Hong Kong police coach sparks pickleball passion, eyes Inter-Forces Games 2026
A police coach who learned by taping lines onto a badminton court is now leading pickleball inside Hong Kong’s force, with the sport featured in Inter-Forces Games 2026.
Sergeant Li Man-fai’s pickleball story began with adhesive tape on a badminton court and has ended up inside one of Hong Kong policing’s most visible annual showcases. OffBeat, the Hong Kong Police Force’s official magazine, profiled Li as a founding member and coach of the Police Pickleball Club after the Pickleball Association of Hong Kong, China named him an “Outstanding Coach.”
That recognition matters because it gives pickleball institutional weight inside the force, not just as a leisure pursuit but as a structured activity with training value, morale value and civic reach. Li first encountered the sport a few years ago while serving as an instructor at the Junior Police Call Pat Heung Centre, where he and others marked out a makeshift court with adhesive tape and learned the game as they played. From that improvised start, the sport spread into formal police circles and into the senior ranks.
The reach has become unusually broad. OffBeat said Li later taught pickleball to Senior Police Call members, including an 80-year-old senior, turning the sport into a rare bridge across age groups. That detail gives the game a social dimension that extends well beyond the court: pickleball is being used inside the Hong Kong Police Force as a low-barrier, intergenerational activity that can bring young recruits, veteran officers and civilian-linked community groups into the same playing space.
The sport’s rise inside the force was given its clearest validation at the Hong Kong Police Force-Singapore Police Force-Macao Judiciary Police Inter-Forces Games 2026, held from May 18 to May 21 at the Police Sports and Recreation Club. Alongside football, badminton and indoor triathlon, the programme added a newly introduced Pickleball Friendly Match, a sign that the sport has moved from novelty to fixture in uniformed-service competition.
Top officers joined the friendly match in a mixed-team format, including Chow Yat-ming, How Kwang-hwee and Deputy Director of the Macao Judiciary Police Lai Man-vai, with Li serving as referee. That combination of senior leadership, cross-force participation and officiating turned the event into more than a demonstration. It showed pickleball functioning as a shared language for Hong Kong, Singapore and Macao police communities.
The broader picture is just as striking. JPC was launched in 1974 to build responsibility, self-confidence and commitment through healthy activities, and pickleball now fits neatly into that mission. The Hong Kong Police Force won the overall IFG 2026 championship on home ground, with Singapore second and Macao third, but the deeper takeaway was the sport’s growing legitimacy. For Hong Kong’s pickleball ecosystem, support from the police force, an affiliated governing body and a premier local league points to a sport moving fast from fringe curiosity to institutional fixture.
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