In 2022, Aanik Lohani asked Ben Johns to take a picture with him.
Lohani was an aspiring pickleball player, an ex-tennis player who had just won an amateur pickleball singles tournament in his home state of Minnesota, and Johns, well, you know – he’s the best player in the world.
A year later, Lohani really couldn’t ask Johns for a picture when he saw him on the court. That would be kind of weird. You don’t ask someone for a selfie when you’re playing against them in the singles final of a PPA Tour event on Championship Sunday.
“There were definitely a bit of ‘first day of school’ jitters for me,” Lohani said of facing Johns earlier in October in Las Vegas. “But I think that was to be expected as it was my first Championship Sunday.”
Quite a run for Lohani in the last year, going from amateur to pro, signing with the PPA Tour, getting a new paddle deal and finding his way to Championship Sunday where he won his first medal.
“My team and I are trying hard to ride this wave of recent successes I’ve had,” he said. “I’ll be looking to build on it at the National Tournament (In Dallas in November) as well and into the 2024 PPA Tour season. Our last goal as a team is for me to be the best ambassador for each brand I’m representing and will be representing as I love to spread the word with every one of my supportive fans on how it is that I keep my successes rolling.”
And Lohani is doing all this while keeping a full-time job as a data engineer for US Bank, where he takes datasets, cleans them then utilizes it to create visuals for business lines to use. Yeah, it’s more difficult to explain than hitting a third-shot drop.
“I like to see it as a challenge,” Lohani said. “A lot of people can work a corporate job or play pickleball at a high level, but not many can do both and do both well. And at the end of the day, I think transparency in both worlds goes a long way in terms of being realistic with my boss with what deadlines I can meet, and with how many tournaments and events I can make on the PPA Tour. I definitely will know when I’m over-exerting myself, but for now, I feel as though I can give 100 percent of my devoted attention to the part of my life that I am doing at the moment.”
It appears the pickleball “moment” is just starting. Since signing with the PPA Tour, Lohani has also been signed by Joola as a sponsored player and the former tennis player says it definitely has helped his game.
“It’s helped me to elevate my game to the next level,” he said. “So I’m super excited to keep this Joola partnership alive as they are supporting me so well on my pickleball journey.”
The journey was a trip to the finals in early October at the PPA Tour’s Las Vegas stop. Lohani entered the tournament as the No. 23 seed. He started the day winning against the No. 10 seed, Julian Arnold, and beat Hayden Patriquin as well as J.W. Johnson on the way to the final when he faced Johns.
“It’s always fun to play better people and playing Ben is like running and playing chess at the same time,” Lohani said. “Utilizing one strategy against him the whole match will never work. I’m slowly learning how to play him better. It was my first championship Sunday. That said, I always try to capitalize on feeling nervous and use it as adrenaline to feel more pumped up in the moment.”
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