It’s looking like there’s much more that needs to be unravelled regarding the UPA terminating the contracts of James Ignatowich, Ryan Fu, and Vivian Glozman. On Thursday, the UPA announced that it had terminated the contracts of the three pickleball pros after they supposedly participated in “competitor events.” Another player’s status, that of Parris Todd, is under review as well.
That “competitor” appears to be the Pickleball Japan Federation (PJF), which recently held several clinics and exhibitions in Tokyo’s Ariake Tennis Park.
Here’s where the plot thickens, so to speak. After news of the axing made its rounds on the internet, the Chair of the PJF’s Board of Trustees, Quinn Riordan, quietly shared his two cents in a comment on a post in the Facebook page The Kitchen – A Pickleball Community. In his comments, Riordan pointed out that the PJF is not a PPA competitor, and that it owes much to Ignatowich and company for helping grow pickleball in Japan.
“To clarify, the Pickleball Japan Federation is not a competitor to PPA. We are a non-profit organisation dedicated to spreading the joy of pickleball to Japan. We supported PPA’s event in Fukuoka and are currently cooperating with local partners to potentially host a PPA event in Japan in 2026,” Riordan wrote. “Our first PJF Championships held in December 2024 greatly expanded the number of pickleball players in Japan, and now pickleball is booming in Japan. Part of that success is due to James Ignatowich and his team teaching clinics at our event, which helped generate tremendous enthusiasm for the sport.”
Curiously, Riordan’s comment corroborates, to a degree, some of the points raised by Ryan Fu, who maintains that he and company taught in four clinics and did the exact same thing last year.
At the moment, it appears the termination of Fu, Glozman, and Ignatowich stands. But the axing might not be as cut-and-dried as the UPA makes it appear.
