Kloss says Asia still trails US pickleball despite PPA Tour growth

Jim Kloss is arguing that Asia’s pickleball rise is real but overstated, and the latest scoreboard supports the caution. The region has produced breakout wins and a growing tournament footprint, but it has not yet built the kind of deep top-end talent that can match the US across a full season.

PPA Tour Asia’s inaugural 2025 campaign ran seven tournaments, starting with the Panas Malaysia Open in July, where the tour offered minimum US$50,000 in prize money and 1,000 ranking points. The circuit then moved through Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan and China, with the MB Vietnam Open 2025 billed as Vietnam’s first-ever PPA Tour Asia event and its biggest pickleball tournament to date. Now the tour has gone bigger again, setting a 2026 calendar of ten stops across seven markets and capping it with the Hong Kong Slam, which it says will be the biggest professional pickleball tournament ever staged in Asia with up to US$1.1 million in prize money.

The results, though, still point to a gap. In the official PPA Tour Asia men’s singles rankings updated April 8, 2026, Vietnam’s Hoang Nam Ly sat 14th with 3,100 points. That is a meaningful foothold, but not evidence of a regional takeover. The season-ending 2025 rankings also crowned Hong Kit Wong No. 1 in men’s singles and men’s doubles, a sign that Asia is producing champions who can carry the tour, even if the overall field remains uneven.

The strongest on-court proof of progress has come in isolated spikes rather than constant pressure. Phuc Huynh won the MB Vietnam Open 2025 men’s singles title at home, beating Hoang Nam Ly 11-5, 11-1 in an all-Vietnamese final. Months later, Hoang Nam Ly delivered one of the season’s loudest results, upsetting reigning PPA World Champion Federico Staksrud 2-0, 11-7, 12-10, in the Hangzhou Open semifinals on December 5, 2025.

Even with those results, the elite picture still tilts toward the US. The official PPA Tour men’s singles rankings remain headed by Christopher Haworth, Federico Staksrud and Hunter Johnson, with Ben Johns listed 13th. DUPR Asia’s April 13, 2026 update shows more regional names in the mix, including India’s Armaan Bhatia, Vietnam’s Quang Duong and Jonathan Truong, and Japan’s Yuta Funemizu. The depth is improving, but Kloss’s point stands: Asia has begun to land punches, not yet take control of the fight.