Yuta Funemizu went from losing to recreational players in American parks to beating the world’s best—by discovering that the game he was told to change was precisely the game he needed to keep.
Yuta Funemizu had six match points in the final in Arizona, and although he was unable to convert them, there was something strikingly measured about the way he reflected on the result when we spoke shortly afterwards. Naturally, there was frustration at coming so close, but little sense of dwelling on an opportunity lost. “There were six match points, so of course it was very frustrating,” he said. “But I played every single ball with everything I had. I have regrets, but I don’t feel overwhelmingly disappointed. When the next opportunity comes, I just need to be ready to go for it even more.”
Perhaps more significant than the final itself was what Funemizu had accomplished on the way there. He had beaten Ben Johns and other leading professionals, giving him tangible evidence that he now belongs among players he once watched from a considerable distance. Only a year ago, he admits, he could hardly have imagined reaching a final at this level. “Honestly, I couldn’t have imagined myself being there,” he said. “But I’ve worked very hard to get here.”
There is also a fascinating twist to the victory over Johns. The two will soon go from opponents to partners when they play together at Ariake in Japan. They already knew about the partnership when they faced each other in the United States, but with both concentrating on their respective tournaments, there was little reason to discuss it at the time. Before Ariake, Funemizu hopes to spend time training in Florida, where Johns is based, and he sees the opportunity as much more than simply sharing a court with one of the game’s most accomplished players. He wants to understand how Johns thinks during matches, study his tactics and technique at close range, and, as a player who is particularly comfortable on the right, discover exactly what a player of that calibre expects from his right-side partner.
From world champion to beginner
The fact that Funemizu is now thinking about such fine details of elite-level partnership is remarkable when set against where his pickleball journey began only around three years ago. Before discovering the sport, he had already reached the highest level in soft tennis, becoming a world champion, yet none of that prevented his introduction to pickleball from being profoundly humbling. After going to the United States, he found himself struggling for roughly two months to beat ordinary recreational players he encountered in public parks. Dinking was unfamiliar, drops were unfamiliar, moving effectively towards the kitchen was unfamiliar, and even the bounce and feel of the ball presented problems. Being an elite racket-sport athlete, he discovered, did not automatically make him a pickleball player.
The style they told him to abandon
More difficult still was the reaction to the techniques he brought with him from soft tennis. The strokes and movements that had been developed over years at the highest level looked unconventional in a pickleball environment, and Funemizu was repeatedly advised to abandon them. Some people told him bluntly that the techniques would not work, and eventually the criticism began to affect his confidence. For about two weeks he stopped relying on much of his soft-tennis game and tried to play in a more conventional pickleball style.
It was during that period that he reached what may have been the most important conclusion of his young pickleball career. Funemizu had been a world champion in another sport, and the skills he had accumulated were not something he could simply erase. More importantly, he began to understand that if he discarded everything that distinguished him and learned to play exactly like everybody else, he risked becoming just another player in an increasingly competitive field. “I thought that if I didn’t use my soft-tennis techniques in pickleball, I would just have the same style as everybody else,” he explained. “I would disappear among all the other players. I wouldn’t have a strength that was my own.”
Daniel Moore’s father was helping coach him at the time, and Funemizu told him that he wanted to return to his own style and find a way of making those techniques work within pickleball rather than replacing them.
Once that decision was made, his confidence began to return. Gradually, so did the results, and with those results came a striking reversal in how other players viewed his game. The techniques he had once been told were unsuitable for pickleball became part of what made him recognisable. Players who had encouraged him to abandon them began praising them, and some started trying to incorporate elements of Funemizu’s style into their own games. Today, he says, even top professionals occasionally approach him and ask how he produces his distinctive volley.
The help of Federico Staksrud
His development in America, however, has involved far more than finding a technical identity. One of the most important figures in that development has been Federico Staksrud, one of the leading players in professional pickleball. What makes the relationship particularly significant is that Staksrud took an interest in Funemizu long before the Japanese player had established himself professionally. While Funemizu was still an amateur trying to find his place in the American game, Staksrud noticed the intensity with which he trained, his willingness to put in the hours and the passion he brought to competition. He practised with him, helped him understand the mentality required to win at the highest level, and introduced him to people within the professional pickleball community.
For a newcomer attempting to build a career thousands of miles from home, those relationships mattered. Funemizu was learning that succeeding in professional pickleball was not simply a question of mastering dinks, drops and volleys. He also had to understand the environment surrounding the sport: how professionals train, how they approach competition, and how relationships are built on a tour attracting ambitious players from around the world.
That experience helped shape the way Funemizu now views professional pickleball in the United States. He has been struck by the commitment of players who arrive from different countries, often dealing with visas, relocation and considerable uncertainty because they believe the sport offers them an opportunity to build a career and perhaps change their lives. That level of commitment, he believes, affects everything from training schedules to decisions about partners. “They take responsibility for every decision,” he said, and when they finally step onto the court, that commitment can be felt in the importance they attach to every point.
A partnership that began in Hawaii
One partnership that brings Funemizu’s American and Japanese pickleball experiences together is his relationship with Tama Shimabukuro. The two met almost by accident in Hawaii around three years ago, when both were still near the beginning of their pickleball journeys. Shimabukuro was only 12 or 13 at the time, and Funemizu remembers them simply playing together on what was then one of the very limited number of courts available to them.
Their careers subsequently developed on parallel tracks. Funemizu made the move into the professional game first, with Shimabukuro following roughly a year later, but they had already talked about eventually playing together. They earned a bronze medal together as amateurs and later discovered that their contrasting games worked naturally as a partnership. More recently, they reunited to win together in Tachikawa, bringing a relationship that began casually on a court in Hawaii onto a much bigger competitive stage.
Communication has been part of that evolution as well. Shimabukuro initially spoke virtually no Japanese, Funemizu recalled, but has worked steadily on the language, including the vocabulary and communication needed between partners during competition. Their partnership is therefore more than simply a pairing of two talented players; it is another example of the international connections that have characterised Funemizu’s own path through the sport.
A changing game
At the same time, the game itself has been changing rapidly. Funemizu remembers the paddles he encountered when he started as comparatively difficult to control, almost like simple wooden boards. Advances in equipment have made it easier to generate spin and power while maintaining control, and for athletes arriving from tennis, soft tennis and other racket sports, that means more of their existing skills can now be expressed through pickleball. In Funemizu’s case, modern paddles allow him to reproduce more of the sensations and techniques familiar from soft tennis. He does not believe this means the dink, drop and other traditional elements of pickleball are disappearing; rather, players from different backgrounds can increasingly bring their own identities into the sport, raising the overall level and expanding the range of styles seen at the professional level.
Funemizu’s own story may be one of the clearest examples. In roughly three years, he has gone from being a world-class athlete who nevertheless struggled against recreational pickleball players to a professional capable of defeating the game’s biggest names. The techniques that once made him question whether he belonged in pickleball are now among the reasons he does.
Looking five years ahead
His ambitions extend beyond his own career. Asked what he would like us to be discussing if we were to have the same conversation five years from now, Funemizu immediately looked towards a much larger future for the sport. He would like to be talking about what it takes to win an Olympic gold medal, about the world’s leading tours coming to Japan, and about pickleball becoming sufficiently established that Japanese audiences regularly see it on television.
For young Japanese players hoping to follow him, his message reflects his own experience. Funemizu believes pickleball’s demand for patience can suit Japanese and other Asian players particularly well, but he also believes aspiring professionals cannot afford to look only inward. The strongest competition remains international, and young players need to be prepared to leave familiar surroundings, experience different environments and test themselves against the world.
That advice carries particular weight coming from someone whose own international journey began by losing to strangers in American parks. Funemizu could have responded by erasing the style he had spent years developing and becoming the kind of player others told him he should be. Instead, he eventually trusted the qualities that made him different. Three years later, he has beaten Ben Johns—and when the two next meet on court in Japan, Johns will be standing on his side of the net.
Photos courtesy of Yuta Funemizu.