Indonesia Pickleball Federation Appoints New Chairman

Muhammad Nazaruddin took the helm of the Indonesia Pickleball Federation (IPF) by acclamation on March 31, inheriting a five-year mandate to push pickleball from exhibition novelty to a full medal discipline at PON 2028 and, if the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics program goes the federation's way, onto one of sports' largest stages. Twenty-nine provincial delegates at the National Congress held at ARTOTEL Gelora Senayan in Jakarta needed only a single unified vote to install Nazaruddin for the 2026-2031 term.

The appointment represents a genuine organizational inflection point. Nazaruddin succeeds Prof. Dr. Komarudin, the Rector of Universitas Negeri Jakarta (UNJ) and the federation's second-ever chairman, who was selected at an Extraordinary National Congress on February 7, 2024 and inaugurated by KONI Chairman Marciano Norman on February 27, 2025. In roughly two years, Komarudin's IPF hosted a Pickleball World Championship in Bali, earned pickleball an exhibition slot at the 2024 National Sports Week (PON) in Aceh and North Sumatra alongside padel and teqball, and returned from the 2024 World Championship in Thailand with one gold and one silver medal. The federation also opened the Indonesia Pickleball Center at UNJ's Rawamangun campus on October 22, 2025, and ran Indonesia's first-ever National Student Pickleball Championship that same month.

Nazaruddin's agenda, as he outlined it at the congress, moves further on every one of those fronts. His stated priorities center on "strengthening organizational governance, increasing the number of athletes and clubs, and driving Indonesia's pickleball achievements at the international level." He added: "We want pickleball to develop not only as a recreational sport, but also as a competitive discipline that can bring pride to Indonesia in various international championships."

KONI's Eko Budi Supriyanto, who represented Chairman Marciano Norman at the Munas, framed the moment in structural terms. "As a relatively new sport in Indonesia, pickleball has great potential to grow rapidly if supported by strong organizational management and structured athlete development," he said.

That structure matters because of what it unlocks. KONI officials have indicated that SEA Games participation is a prerequisite for full recognition by the Indonesian Olympic Committee (KOI), making a regional program slot a necessary waypoint before any Olympic ambitions become credible. The competitive calendar Nazaruddin must now build, spanning sanctioned provincial tournaments, national championships, coach and referee certification, and consistent international appearances, is not merely about medals; it is the administrative evidence base that sports bodies require to elevate a federation's standing.

The pressure to accelerate is intensified by padel, which Bloomberg described in December 2025 as triggering "a huge construction boom in Indonesia," complete with rooftop courts, networking clubs, and upscale Bali retreats. Nazaruddin has directly named athlete numbers as pickleball's counter-strategy, and the sport's cost structure supports that play: courts can be built on existing badminton or basketball surfaces, and starter equipment runs as little as Rp200,000, roughly USD 12.

The regional tailwind is significant. A UPA Asia and YouGov survey across 12 Asian territories, drawing on more than 14,000 respondents, estimated that 812 million people in Asia have played pickleball at least once and 282 million play monthly. Awareness grew at 60% year-on-year, with 62% of respondents saying they had encountered the sport only within the last two years.

The single metric that will define Nazaruddin's first term is pickleball's status at PON 2028. An upgrade from exhibition to full medal discipline would signal that the federation has satisfied Indonesia's sports governance benchmarks and built the athlete pipeline, certified-official rosters, and sanctioned tournament calendar that make a sport eligible for national standing; without it, the road to the SEA Games and any Olympic conversation remains closed.