Asia at Worlds: Who Is Ready for MLP Asia?

Asia’s leading players won 9 of 16 round-of-64 matches at Worlds. Doubles looked strong, singles did not, and MLP Asia’s DreamBreakers will test that.

Hong Kit Wong had been here before, in a manner of speaking. On Saturday at the MLP Nations Cup, on the same Brookhaven Country Club site, he and Jimmy Liong trailed Australia’s George Wall and Chris Crouch 1-8 in men’s doubles. MLP Asia’s own report says they “looked done”. They won 14-12. Three days later, back in individual colours at the Pickleball World Championships, Wong, fresh from his Hong Kong Slam run against Federico Staksrud, won three matches in a day: men’s singles against Joel Poland, men’s doubles with Eunggwon Kim against Francis Chi and Braylon Ohrel (12-10, 11-8), and mixed doubles with Kei Sawaki against Loong and Lindsey Newman.

The usual reading of a week like this is that Asia is “catching up”. It is a comfortable phrase, and it is half right. Tuesday’s draws suggest something more specific. Asia’s best players are already a match for the field in doubles. In singles, they are not yet there, and the gap shows. In a fortnight that gap stops being a ranking curiosity. It becomes a team problem.

How did Asia’s players do in the round of 64?

Here is the group, and I should be precise about who is in it. I have counted players listed with Asian hometowns in the men’s World Pickleball Ranking (Wong, Kim, Armaan Bhatia, Yuta Funemizu, Hien Truong and Kenta Miyoshi), plus three women drafted as domestic players by MLP Asia teams: Rika Fujiwara and Aiko Yoshitomi (THE DOTS TOKYO) and Lingwei Kong (Dragon Warriors). I have not assigned nationalities the sources do not give. Every result comes from the official PPA brackets for Tuesday 3 November.

That is 9 wins from 16, two of them walkovers. In singles the record is 2-3. In doubles and mixed it is 7-4, and men’s doubles went 3-0. Strip out the walkovers and the doubles record is 5-4. That is still better than the singles.

The best result on the sheet belongs to Yoshitomi. She and Luca Mack, seeded 51, beat the 10th seeds Dekel Bar and Jessie Irvine 11-8, 11-1. That is a heavy upset by any measure. The most worrying result is Miyoshi’s. As the 27th seed he lost to Max Freeman 12-10, 11-0 in singles. He also lost in mixed with Ella Yeh, and only a walkover kept his doubles going.

Is the doubles strength real or a small sample?

A sample of 17 matches on one Tuesday is small. I would not build a theory on it alone. But it does not stand alone.

Start with the Nations Cup, played on the same courts from 30 October to 1 November. Asia International was one player from each MLP Asia team: Kong, Macy Ybañez, Wong, Fujiwara, Liong and Tama Shimabukuro. It lost all three group ties, to Australia 3-1, Latin America 3-0 and Europe East 3-1. Both of its game wins came in men’s doubles. One was the 14-12 comeback above. The other was Wong and Shimabukuro beating Andrei Daescu and Arwid Dahlin 11-7. Daescu sits seventh in the men’s World Pickleball Ranking. The women’s doubles and mixed games all went the other way, several of them heavily (11-2 and 11-3 among them).

Then look at the ranking itself. The World Pickleball Ranking weights PPA results over 52 weeks: 50% gender doubles, 35% mixed and 15% singles. Six men with Asian hometowns are in its top 50: Wong at 20, Bhatia 22, Kim 23, Funemizu 24, Truong 29 and Miyoshi 39. A ranking weighted 85% towards doubles has put six of them in the top 50. That is no fluke of one week.

So the conventional line, that Asia is catching up across the board, needs adjusting. In men’s doubles Asia has caught up. Wong, Kim, Bhatia and Funemizu now play at tour level week in, week out. The women’s game and singles are where the distance remains.

What is MLP Asia and when does it start?

MLP Asia is the Asian edition of Major League Pickleball. It has six teams: THE DOTS TOKYO, Hong Kong Cannons, Manila Helios, Malayan Stripes, Viet Panthers and Dragon Warriors. Each roster has six players, three domestic picks (at least one man and one woman) and three from an International Draft. The International Draft was held on 14 September, with the draft order in each round sold at live auction (our analysis of the draft).

The season opens on Friday 13 November in Japan. THE DOTS TOKYO host Manila Helios and Malayan Stripes. On Saturday 14 November the Hong Kong Cannons host the Viet Panthers and Dragon Warriors. Every franchise gets a home night, a choice we examined in August. Play starts at 6pm local time each night, which is 09:00 UK time in Tokyo and 10:00 UK time in Hong Kong. The regular season runs over three weeks of Friday and Saturday match days, with a break week between weeks two and three. The top four reach the Finals: semi-finals on Friday 11 December, then bronze and gold on Saturday 12 December.

Points are awarded the MLP way, with a twist that rewards winning outright. A regulation win (4-0 or 3-1) is worth three points. A DreamBreaker win (3-2) is worth two, a DreamBreaker loss one, and a regulation loss nothing.

A quick word on the calendar. MLP Asia’s July schedule article lists match day six as “Sat 28 Dec”. Every other date in the season points to 28 November. I have treated it as a likely typo. Readers should check the league’s site before travelling.

What do the MLP Asia championship rings look like?

The winners will get something to wear. MLP Asia unveiled its championship rings on 3 November. They will be presented on the final night, Super Saturday, 12 December.

The design leans on the league’s logo. The ring is gold, with an orange enamel ball raised on a navy base. The ball has seven gold-lined holes. A golden border with raised lettering surrounds the face, set with two rows of clear stones. On one side, “CHAMPION” sits above the MLP Asia logo.

Rings are a very American way of saying a league intends to last. Nobody keeps a ring from a competition they expect to disappear. That is the point of announcing them before a single ball has been hit.

Which Worlds players will be in MLP Asia?

This is where the two stories meet. The MLP Asia rosters are full of people who were in Texas on Tuesday.

The Hong Kong Cannons are Wong (captain), Nok Yiu Tang, Marco Leung, Bhatia, Chao Yi Wang and Sawaki. On Tuesday Sawaki, seeded 42, beat the 24th seed Ting Chieh Wei in women’s singles. She also reached the women’s doubles round of 32 with Ella Yeh, and the mixed with Wong. Chao Yi Wang had a harder day. As the fifth seed she lost in singles to Pretorius (61), 11-2, 0-11, 11-7, one of the upsets of the round.

THE DOTS TOKYO are Funemizu (captain), Daniel Moore, Nasa Hatakeyama, Fujiwara, Yoshitomi and Mihae Kwon. Hatakeyama, seeded 29, beat Delgado in three games. He now meets Federico Staksrud, the second seed, in this afternoon’s round of 32. The club is owned jointly by TBS Holdings and dentsu Sports & Entertainment. It says Japan has an estimated 330,000 players in 2026, about seven times the figure a year earlier.

Kim plays for the Malayan Stripes alongside Liong (captain), Xiao Yi Wang-Beckvall and Lacy Schneemann. Shimabukuro, eighth in the men’s ranking, was the first pick of the International Draft, for the Viet Panthers. He shares a team with Kaitlyn Christian, the women’s singles third seed, and Truong. The Dragon Warriors have Kong as captain, plus Grayson Goldin and Luc Pham. Both men are in the singles round of 32: Goldin (15) plays Harrison Brown (20), and Pham (18) plays Zane Ford (10).

The Hong Kong Cannons’ website says the team is looking forward most to playing Vietnam, “one of the most competitive ties on our schedule”. It gets that tie on the second night of the season.

Why does the singles gap matter in a doubles league?

Because of the fifth game. An MLP tie is four doubles games: women’s, men’s, then two mixed. If it stands at 2-2, it goes to a DreamBreaker. That is a singles game to 21 with rally scoring, in which two men and two women from each team rotate every four points. Under the 2026 MLP rules guide, teams name their DreamBreaker line-ups after the second mixed game. They can pick any rostered player, even one who sat out the doubles.

In other words, MLP Asia’s doubles strength wins you games, and singles wins you the close ties. The points system makes that a real cost. A 3-2 win is worth two points rather than three, and a 3-2 loss still gets one. Over a short season with a top-four cut, those single points will separate teams.

On Tuesday’s evidence the domestic women in this group went 1-1 in singles. The domestic men’s singles leaders are thinner still: Wong won, and Kim and Miyoshi lost. The international picks will carry much of the singles load. That is presumably why teams paid at auction for players such as Christian, Hatakeyama and Pham.

What happens next for Asia’s players at Worlds?

The round of 32 starts today at 11:00 local time in Texas (17:00 UK). Wong (11) faces Eric Oncins (23) in men’s singles. Oncins beat Will Mackinnon 11-2, 11-3 in the round of 64, according to the official bracket. Fujiwara (12) plays Bui (21). Sawaki plays Isabella Dunlap (10). In men’s doubles, Kim and Wong, and Funemizu and Bhatia, both carry seeds into the last 32.

The history here is short but quick. In July Wong won a third straight PPA Tour Asia singles title, in Singapore (our report). Now six men with Asian hometowns sit in the men’s top 50, and a league built around them starts in nine days. By the end of this week we will know whether that doubles strength holds up past Tuesday. By 12 December we will know whether it is enough to win a ring.

My call: MLP Asia’s first champions will be the team whose international picks win the DreamBreakers. The domestic stars will get them there.