Hong Kong's Ryan Lam Tops Inaugural Men's 19-Plus World Pickleball Rankings

Ryan Lam Chun‑hei reached the top of the inaugural World Pickleball Championship combined rankings for 2026 in the men’s 19‑plus category, collecting 51,100 points in January and declaring the achievement “just the beginning.” The 29‑year‑old’s rise is stark: two years ago he sat near the bottom of the top 100, and this season he placed second in men’s singles, third in men’s doubles, and second in mixed men’s categories, with Hungary’s Bako Balint Gergo ahead of him in singles.

Lam framed his ascent as part personal turnaround and part local surge. “Pickleball has completely changed my life in many different ways and I am super grateful to be at the forefront of this ongoing pickleball craze in Hong Kong,” he said, and he credited the rapid development to “a boom in the number of courts and new players joining the sport, or even local leagues” over the past six months. The statistics behind that claim are reflected in Hong Kong’s team performance on the world stage: the city reached the finals of the 2025 Pickleball World Cup in Florida, facing the United States in a tournament that featured competitors from 68 countries.

Commercial backing and formal player management arrived ahead of Lam’s ranking milestone. On October 15, 2025, TGG Group’s sports arm, LIT Sports Global, announced professional contracts for three top Hong Kong players: Ryan Lam, Nikita Tang (full name reported as Nikita Tang Nok‑yiu) and an athlete listed variably as Agnes Fan and Agnes Fung in different reports. The signings were celebrated at a ceremony held at the Conrad Hotel Hong Kong, where the players were presented as the city’s first professional pickleball athletes and described as being managed by LIT Sports Global with promises of career development, brand partnerships, and global representation.

TGG executives signaled this was a strategic start rather than a one‑off investment. Andre Lajeunesse, managing director at TGG Group, said, “Pickleball is our starting whistle.” Founder Barry Lau framed the ambition in broader terms: “Why shouldn’t we be good at it [pickleball]? Why can’t it be like fencing? And when sports become much more developed, then the city or the nation becomes better off.” Planned projects tied to that pitch include building a state‑of‑the‑art facility, launching a pickleball academy, running a Greater Bay Area Tour next year, and staging a World Pickleball Championships event in Discovery Bay in December.

Celebrity attention has followed the professional push: the Conrad Hotel ceremony drew public figures such as Natalis Chan (Ah Lek) and Olympic champion Li Xiaopeng, and social media captures showed strong engagement. Taken together, Lam’s No. 1 ranking, Hong Kong’s World Cup final in 2025, and institutional investment from LIT/TGG point to a rapid professionalization of the sport in the city, a momentum Lam insists is only beginning.