A Lesson from Unicorns

Recently, two teams — Federico Staksrud and Matt Wright as well as Andrei Daescu and Gabe Tardio— achieved a pickleball rarity: defeating Ben and Collin Johns, the most formidable team in the world. This accomplishment is so rare that teams like these are often called ‘giant slayers’ or, better yet, ‘unicorns.’

Though Daescu and Tardio deserve a lot of credit for taking them down and even pickling them in the final game, the Johns have been beaten before.  The 16 seeded Phillip Locklear and Ben Newell achieved this feat in 2023 in Newport Beach.  I recently had the opportunity to witness these guys in the wild at Chicken-N-Pickle, Kansas City (Overland Park). I delved into how they orchestrated the biggest upset of the year and the valuable lessons we can all glean from it.

12-10, 11-4

The scoreline from the second round at the 2023 PPA Newport Beach Shootout seems like a typical Johns scoreline, except that the Johns were on the losing end of both games.  The only way to view this match is to dig through YouTube for a fan recording, as the game wasn’t streamed on any platform.  Neither team was playing their best pickleball with plenty of routine errors, but it was clear that Locklear and Newell were looking to dictate the match on their terms with very few soft thirds and long dinking rallies.  In essence, they looked to create chaos, often the primary strategy of any team that had taken down the Johns brothers in recent years.

Ben Newell

The known quantity.  A scrappy, entertaining lefty with a powerful drive, Ben Newell is no stranger to the pickleball scene. He helped his team, Dallas PC, to an MLP 2023 Challenger League Championship and had solid results with various partners on the PPA and APP tours.   The Johns knew what to expect from Newell, but that made no difference to his game plan.  Drive and crash was the recipe, and he served them up from 0-0-2 till the final point of the match.  Ben Newell’s advice on implementing this strategy rings true for all of us: "Do not make up your mind too early about what shot you will take.  Play loose and unpredictable.”

As we moved from our dinking conversation to our lesson, Ben quickly noted that I wanted to play it safe and reset from my backhand side.  “I know you aren’t going to hurt me from that wing,” he said.  And he was right.

I had already planned to drop from there even though I had a few opportunities to attack with my two-handed backhand.  He would say, “To create chaos and deception, we need to look at each shot as an opportunity to make a play on the ball with resetting or dropping as secondary options.”  He was intent on saying that we must “respect our opponent’s strengths in each match, but we should not shy away from them either.”

The biggest issue he sees on the pro scene is the lack of respect for an opponent's game.  “We must study and respect the players across the net from us and, in turn, have an answer for their best stuff.”

Phillip Locklear

The unknown quantity.  Phillip Locklear has a highly deceptive, quick, calculating, and somewhat unorthodox playing style reminiscent of an AJ Kohler or, for us veteran players, a younger version of senior pro John Sperling.  His dinking style holds the ball for as long as possible before putting spin straight up the back of the ball.  I have dinked with many pros, and he made me the most uncomfortable.

Once his paddle was on the ball, he could dink, attack, or lob, and it would come off the same swing motion with little indication of the pace or place it would ultimately be heading.  His philosophy for playing the game is to place 90% of the focus on the opponent and to trust your execution by taking the ball out in front. He said, “I rarely let the ball get behind me and cross over my feet on dinks, not because it’s not a sound shot, but because I lose sight of my opponent and I always want to have an eye on how they are leaning and what they are sitting on.”  He added, “There are no bad shots, just bad spots.  Too many players stop attacking because of one good counter by their opponents rather than take that information and use it to suggest they are leaving another spot open.”

Like Newell, Locklear is adamant that your game be fluid and unpredictable.  He used the analogy of pro basketball player Kyrie Irving, who decides his crossover or penetrating moves instinctively and in real-time based on what the player is showing him, not some predetermined script.

A Winning Strategy

The strategy to beat the Johns brothers isn’t rocket science and has been known for some time now. It's a combination of driving and crashing, and when that doesn’t work, you attack Collin and keep Ben honest by slipping balls behind him on his backhand side. However, executing this strategy requires the right players.  With Newell’s lefty drive and Locklear’s deceptive style, they were the right players to pull off one of the big upsets in pickleball in April 2023.  Newell and Locklear were driving and crashing well and would keep Ben and Collin guessing by varying their positions on the court and playing an aggressive game of chaos.

You may wonder how they fared after taking down the Johns brothers in the second round: well, they lost in the quarter finals to another drive-and-crash and deceptive duo with Garrett Whitehead and a then-newcomer by the name of Gabe Tardio

John is a PPR Certified Instructor, a professional rec player known by his pickleball friends as “The Professor.”  He aims to help players navigate their pickleball addiction with weekly tips from etiquette to technique to injury prevention.  He can be reached at ThePIckleProf.com.