How world No. 1 pickleball player Ben Johns sets up his JOOLA Perseus Pro IV paddle

Alex Lantz

Director of Content

Last Edited

Jun 03 2025

Category

News

Ben Johns recently posted a video demonstrating how he customizes his JOOLA pickleball paddle.

It's getting a lot of attention in the pickleball community, so we wanted to break it down and explain the benefits of Johns' setup.

For starters, he uses the new JOOLA Perseus Pro IV 16mm paddle. (For more on the new JOOLA Pro IV lineup, check out our breakdown of each Pro IV shape or our in-depth review of the Perseus Pro IV 14mm and 16mm paddles.)

Below are all of the modifications Johns makes to that paddle from how it comes "stock."

Step 1: He adds 1 JOOLA overgrip, which you can buy here. This makes the grip slightly thicker and is easily replaceable to keep it fresh and tacky. He also wraps it a little higher up on the throat than how the grips come standard, giving him more room on the handle for two-handed backhands.

Step 2: Johns uses tungsten tape to add weight to the throat and bottom corners of the paddle. He uses 1/2-inch width tape that weighs .5 grams per inch of length. You can buy it here, and it also comes in 1 gram per inch density. He adds a 5.5-inch piece of the tungsten tape to each edge of the paddle (5.5 grams total of additional weight), starting about an inch above the grip and ending just below the halfway point on the side of the paddle. The Perseus Pro IV 16mm comes stock at 8.2 ounces, so my back-of-a-napkin math tells me that brings his total paddle weight up to about 8.4 ounces (5.5 grams = 0.2 ounces).

You can find a more in-depth article about how adding weight can impact the performance of paddles here, but the short version is this: In the location where Johns adds weight to his paddle, the biggest benefit will be additional stability, and it won't have a significant impact on the swingweight of the paddle.

If he had added weight higher up, he would gain more power, but at the expense of a higher swingweight.

More news