Teen pickleball stars Shimabukuro and Kunimoto surge into Tokyo Open contention

Two Hawaiian teenagers are opening the Sansan Tokyo Open at the top of the bracket. Tama Shimabukuro, 15, is seeded No. 1 in men’s doubles and mixed doubles and No. 2 in men’s singles, while 18-year-old Kiora Kunimoto is the No. 1 seed in women’s singles.

The PPA Tour Asia event is its first tournament in Japan’s capital and is scheduled for July 1-4, with US$50,000 in prize money and 500 ranking points on offer. The seedings put both teenagers in headline positions at a tournament built to test players who are already expected to handle pressure, travel and points at the same time.

Shimabukuro’s climb has been especially sharp. At the Sansan Fukuoka Open 2025, he came through qualifying, then beat Tyler Loong in men’s singles and later paired another upset with a mixed-doubles win over Loong and Pei-Chuan Kao. He was 14 in Fukuoka. A year later, Tokyo has him at or near the top of three different draws, a jump that says as much about the speed of his rise as it does about the changing shape of the sport around him.

Kunimoto’s path has compressed just as quickly. Her player profile says she first played a pickleball tournament in January 2025 and entered her first pro event in June 2025. Another profile says her father, a tennis and pickleball instructor, introduced her to the sport. She was still focused on high-school tennis through May 2025, when she won the Hawaii State High School Girls’ Singles title, and she has since moved into the senior game with real momentum.

That momentum now reaches beyond singles brackets. Major League Pickleball lists Kunimoto with the California Black Bears, a Challenger-level team, placing her inside the league structure while she is still only 18. Shimabukuro is already listed by the PPA Tour as a professional player in men’s singles, men’s doubles and mixed doubles, which puts him on a similar track: individual events, ranking pressure and elite opponents all before most players have built a long amateur résumé.

The Tokyo seedings fit a broader pattern. Junior PPA is built for athletes 18 and under, and Asia Federation of Pickleball materials describe junior and university programs as part of a pathway from grassroots to international competition. Shimabukuro and Kunimoto are showing how much that pathway has narrowed. The gap between promising junior and elite contender is shrinking, and Tokyo put two Hawaii teenagers directly in the space that used to be reserved for players much further along.