Pickleball in Asia!

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to Pickleball Cheat Code. We are back and this is the show for competitive Pickleball players who want to level up their game. We focus on advanced strategies for experienced players, stuff only the pros really know. I'm Brodie Smith, I'm a 5'5 plus level player and I'm here with my co-host, the one and only Tanner Tomasi. Hey everyone. Tanner is a 6'0 plus rated player and an APP gold medalist. Today we're going to be recapping

[00:00:26] the recent CRBN trip to Asia and debating who's currently better at Pickleball, the US or Asia. Might shock you with some answers there. And if you've done anything to improve your game, share the show with your Pickleball community. Pickleball Cheat Code.

[00:00:53] Okay. Let's chat the trip, Tanner. Unfortunately, as you obviously know, I had to bail on the trip. I got to Hong Kong by myself and got really sick and had to go home, which was the biggest bummer of all time. But luckily the rest of the team, Tanner himself, Ed Jew had an incredible adventure and I had FOMO the whole entire time. So we'd love to hear, you've talked to me off air about this a little bit, but we'd love to hear a lot more about your trip in general,

[00:01:22] what your thoughts were, favorite countries. Give me the breakdown. We want to hear it. Yeah, it was really fun. I liked that. I got to spend time with kind of the carbon team and higher ups. We had Kyle, the owner. We had Frank, the social media guy. We had Tate, the president of sales, I believe. Ed, who is also a same position as me, a creator. And then I believe that was pretty much everybody for like the core of the trip.

[00:01:50] So there's not really many other companies where me, like as a sponsored player, get to hang out with people of that caliber within the company. So it was super cool in that aspect. And I really had a blast just kind of hanging out and getting to know everybody. And what was really cool was everybody's kind of personalities aligned. And I have really similar interests that I didn't know as Kyle, the owner with surfing and snowboarding. So all that was really fun. And I was glad

[00:02:19] it went by really fast. I'm looking forward to the next trip for sure with everybody. Hopefully we can go back soon. Realistically, it'll probably be a 2027 trip, but who knows? Excited to make it happen again. But I want to touch on the pickleball side. So what kind of difference? So the main countries that you hit were Philippines to start. I mean, you did more beyond this, but at least for the carbon trip, Philippines, Vietnam, the north and the south of Vietnam,

[00:02:45] and then also finishing off in Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur. So of the three, like what did you enjoy the most from maybe even a cultural standpoint or just a pickleball standpoint? Like tell me about the differences between the three countries and their pickleball levels, things like that. I think all the countries are really emphatic about pickleball. I'm really excited. It's a lot of young people involved. We're in the US. I think like on the back end, it's a lot of

[00:03:10] older people involved with like running tournaments and facilities. It's a little bit older of a demographic, but over there in those three countries, it seemed to be the opposite. It's young people really excited. Level wise, I think the most developed is probably Vietnam just because I think they've been playing the longest of the three countries and they have some pretty elite tennis players. So all those players there are like when we did our exhibition game there, it was like everybody was minimum or clinics.

[00:03:40] I mean, it was like minimum of like 5.0. So it was really cool. And I really enjoyed teaching them. Uh, I did have to use a, uh, translator, uh, which was a little difficult, but it was a fun experience. I would say the Philippines and Malaysia, um, from what I saw, I didn't get to see, uh, as much, I would say we just spent more time in, uh, Vietnam, but I'd say they're pretty similar in level. Like I said, super excited. I think pickleball is a little bit newer ish in, uh, those two countries

[00:04:09] compared to Vietnam. Vietnam might be like a year ahead, but, um, like I said, all the players are super eager to learn in all three of those countries. Um, the sports that they come from are table tennis and badminton. So in all three of the countries, everybody kind of excelled and had natural like fast hands. Uh, I think all three of the countries where things broke down would be like in longer dink rallies, not saying that it was necessarily poor or bad, but just there was clearly they preferred

[00:04:38] to be in fast hands and shorter points. So I think as they kind of figure that out, it'll be, uh, as the game just develops, honestly, it'll be super, uh, super cool to see. Cause I think all of them are going to be really good. What was the biggest sport conversion that you saw? I mean, I don't know how big tennis is in Southeast Asia. So I don't think tennis is very big. Well, you're, you said, um, and I've heard singles players are really good in Vietnam and I've

[00:05:03] heard a lot of it is the tennis part or is it badminton? Like what, what's, is there a certain country that courts like, go ahead. Yeah. I think for the singles, I think it, it must be the tennis. Like these guys are, and like I said, like pretty much all the Vietnamese that I've ran into that are playing like high level are all good at singles. We're in like the U S it's pretty common for people to just be like, no, I don't play singles. Like kind of like myself, I play it. I'm just not that good at it where they're kind of good in all three categories, singles, men's and mixed doubles.

[00:05:32] So it's pretty, uh, pretty impressive on that front. Yeah. So if you were to say, are there any differences, let's take a Filipino pickable player, a Malaysian pickable player and a Vietnamese pickable player. Is there a difference between these three countries stylistically? Maybe, uh, the Philippines are having the table tennis and they're way better with hands. For example, you know, is there any stark contrast between the countries when you're traveling there? I would say the, uh, Philippines and Malaysia are pretty interchangeable from what I saw.

[00:06:01] Like I said, we didn't spend too much time there. So it's kind of hard to really, uh, like hone in and narrow it down. We did spend a lot more time in Vietnam. I would say like in Asia in general, like I just mentioned, they all really have the fast hands. Um, besides that, it just seemed like the Vietnamese kind of just played more. Like it's been a game for longer. Gotcha. Uh, whereas the other two countries, they're still kind of like figuring out the ropes. Not that they don't have it,

[00:06:28] but I just think a year or two behind us in terms of them getting on board with the sport. Right. Yeah. I would say that sounds like that's true. And that's the best way, like representation to say it. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard there's a lot of the better pros there too. And even the most recent PPA with like some of those singles guys taking down like Federico Staxerud and stuff. It's crazy. And with the whole pool, Vietnamese player one, I forgot his name and some controversial call. What's his name?

[00:06:53] Lee Hwang Nam. That's right. Yeah. I mean, it seems like a beast. You said this either on a previous pod or to me in person a while ago. Uh, I think this was actually just in person over the phone. You were telling me, um, when you were doing pre-carbon trip, when you're in Asia, that you think that the singles players in Vietnam are already better than the U S players, just like flat out. Like what, what are your thoughts now after the trip on that? Cause I think that's crazy. And I don't think

[00:07:22] people are realizing that and maybe they are finally after that, um, recent PPA tournament, but compare singles players in Vietnam or Southeast Asian general to us singles players. Like how would they stack up if they were to all come over here and play a huge tournament? Yeah. I think I said that to you when I was in India. Yeah, that's right. Funny enough, the PPA finals, uh, that just happened in Hanoi. It was Vien Hien or whatever his name is. And Lee Hwang Nam. They actually,

[00:07:49] Nam was on my team in India and the guy Vien Hien, the guy who played Nam in the finals was on a team in India as well. And they played each other, um, two times, which like during our India teams matches, like matchups. And it was like the highest quality singles I've ever seen. And from that point I was like, Oh my, like it was way higher quality than any game I've ever seen in the U S ever. Now, like I said, I haven't really watched like the top, top PPA. Uh, I haven't really

[00:08:18] watched the top, top PPA, uh, in person too, too much. But, um, this was easily comparable, if not better, at least these two games, like I said, what are they doing differently? Like stylistically, is there, are they just faster people? Like what's the difference? Like, uh, so when you say you're at the net hitting volleys to me, there'll be like on the full sprint, like hitting forehand and backhand rolls, like back into the kitchen and then getting back into the point while just like on a full sprint. And they're just constantly able to reset the point.

[00:08:47] And they're like hitting third shot drops, fifth shot drops while they're like fully on the stretch, like aggressive balls and get back to the net. They're not like just ripping passes. You know, are they sliding, like planning their feet? Is that how they, is that how they're getting their balance though? They slide then swing through it. Are they running through the shots? Like how is that? No. Yeah. They all, they all slide. Like I said, the guys in the PPA, uh, finals, like when I saw that in person, I was like, Holy cow. And then it was funny.

[00:09:14] They played each other again there, but yeah, just, they all slide super clean strokes, not many mistakes, always get the ball back. It's just, I, yeah, I don't know. You just, I feel like you don't really see that, that level too often. That's crazy. And I heard you played a 10 year old and lost him in singles. Maybe you weren't trying as hard as you, as hard as you were. Okay. I need to hear about that. How is that possible? I mean, I've seen you play singles. I know you're a doubles player, but you're also a

[00:09:41] very good singles player. Um, despite what you may say about yourself, you're insanely good at singles. So I want to, I need to hear more about that. Yeah. I don't know. He was just, uh, like, obviously I went into the, they wanted to play a game. Um, that I was like, okay. So I went into it, obviously like, okay, let's keep the ball in play. And then he just started like wrecking me and like, Oh my gosh, I need to, uh, I need to, to up the level here. And then like, before I

[00:10:07] knew it, like I was down probably like three, seven. And then I think I got back to like seven, I think I got back to like six or seven. Uh, but he ended up winning, but he was just really good. He was super just same thing. Just rolling the ball. Good, hard to pass, which doesn't make much sense. Just possibly should have just lobbed him every point. I was thinking, yeah, if I were to play him again, I definitely would throw up some more lobs. Got to do what you got to do to get the dub.

[00:10:32] That's crazy though. So it sounds like they're just going to be, you know, the clear dominant force call it in five years when we get more players, um, from Vietnam coming here consistently in singles. Let's talk about the double side. Then how do you picture that going? Cause it sounds like, I mean, they're not just hitting these like flat tennis ground strokes. They're hitting unique angled shots

[00:10:56] with insane footwork and speed alongside that, which is very difficult to do. So how are they learning this differently than how we are in the U S and the States? Like what, what is causing that? And how do you see that changing the doubles landscape in the future? I don't know for doubles. I would say they're still not there yet. Yeah. It's definitely behind, but, uh, I don't know if it's as relevant in doubles. I think just from singles, I mean,

[00:11:22] the guys that we're looking at are a really small sample size, you know what I mean? They're just really good at, um, they're just really, it's like a handful of guys that are just really good at singles. But, um, I think, um, as like more people come from Vietnam, a lot of the kids are playing like really young as their first sports, kind of like the kid that I ran into where they're, they're playing pretty serious all the time. So I think like, as they get older and older, they're, they'll just, it'll just be second nature where like, I've only been playing three years,

[00:11:51] you know, I started at, or four years. I started at 22, I'm 26. Now he probably, the kid that I played probably started at like six, he's 10 now. So like, um, he kind of just probably, uh, he has no bad habits to break. Yeah. You know, like I came from tennis, not having a great two handed backhand. Um, so like, I'm still trying to develop that. So he just kind of naturally probably falls into it. They're kind of like NLA, you know? And what's an interesting untapped or not untapped a market

[00:12:20] that a lot of people don't know about that I've talked about, uh, in regards to pick up on Asia is China. And obviously from a population standpoint, insane in terms of just the sheer number of people there. And it sounds like they're getting heavily invested in the sport. So planning that seed, let's say that there's a pickleball world cup 15 years from now, if you had to pick a country that is going to win that world cup and a double singles combo, who would you say? Maybe it's Vietnam, maybe it's us, and maybe you're going in the dark and saying China, I have no idea, but it's

[00:12:49] an interesting conversation, I think. Yeah, that's a tough question. I'd be curious to see, um, how it kind of shapes up or develops. But, um, I don't know. I mean, obviously the U S is always going to be good. Like the top people in the U S are always going to be good, but the Vietnamese are just like, they kind of treat it like training camps, you know what I mean? So it's like that. I think they're going to really overtake soon, at least in like the singles, um, as the,

[00:13:16] as it develops more there, it's just, just really, really, really strong China. I don't know. I haven't really met, I feel like I don't, I don't want to say this, but I haven't met anybody from China that I really know. That's too good. I don't know like anybody from China that plays, but I'm sure obviously, you know, of course, no, I'm on the same boat. That's, that's my point is I've heard of a few players from China that are really good, but they're not, um, out there making a huge name for themselves or dominating the least that I know of, but I've just heard investment

[00:13:42] wise in terms of infrastructure and courts that I am assuming we're going to be hearing a lot more about their growth in the next couple of years. And it's going to blow people away from, from what I'm thinking. Um, cool. I also, um, got word that it's interesting how their dupers worked. We're like a, a four Oh, there's more of like a five Oh, it's kind of like the opposite. Is that something that you saw too? Frank was mentioning that to me and I thought that was really interesting that, uh, there's like sandbagging flipped there, which is,

[00:14:09] I thought it was cool. Yeah. I didn't hear with those high numbers. The only thing that I heard was like a 1.5 is like a 3.0, maybe something like that. But like, if you're like a 3.0, you're a five Oh, like it was just a different rating system, which I think they do. They have different rating systems in the South and North of Vietnam. They don't use duper. They use their own thing. What they both don't use duper. They both have their separate platforms. They both have separate platforms is what I hear. Yeah. Are you in those platforms? No, I have no idea what they are. Interesting. I wonder if you're

[00:14:39] like in this system in some regard, just from, I don't know. That's what I'm saying. I don't even know if it's a real system. I just know like they call themselves lower numbers than it would be here. Gotcha. Um, so let's say you're going to go back there and I'm curious from like a pickleball cheat code perspective. Let's say you're playing somebody that is a top player in Southeast Asia that comes from a table tennis background versus a badminton background. If you were to go against a top 10 table tennis player that came into pickleball

[00:15:07] versus badminton, what would you do to counteract their play styles? And one that comes to mind top table tennis players are Ben Johns was huge into it and Colin. And then also Len Yang is the most, um, I think popular table tennis player with his flicks. And then you see badminton players with their heavy snaps from the experience that you had there in Asia. Um, like what would you do to, to outplay some of these players and kind of expose their weaknesses per se?

[00:15:34] Hmm. I'm not, I feel like I haven't seen enough badminton or table tennis to kind of put them into separate categories, but I would say both of them. Um, cause you were mentioning the hand speed. I feel like that's where a lot of that comes from, right? Yeah. I think so too. I don't really know the difference from badminton or ping pong. Like I'm saying, like in a fair comparing to like, I would kind of just group them together. That's fair. I mean, they just, cause I don't really know, you know what I mean? But I would just say they all have good hands.

[00:16:00] I would just not play into their hands, just make them dink. And then probably not lob them. Cause they all like have the fast, like wrist snaps that like, I'm not used to, you know, but besides that, just kind of just like playing like good people in the U S just dink and then wait for a flick, just no, just dumb early speed ups, which is like basically the basic strategy against people that can play. Um, but like, but they're going to be better at that though than the average, like three, five player in the U S yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Five there. They're going to just probably

[00:16:27] have faster hands and they know how to put the ball away with that risk, risk speed and risk strength. Yeah. I agree. Maybe attack them out wide if they don't have like a two hands from the ping pong, you know what I mean? Yeah. But just like avoid near their body is what I would assume. Did you see, especially the younger players stylistically, were they all doing two hand backhand rolls for everything? Cause I know the younger generation here starting to do that. That's the new meta. What'd you see over there for everything? Yeah. I would say it was the

[00:16:52] same thing. All the kids that I saw had like pretty much all the shots. They just, they just have to just get bigger, but they have all the shots and all their form looks great. They just need like to just become bigger people, you know, except for the 10 year old and clearly he's big enough, right? He's already big enough. Yeah. All right. So let's say we're going back in 2027. What would you do differently? What would you be more excited about? You know, would you want to be doing a tournament there? Um, what, what are some future plans for your next trip or for when I'm coming next time?

[00:17:23] I plan on doing a sub tournaments definitely before that. I'll probably head over there. I'm sorry. Um, but, uh, I would just like to see, uh, kind of how it developed from the year to year, you know, I'm sure it'll be big development, kind of like the U S year to year. So I'm excited to just see how it, um, how it develops. I don't know too much else what I would look for. I would just assume that it would keep progressing. Everybody over there seems to be working hard and kind of going

[00:17:51] all in with it. So just year to year, I think it'll probably be like really big changes for sure. Yeah. I mean, they're at such, they're still at such an early stage. I mean, U S is still an early stage, but they're even earlier. So really curious to see how things pan out. It's going to be really exciting when we go back there, um, from your own game and from the things that you saw there, you mentioned some of the footwork aspects of what they did in singles. Are there things that you're

[00:18:15] going to take away to implement into your own game that you noticed, or even the way that they're training? Like you said, it sounds like they're training really, really hard. So is that going to even inspire you in some way? You know, I'm curious what your takeaways were on that side. Yeah. I think it was pretty motivating to see everybody kind of going hard over there. Um, but where I'm at too here in Florida, I would say everybody pretty much goes hard too on that front. That's true. Um, like from the actual styles, I wouldn't say there was too much from doubles. I

[00:18:45] think it's all pretty standard, but for singles, just, uh, it would be great for me if I could add in the sliding. I don't really have that. I don't have that at all. It's so hard. Yeah. I think that would probably be the main thing that just allows you to kind of get back into position much faster. I feel like every time I try to slide, I feel like I'm going to break my ankle or tear an ACL. It feels so aggressive. It's like going full speed, locking your leg in and then sliding it out

[00:19:10] and assuming your shoe doesn't buckle or your ankle doesn't buckle. I did. It's just not natural to me. So I don't know how these players do it so easily. Cause like you said, it allows you to stay square. It allows you to not run through a shot and you're not giving up more ground that you have to remake back up. You can just get right back into the point. Um, but yeah, I need to start trading more singles and probably test that out. But if you hear of any ACL tear for me, that's probably what happened. Yeah. I'm going to stay away from that for injury. I don't think it's, it's worth it,

[00:19:38] but it definitely is injury prone for sure. Are you still training singles or are you still, or cause I know you're doing some of that and you're interested in it at least, but are you still mainly? I'll play like games, but drilling singles is it? It's just not that fun. If I don't have fun, I don't really like to do it. Uh, so I'll play some games, but like mostly the doubles. It's exhausting. Yeah, it's exhausting. Um, what's your next tournament then for overseas?

[00:20:04] Um, for overseas, I don't know if I have one on the radar. Is there any APPs coming? I'm sure there's some, I don't know if I'm going to play them. It doesn't really make sense. Uh, it has to be like where I can link trips together. Otherwise it just, um, there's not too much prize money. You have to pay your way, you know? So it doesn't make too much sense unless like you're over there. Then it like makes sense. Cause it's like, let's play, let's get some exposure. Um, especially with me and my brand, but to just be like, Hey, there's a tournament next week in

[00:20:34] Japan. Like let's go play. It just, it doesn't make sense. Only if you can like go for a month or two months. Yeah. Well, you even mentioned doing some training there. Would you do that? Go to Vietnam, work with some of their pros there and spend some time? Yeah, I would do that. Uh, like, like I said, if I could go over to Vietnam for like a tournament and then there was like a couple that I could link together, I would definitely do that. I would stay there for like a month. No problem. Um, I'm sure I will just wait for the right opportunity

[00:20:59] to go. Um, yeah, that's cool. Well, I'm still very bummed. We didn't get to do our skinny singles challenge that we've been hyping up for forever now, and it's still just not happening. Um, maybe we can do it at APP sack if I go up to Sacramento and do it then, but we'll find a time. I mean, could have done some great exhibition games too, but, um, I'm glad the trip went really well and still have FOMO from not being there. Uh, but I can't wait for the next one we do

[00:21:26] as a team. It's going to be a blast and we'll get a lot of good reps in there and, and see where things are at and the next year and how much has changed. For sure. Good chatting. It's great to be back. PCC is back, everybody. We got all the episodes coming week after week. Um, so stay tuned. It's going to be fun back on the flow of things. I'm excited. Let's go. All right. See everyone.