Heineken Pickleball World Cup 2026: Hoang Nam Ly, Phuc Huynh Arrange All-Vietnam Final in Men’s Pro Singles
Some tournaments come down to which country wins. This one, at least in Men’s Pro Singles, came down to which Vietnamese player wins. By the time the semi-finals wrapped up at the Heineken Pickleball World Cup 2026 in Da Nang, Phuc Huynh and Hoang Nam Ly had done something no other nation managed: locking both the gold and silver medals for Vietnam before a single point of the final had even been played.
It’s the kind of dominance that only really happens on home soil, in front of a home crowd, with a home federation that’s spent years building toward exactly this moment.
Phuc Huynh’s Run to the Final
Phuc Huynh‘s route through the draw read like a man who simply refused to have a bad day. He opened with a clean 2-0 win over Zachary Grabovic, followed it with a tighter 2-1 victory over Drake Palm, then dispatched fellow Vietnamese player Nguyen Viet Hoang 2-0 to reach the semi-finals in complete control of his own tournament.
The semi-final against Martin Stanchev was where things finally got tense. Three full sets, plenty of nerves, and Huynh still found a way through to book his spot in the gold medal match—the kind of result that tends to matter more in hindsight than it feels in the moment.
Hoang Nam Ly’s Path, and a Late Twist
Hoang Nam Ly‘s own run carried its own drama, if of a slightly different flavour. He opened with a win over Do La Viet Nhat, then needed three sets to see off American player Ryler DeHeart, before cruising past Emilien Burnel 2-0 to reach the semi-finals opposite compatriot Quang Duong.
That semi-final never actually finished as a contest. Quang Duong, who’d already turned heads with impressive wins over Japan’s Kento Tamaki and rising Indian talent Arjun Singh, was forced to withdraw with a wrist injury, handing Ly his place in the final without needing to close it out on the scoreboard. Not the way any player wants to reach a gold medal match, but a final berth all the same—and proof of just how deep Vietnam’s bench currently runs, given the player forced out of contention was arguably playing some of the best pickleball of the tournament up to that point.
Three Players, No Real Debate
With Huynh and Ly meeting for gold, and Quang Duong bowing out only through injury rather than being outplayed, the results this week settle a question that’s been circling Vietnamese pickleball for a while: Phuc Huynh, Hoang Nam Ly, and Quang Duong are, without much room for argument, the country’s top three male players. Between them, they’ve now walked through the rest of the World Cup field on home soil, and the only players capable of stopping any of them, this week at least, were each other.
For a tournament billed as a genuine global event, drawing players from dozens of countries to Da Nang, the story of Men’s Pro Singles ended up being written almost entirely by three Vietnamese names—a rather emphatic statement for a host nation to make in front of its own crowd.
