{"id":83690,"date":"2025-08-21T00:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T00:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/83690\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T00:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T00:35:11","slug":"hong-kong-pickleball-star-wants-sport-to-come-out-of-tennis-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/83690\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong pickleball star wants sport to come out of tennis\u2019 shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Jack Wong Hong-kit believes pickleball deserves to stand on its own and not just be considered an extension of other racquet sports.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Speaking ahead of this week\u2019s Hong Kong Open, the city\u2019s top player said he was focused on making his home fans proud as the Professional Pickleball Association makes its debut at Kai Tak Arena on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The former national team tennis star also said he was able to find \u201cmy second spring\u201d in pickleball and dreamed of representing Hong Kong if the sport were ever included in the Olympics.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cPeople said it\u2019s like tennis or table tennis, but I don\u2019t think so; there are maybe some similar moves, but pickleball is a sport of its own,\u201d said Wong, who retired from tennis for the second time last year to focus on a new career.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cPickleball doesn\u2019t require much stamina, but there are so many technical details and variations. It\u2019s not like tennis, which requires sheer power, and you just need to serve hard to win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Hong Kong's top pickleball player Jack Wong Hong-kit in action. Photo: Handout\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/8e0bb962-3998-4458-b27f-eb0b906b1a7a_4b8ae14c.jpg\" title=\"Hong Kong's top pickleball player Jack Wong Hong-kit in action. Photo: Handout\"\/>Hong Kong&#8217;s top pickleball player Jack Wong Hong-kit in action. Photo: Handout<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The 26-year-old said players with tennis, table tennis, and badminton backgrounds would find pickleball relatively easy to learn and might even show rapid improvement within the first three months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Wong Hong-kit believes pickleball deserves to stand on its own and not just be considered an extension&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[1724,63021,64,63,63024,63022,10340,63023,63020,54590,54593,63016,2819,10018,63015,63018,63019,63017,85,747],"class_list":["post-83690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-asia","tag-atp-rankings","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-china-slam","tag-fukuoka","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-open","tag-jack-wong-hong-kit","tag-kai-tak-arena","tag-kai-tak-sports-park","tag-ktsp","tag-kuala-lumpur","tag-olympics","tag-pickleball","tag-ppa","tag-ppa-tour-asia","tag-professional-pickleball-association","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}