Ahmedabad teen Panth Thakkar rises in India's World Cup pickleball race

Panth Thakkar stepped into Ahmedabad as the face of India’s next pickleball layer, not just as a promising teenager. The Gujarat player, who picked up a paddle only in 2025, was suddenly in the middle of India’s first real World Cup selection pipeline as the Indian Pickleball Association’s first-ever Junior Pickleball Championship opened at Dinkers Academy from June 12 to 14 as a PWR 400 event.

That matters because this was never just a junior tournament. The event doubled as trials for India’s sub-junior and junior teams for the third edition of the Pickleball World Cup, which the Global Pickleball Federation has sanctioned for Vietnam from August 30 to September 9. Coverage put the field at more than 100 players in the U14 and U18 brackets, while other reports said more than 180 young players from across India took part. Either way, the scale was enough to make Ahmedabad look less like a host city and more like a national scouting combine.

Panth’s rise has become a useful shorthand for how quickly pickleball can create a credible elite lane. Analysts have described him as a star in the making, pointing to silky hands, fearlessness, calm under pressure and a maturity that looks ahead of his age. He also arrived with a stronger resume than a casual breakout story would suggest. One report said he brought a US Open bronze in doubles to the Ahmedabad trials, a result that gives selectors something tangible to measure against the noise around any young prospect.

His track record is not spotless, and that is part of the point. At IPA Nationals 2025 in Bengaluru, Gujarat’s Veer Shah beat Thakkar 15-9 in the U-14 boys singles final. That score says Panth was already playing real matches against real contenders before the World Cup conversation started. The loss also sharpens the read on him now: he is not being pushed forward on reputation alone, but on a body of results that already includes work against the top end of his age group.

The bigger story is institutional. The IPA is recognised by the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports and the Sports Authority of India as the national sports federation for pickleball, and the selection committee in Ahmedabad included Aalap Sharma, Dhiren Patel, Mohit Kumar, Atul Edward and IPA CEO Aditya Khanna. That kind of structure gives India something closer to a system, not just a stream of gifted individuals. For a sport still building its ladder, that is the difference between a one-off prospect and a genuine World Cup pathway.