What Is the World Pickleball Rankings — and Who Is #1?

For years, pro pickleball had no single world pickleball rankings system. A player could lead the singles standings and barely crack the top 20 in doubles. Different disciplines, different leaderboards, no common currency. That changed in August 2026.

Why Pro Pickleball Finally Has One Official Answer to 'Who's the Best?'

Why Pro Pickleball Finally Has One Official Answer to 'Who's the Best?'

Before the World Pickleball Rankings, pro pickleball ran three separate leaderboards — singles, gender doubles, and mixed doubles — with no mechanism to weigh them against each other. A player who dominated doubles and played no singles occupied a different statistical universe than one who competed in all three disciplines every weekend.

The WPR, launched by the Carvana PPA Tour in August 2026, fixes that. It is one global leaderboard covering every PPA event worldwide, from Challengers to the Pickleball World Championships. The question fans have been asking for years — Is Anna Leigh Waters or Ben Johns the more complete player? — now has a mathematical answer.

How the World Pickleball Rankings Work: Points, Disciplines, and the 52-Week Window

How the World Pickleball Rankings Work: Points, Disciplines, and the 52-Week Window

The WPR is a composite score built from three disciplines, weighted unequally. According to the PPA Tour announcement, gender doubles counts for 50% of a player's score, mixed doubles for 35%, and singles for 15%. The heavier weight on doubles reflects where most playing time — and most competitive stakes — lives at the pro level.

Each ranking draws from a player's 14 best results over the trailing 52 weeks, with points scaled to event prestige. A Challenger earns fewer points than a Major; a Major earns fewer than the Pickleball World Championships. International stops in Europe and Asia feed the same leaderboard as domestic events, at point values scaled to each event's tier.

The 52-week rolling window means rankings shift throughout the year. A dominant run in the fall keeps paying dividends into the following summer. A drop in form shows up in the standings within months.

What the WPR Changes: Season Stakes and What to Watch

What the WPR Changes: Season Stakes and What to Watch

The WPR is not just a fan metric. The PPA Tour uses rankings to determine event entries, assign top-seed byes, and set qualification for the season-ending PPA Finals — where the sport's best across all disciplines compete to be crowned champion.

That gives the WPR real competitive weight. A pro who skips singles to save energy for doubles isn't just managing their schedule — they're making a deliberate choice about how their ranking evolves over the year. Watching a player enter all three disciplines on the same weekend makes a lot more sense once you understand the stakes.

Connor Pardoe, Founder and CEO of the Carvana PPA Tour, put it directly: "Greatness isn't one-dimensional. The World Pickleball Rankings is about clarity and credibility — one number and one global standard."

For rec players following the tour, the WPR is the closest thing pickleball has ever had to a definitive answer to the oldest argument in the sport. Rankings update after every event. The 2026-27 PPA season is underway.