Asian pickleball players surge up DUPR after Hanoi Cup success
A Vietnamese sweep in Hanoi pushed Truong Hien up 35 spots and Hoang Nam Ly to back-to-back gold, signaling Asia’s pro pipeline is speeding up.
Truong Hien’s 35-spot jump was the clearest sign that Asian pickleball’s power map is shifting fast. In a field built on top-tier opposition at the MB Hanoi Cup, the Vietnamese men’s singles run ended with Hien upsetting Federico Staksrud 11-7, 4-11, 11-5, then reaching an all-Vietnamese final before Hoang Nam Ly stopped him 11-5, 11-6.
That kind of movement matters because DUPR is not a static reputation score. The global system says every match counts, and it folds in match results, opponent quality and score. When those wins come at a PPA Asia 1000 event worth 1,000 points, the jump can be immediate. The Hanoi stop ran April 1-5 at My Dinh Indoor Athletics Arena, and the results have already spilled into the rankings.
Hien climbed to No. 45 in the men’s pro singles DUPR rankings with a 6.062 rating, but the bigger takeaway is what his run said about Vietnam’s depth. Staksrud was the headline upset, but the final itself completed the picture: Ly and Hien turned Hanoi into a showcase of a homegrown men’s bracket that no longer looked like a one-off surge.
Ly’s title was even more convincing. He beat Dylan Frazier 11-5, 11-6 in the semifinal, then handled Hien in straight games to win back-to-back PPA Tour Asia titles after also taking Hangzhou in 2025. PPA Tour Asia’s rankings page listed Ly at No. 15 in the men’s singles points standings as of May 3, 2026, a sign that his rise is now being reflected across both the rating system and the tour’s own points table.
The pattern extends beyond Vietnam. Kiora Kunimoto moved up 22 spots to 5.643 after a bronze-medal finish at the PPA Newport Beach Challenger and a competitive three-game battle against Kate Fahey and Schneemann. That gives Asia more than one breakout lane, with Vietnam’s singles surge joined by Japanese movement against established international names.
PPA Tour Asia bills itself as the premier professional and amateur pickleball tour in the region, and Hanoi showed why that claim now carries weight. With every match feeding DUPR and a weekly-updated points race adding pressure, the region’s next elite players are rising not in theory, but on the same courts where the hierarchy is being rewritten.
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