Asian pickleball pros shine with upsets at Kuala Lumpur Open

Hien Truong did not just win the men’s singles title in Kuala Lumpur, he finished off a bracket that increasingly looked like Asia’s to control. At the Panas Kuala Lumpur Open, a 500-point PPA Tour Asia event with US$50,000 in pro prize money, Asia-based players repeatedly knocked off traveling US and Australian pros and turned one of the season’s most important stops into a statement about the region’s rise.

The event ran May 13-17 at 9Pickle in Kuala Lumpur, and the setup mattered as much as the results. Tucked between the PPA Tour Finals and the start of the 2026 Major League Pickleball season, the tournament drew only a smattering of US and Australian players, leaving most of the competitive burden to Asian pros who have spent the past year closing the gap. The depth was visible from the opening rounds, where qualifier Hung Anh Nguyen and Nasa Hatakeyama pushed through the men’s draw with upset after upset.

Nguyen beat Jace Morris, then took out No. 3 seed Tama Shimabukuro and Vanshik Kapadia to reach the semifinals. Hatakeyama answered with wins over Chen-An Hsieh, No. 2 seed Hong Kit Wong and US pro Zane Navratil. Truong then ended Nguyen’s run in the semifinal before beating Hatakeyama in the final, adding another trophy to a résumé that already included medals in Malaysia, China, Australia and Vietnam over the past year. Those results suggest a region no longer waiting for a breakthrough, but building a hierarchy of its own.

The women’s draw told a similar story. Top seed Chao-Yi Wang advanced to the final and beat Taiwan compatriot Pei-Chuan Kao for gold after Kao and other lower seeds made their own deep runs. The broader message was clear: Asia’s top women are not merely surviving against imported talent, they are routinely setting the terms of play in major regional events.

The Kuala Lumpur numbers reinforced that shift. Tournament results listed 595 players, a sign that the sport’s competitive base in Asia is widening well beyond the pro bracket. That matters because the region’s emergence is not happening in isolation. Forbes also pointed to April’s HB Vietnam Open in Hanoi, where the largest-yet contingent of traveling US-based pros still saw Asia-based players such as Hoang Nam Ly, Truong and Hong Kit Wong advance deep and win medals.

Kuala Lumpur has become more than a stop on the calendar. With the earlier APP Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Open in February already producing triple gold for Sofia Sewing and a men’s singles win for Phuc Huynh, and now a PPA Asia event where Asian pros repeatedly beat recognized US names, Malaysia is looking less like a host market and more like a proving ground for the sport’s next competitive order.