Given pickleball’s enormous following in Malaysia, you might be surprise that it was actually late to the pickleball party. In fact, according to Selangor Pickleball Association President Ted Thor, Malaysia was way late getting into pickleball, having been introduced to it only in 2019.
Thor told The Star that the earliest to adopt pickleball in Asia was Singapore, doing so in the 1990s. India followed suit in 2006, before Thailand got into the sport in 2008. Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), and China were introduced to pickleball in 2018, while Indonesia and Malaysia started playing it a year later in 2019.
Even when pickleball got introduced to Malaysia, the country was initially lukewarm—and for good reason. It is a badminton country, after all, and pickleball was the new kid in town.
“When I first started playing in late 2021, there were only about two small groups of regular players in Kuala Lumpur and no dedicated courts; just tennis or open-air badminton courts,” recalled Thor in his interview with The Star. “By late 2023, a few dedicated courts began popping up around Klang Valley.”
Pickleball Takes Off in Malaysia
Then, something happened. Pickleball took off in Malaysia in 2024, and all of a sudden, it was as if Malaysians couldn’t get enough of it. Pickleball grew so popular that demand for dedicated courts kept increasing. Now, according to Thor, Malaysia has at least 50 privately owned arenas all over Malaysia, with each having multiple courts servicing the country’s ever-growing number of picklers.
One of these arenas is Low Chung King’s Grand Pickleball Arena, and it is among the best in the country for sure. According to King, there are now more than 400 courts across Malaysia, with some 200 of them in Kuala Lumpur alone. For context, King said there were only six pickleball venues in the city in June 2024. That number grew to 70 by December of that same year and is now at around 200.
None of that should be surprising, though, as this high demand for courts is just a direct result of the high number of players Malaysia now has.
“There is an app called Reclub, which allows players to register and find people of the same skill level to play with. We currently have more than 143,000 active users (on Reclub), making Malaysia the no. 1 pickleball country in Asia, ahead of Vietnam and the Philippines,” King told The Star.
A Sport for the Masses
Again, none of that should be surprising. Pickleball at its core is a simple, very social game that welcomes everyone—and that, according to 002 Pickleball Club and Academy Founder and Coach Colin Tan is why pickleball has been taking Malaysia—and the world—by storm.
“The game itself is interesting; it has something that most other sports do not have. If you watch tennis, ping-pong or badminton, the game is all about speed and power. But in pickleball, you will see people deliberately slowing the game down,” Tan explained. “Women can easily play against men. Not only that, it is also accessible to the elderly. A lot of pickleball players have a background in other racquet sports, too.
Tan has firsthand experience on this. Having retired from competitive sports due to injury, he was introduced to pickleball by a friend. Injured and all, Tan felt he could play pickleball at a certain level, and he got hooked to it pretty quickly. Now, he is among the stakeholders of the sport in Malaysia.
Given pickleball’s upwards trajectory—and it’s likely to stay trending up—it is highly likely Tan will be a very busy man, along with King, Thor, and every other pickleball stakeholder in Malaysia. That’s because there will be games to play, players to welcome, and tournaments to hold.
That’s pretty impressive for a sport that made its way to Malaysia only in 2019.
