This week’s World Pickleball Podcast moves from personal tournament stories to something much bigger: the speed at which pickleball is building new player pathways, new regions of influence and new ways of telling the sport’s story.

  • Chris and Gordon discuss tournament lessons from Telford, Mackay and the Queensland Pickleball Tour.
  • The episode explores PPA Asia, Japan’s rise, Vietnam’s growing scene and the stories inside the June issue of World Pickleball Magazine.
  • The first UK University Pickleball Championships point toward one of the clearest routes for growing the sport’s younger player base.

The best conversations about pickleball usually start somewhere simple.

A new court. A sore back. A medal won in heavy legs. A match that should have gone differently. A player who appeared from nowhere and suddenly made everyone pay attention.

This week’s World Pickleball Podcast has plenty of that.

Gordon Watson joins Chris Beaumont after a busy few weeks in Queensland, where he opened his own backyard court, picked up medals on the Queensland Pickleball Tour, and felt the difference between crafty 50-plus competition and the faster, harder-hitting open-age game.

Chris, meanwhile, comes in from a relentless stretch of tournament play at Telford, where heat, back trouble, mixed doubles with former badminton world champion Gail Emms, and repeated exposure to heavy driving all produced the same conclusion: the modern game keeps asking different questions of players.

The tournament lesson: pace changes everything

One of the strongest sections of the episode comes from Chris and Gordon talking through how to cope with players who drive the ball relentlessly.

It is a familiar problem for many developing doubles players. You know you need to soften the ball. You know you need to stop feeding the forehand. You know the point becomes easier if you can turn pace into reset.

Then the ball comes at you like a missile and the plan disappears.

Gordon’s advice is simple and useful: practise against pace, use wall drills, work on taking speed off the ball, and train the hands before tournament day rather than hoping they appear when the match starts.

Chris also discusses MaxBP’s move into pickleball and the logic of training with smaller balls and smaller paddles, based on the same hand-eye principle that made Don Bradman’s childhood golf-ball-and-stump story so famous.

Asia’s pickleball scene is no longer a side story

The conversation then shifts to PPA Asia, where Tama Shimabukuro continues to look like one of the central figures in the region’s emerging professional scene.

Shimabukuro’s Macao success is discussed alongside Matthew Finity’s surprise singles run, Hong Kit Wong’s continued presence, Amar Barte’s doubles success, and Japan’s growing influence through players such as Rika Fujiwara and K Sawaki.

The important point is not simply that Asian pickleball is getting stronger.

It is that the region now has depth, variety, surprise results, and competing circuits beginning to form around it.

Vietnam’s Pickleball D-Joy Tour also comes into focus, with its APP connection, future Masters event, and the return of major crowd-pulling players. For WPM, this is part of a bigger theme: Asian pickleball is starting to generate its own calendar, its own personalities and its own internal storylines.

The June magazine opens the map wider

The episode also works as a guided walk through the latest issue of World Pickleball Magazine.

Chris and Gordon discuss some of the stories shaping the issue, including Asia’s first full-residence pickleball academy in China, South Korea’s spreadsheet-led court culture, Lee Whitwell’s piece on self-talk, nutrition and performance, wheelchair rule changes, Daniel Moore’s influence in Japan, and Lee Davies’ journey from Welsh rugby to pickleball.

There is also room for two of the issue’s strongest human stories: the men from Sumy, who reconnected through adaptive pickleball after war, and the woman who helped build Townsville’s pickleball tradition.

One of the most important threads, though, is history.

Chris talks about WPM’s long read on the first recognised pickleball championship in 1976 and why the sport needs to preserve the people and events that existed long before today’s professional boom.

Why the UK University Championships matter

The final major section of the podcast looks at the first UK University Pickleball Championships, held at Courtside Pickleball in Stourbridge.

Oxford won the title after surviving DreamBreakers in the quarter-final, semi-final and final, giving organiser Theo Young the rare satisfaction of helping build the event and then winning it with his team.

But the bigger story was not only Oxford’s title.

It was the standard of athletic learning on display.

Chris describes watching university-age players, many from tennis or other sporting backgrounds, improve dramatically during the same day. Some began the event looking like 3.0 or 3.5 players. By the end, they were reading the game, adapting tactically, and playing far above where they had started.

That matters because universities may offer one of the most natural growth routes for younger pickleball in the UK.

Students already understand Wednesday sport. They already understand representing a university. They already know how to learn, compete and travel as part of a sporting environment.

If pickleball embeds itself there, the younger player base could change quickly.

What this episode is really about

This episode starts casually, but the deeper theme is clear.

Pickleball is building new pathways everywhere.

At backyard level, players are building courts and communities. At tournament level, competitors are learning how much faster the game is becoming. Across Asia, new stars and tours are giving the sport a deeper global shape. In universities, young athletes are discovering how quickly they can adapt.

And at WPM, the task remains the same: follow the signals before they become obvious.

Further Reading

Photo of Chris Beaumont

Chris Beaumont

Founder and Editor-in-Chief
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at…

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