The best place a pro has played

A lot of international pickleball coverage still treats growth like a “future” story.

This issue argues the opposite. In Vietnam, the crowd already sounded like a major sport. In Australia, the structure already looks like one.

→ This Week: Vietnam gets loud | Australia gets serious | Chennai gets lucky

Professional pickleball players travel a lot, and not just between cities in the United States. More and more, they’re going to far off places as the “Big 3” professional leagues expand their presence internationally.

So we thought, “what’s the most interesting place a pro (who plays more pickleball than the average person) has ever played?”

For pro Zane Navratil, it was Da Nang, Vietnam, and not just because the crowd was huge. He was there for the well-attended PPA Asia Vietnam tournament, an event which drew 7,906 fans last October: a Guinness World Record for attendance.

But what stayed with him was the noise. Tennis crowds, he said, are trained to stay quiet during points.

Pickleball crowds are different. In Da Nang, fans reacted to great shots as they happened, not politely, after the rally ended. To Zane, that felt “uniquely pickleball.”

That mattered because Vietnam did not feel like just another tour stop dropped into a random market. It felt new. Zane said he came in both bullish and skeptical about pickleball’s growth in Asia. He had heard the rumors all week about a record-setting crowd, but “seeing was believing.”

And the crowd was real: Guinness recognized it as the largest attendance at a pickleball event.

The most telling detail, though, may have come away from the venue. Driving around Da Nang, Zane kept spotting pickleball courts tucked into the city’s nooks and crannies. Courts were everywhere. That is what made the week feel bigger than one tournament. The arena showed Vietnam could turn out for pickleball. The city suggested it already had.

And Vietnam’s next chapter is coming fast: Anna Leigh Waters is set to make her international debut at the MB Hanoi Cup in Hanoi from April 1–5, with 1,000 global ranking points on the line, before heading to Ho Chi Minh City for Franklin Sports clinics on April 6–7.

Watch Zane’s vlog of his experience in Vietnam here.

In honor of our recent “stop” in India, we bring you this beautiful example of a recovery from Chennai.

Close call there, guys. Good hustle.

At the May 10, 2025 Tennis Wales AGM, the CEO said 25% of tennis venues were already offering pickleball, enough that the Lawn Tennis Association had introduced a support package for venues wanting to add it. That is the kind of number worth watching: growth is not just coming from brand-new facilities, but from existing racquet-sport infrastructure starting to make room for pickleball, too.

Source: LTA.org

Interesting tidbits from within the pickleball community:

Can you guess where we’re headed next? Respond to this email with your guess.

Here’s a hint:

For a long time, “global pickleball growth” has been easy to say and hard to picture. But it’s beginning to feel more concrete.

Vietnam drew a Guinness-recognized crowd of 7,906 at the MB Vietnam Cup, and Pickleball Australia’s March 2026 media guide describes a national ecosystem with 400 clubs and affiliates, 605+ venues, and more than 4,400 weekly sessions.

That matters because it changes the question. We are no longer just asking where pickleball might pop up next, we are starting to ask which countries are building the kind of infrastructure that makes the sport hard to remove once it arrives.

Do not hesitate to email Adam or connect with him on LinkedIn with questions, concerns, or story ideas!