is here to stay.

Johns is widely considered the greatest male pickleball player of all time.

He has dominated the sport for years.

He has added new shots to his game over time, including a twoey roll dink.

But the left-handed forehand is not new.

He originally played it in men’s singles in 2016 and 2017.

He stopped using it when he changed his playing style.

Now he is bringing it back.

The fashion incident and the left-handed forehand are two separate stories.

But together, they paint a picture of a player who is willing to shake things up.

Johns is not afraid to admit a mistake — even if his excuse was immediately contradicted by his partner.