Soft tennis champion Yuta Funemizu takes on U.S. pickleball

Asahi Shimbun

2 days ago

With new courts to conquer, Japanese soft tennis champion Yuta Funemizu is taking his championship game to U.S. pickleball.
Funemizu, 31, has a sterling record in soft tennis, which is a variant of the sport using a lighter, softer ball and usually lighter and less tightly strung rackets.
Funemizu was a Waseda University student when he played for the Japanese national team, which captured a world championship.
As a working adult, he played for the powerhouse Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West Corp., recently renamed NTT West Inc., and made a name for himself as a leading professional player.
But the sorrows and lack of recognition that came with being a star in a minor sport never really left him.
'We were never in the spotlight, even after winning 10 successive victories in the Japan (soft tennis) league,' Funemizu said.
Funemizu was soon to turn 30 when Soichiro Minami, founder of the job transfer service operator BizReach Inc., introduced him to pickleball, which was surging in popularity in the United States. He was thus initiated to this fateful 'job transfer.'
Pickleball players use 'paddles,' resembling oversized table tennis paddles, to hit a perforated plastic ball toward each other on a roughly badminton-size court.
Invented in the United States in the 1960s, the sport saw a sharp rise in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main draw of pickleball lies in its ease, which allows players to enjoy rallying even as beginners.
Some say more than 50 million people have played pickleball in the United States, where Major League Pickleball, a professional league, was founded in 2021.
'I found the sport so appealing that I decided it was worthwhile to stake my life on going after it,' Funemizu said.
He enlisted Minami's help to go to the United States in January last year.
'I will compete in more matches than anybody else and acquire skills in a year that it would normally take three or four years to master,' Funemizu said he thought at the time.
A team selected him during a draft in March this year, which made him the first Japanese major leaguer in the sport.
Funemizu operates a YouTube channel, where he openly shares his impatience at having to sit out matches. He has also started a crowdfunding project for covering his tour expenses.
'I hope my donors will enjoy, with me, this journey I am making to the world's top place,' Funemizu said.
The sheer grandeur and plainness of his dream appear likely to endear him to many a supporter.