Skechers Shenzen Open 2026: Grayson Goldin Fulfills Golden Destiny as Chao Yi Wang Returns With Gold
All week long, Grayson Goldin looked like a man of destiny. On Championship Sunday, he fulfilled it.
Ten-five down. Match point sitting against him. Most players would already be shaking hands and planning the drive home. But Goldin had other ideas entirely.
He saved that match point, then simply refused to stop, reeling off seven straight points to snatch the Skechers Shenzhen Open 2026 Men’s Singles title away from Hien Truong, 4-11, 11-9, 12-10. It’s arguably the finest win of his career, plucked from a position that had no business producing one.
By rights, the match should have been over well before it actually finished. Truong breezed through the opener 11-4 and stood five points from the trophy in the decider at 10-5. Then something shifted. Goldin started producing passing shots from angles that shouldn’t have existed and firing backhands with a conviction that suggested he had absolutely nothing left to lose. Truong could only watch as the lead he’d built so comfortably simply dissolved, point by point, until Goldin drew level and never let the momentum slip again. Seven points on the bounce later, the title was his.
A Breakthrough Years in the Making
This win didn’t arrive out of nowhere. Goldin had shown up at three previous Asia stops this year and left each one at the round of 16, beaten in three tight games every time—at the Panas Malaysia Cup 2025, the Sansan Tokyo Open, and the MB Ho Chi Minh City Open, each defeat coming by margins as slim as two points in the decider. Close, repeatedly, and never quite close enough. Shenzhen finally cracked that pattern wide open.
What makes the run genuinely remarkable is where Goldin’s year actually started. He suffered two strokes back in February and temporarily lost his speech, a setback he’s since spoken about candidly on his road back. Six months later, he’s standing on the top step of a PPA Tour Asia podium.
A Historic Day for Vietnam, and Heartbreak for the Top Seeds
Shenzhen produced plenty of other storylines worth remembering. Sophia Nhi Huynh and Ho Tam beat Lingwei Kong and Selina Turulja 11-9, 3-11, 11-6 to become the first Vietnamese women ever to win a Women’s Doubles title on the PPA Tour Asia—a genuine milestone for a nation whose presence on tour keeps growing.
Not every story ended in celebration, though. Top seeds Eunggwon Kim and Jack Wong Hong-kit finally shook off their run of semi-final exits a day earlier, only to fall at the very last hurdle instead, beaten 11-7, 11-8 by Collin Johns and Len Yang in the Men’s Doubles final. The gold that’s eluded them all season remains just out of reach.
Chao Yi Wang marked her return to the tour in style, beating reigning Tokyo champion Rika Fujiwara 11-4, 11-8 to claim Women’s Singles gold. After losing two previous singles finals on Chinese soil, Wang has finally put that particular hoodoo to bed. In Mixed Doubles, Sahra Dennehy—celebrating her 23rd birthday in rather fitting fashion — paired with 15-year-old Tama Shimabukuro to beat Huynh and Truong 11-6, 11-1, giving the young Shimabukuro something to celebrate after his own bid for a triple crown fell just short over the weekend.
The tour rolls on to the Leapmotor Kuala Lumpur Cup, a PPA Asia 1000 event running from 9 to 13 September.
