On June 30, 2026, Sansan Inc. announced that Seiga Hatakeyama (29) and Kei Sawaki (15), players the company supports, had signed pro contracts with the "PPA Tour," the world's top professional pickleball tour. A 29-year-old who captained Japan's national padel team, and a 15-year-old with just a year and a half of playing experience. That two people so far apart in career and age reached the world's highest-level contract on the same day is bound to be recorded as the moment Japanese pickleball changed from a "country that participates" into a "country that sends contracted players." For every individual playing at home, the career path this deal points to is not someone else's business.
The substance of the PPA pro deal and the two players' profiles
The PPA Tour (The Professional Pickleball Association Tour) is the world's top pro tour based in North America, where the world's leading players such as Anna Leigh Waters travel and compete under contract. With this deal, the two becomePPA contracted prosand will base their careers on overseas tours as their main battleground.
Seiga Hatakeyama is from Hokkaido. He was runner-up in tennis at the Inter-High School Championships and won the collegiate national title twice in university. In his first year as a working adult he was selected for Japan's national padel team, and as team captain he won the All-Japan Championship three times. In autumn 2024, he entered pickleball as a first-cohort member of Sansan's development project "Pickleball X." At the "PPA Asia 500 Panas Kuala Lumpur Open" men's singles in May 2026, he advanced to the final for the first time as a Japanese player and finished runner-up.
Kei Sawaki is a 15-year-old from Tokyo. She started tennis at age 5, holds a runner-up finish at the national elementary school championships, and switched to pickleball at 14. Selected for "Pickleball X" as its youngest member, she won both singles and doubles titles at the 2025 Asia Pickleball Junior Open U-16. At the PPA Tour World Championships she took the junior category, and also played in the pro main draw in women's doubles. In 2026 she won a bronze medal in women's doubles at the "PPA Asia 500 Macao Open."
Why now—Pickleball X, a development program built by working backward
This deal shouldn't be read as sudden good news, but as an outcome exactly as designed under Sansan's domestic promotion efforts and "Pickleball X," which began in February 2024. The project moves athlete support, trial events, tournament hosting, and facility operation as one, and has held up "developing globally top pros" from the very start. According to Sansan's materials, the domestic player base has grown to about 330,000, roughly 7x year over year, and in the US the playing population over the past year is put at about 50 million. Now that the rapid expansion of the player base and corporate investment have overlapped, the circuit to push players up to world-standard contracts has finally connected within Japan.
As for Japanese players challenging overseas, the case of former soft-tennis national team memberYuta Funamizu winning his first PPA titleprecedes this, but this is the first time multiple graduates of a corporate development project have reached PPA contracts simultaneously.
Comparing the two players' achievements by the numbers
| Item | Seiga Hatakeyama | Kei Sawaki |
|---|---|---|
| Age | 29 years old | 15 |
| Previous sport | Tennis → padel (national team captain) | Tennis (national elementary runner-up) |
| Started pickleball | Autumn 2024 (Pickleball X first cohort) | Age 14, 2024 (youngest of the same first cohort) |
| Representative results | First Japanese runner-up in PPA Tour Asia men's singles (May 2026, Kuala Lumpur) | PPA World Championships junior title, Macao Open women's doubles bronze (2026) |
In the Kuala Lumpur final, Hatakeyama faced Vietnam's young top player, Truong Vinh Hien. It carries real weight that a player who knows firsthand the depth of the Asian field has become a contracted pro.
The players' own words and how the announcement is positioned
In the announcement, Hatakeyama said he aims to be "a presence that leads Japanese pickleball to the world." Coming from a player who served as a national team captain in padel, it's close to a declaration of carrying the sport. Sawaki commented, "I want to found an academy in the future. I'll keep challenging without using age as an excuse," voicing even a developer's perspective at 15. The next day, on July 1, Sansan announced that in addition to renewing contracts with both players, it would welcome former tennis national team member Rika Fujiwara as an ambassador, expanding its sponsorship to a three-person setup. The stance of not letting it end as a one-off feel-good story but thickening the whole structure comes through.
The message players in Japan should take away
What this deal shows is the fact that there are at least two routes reaching the PPA from Japan. The first is theconvertsroute from racket sports. Hatakeyama and Funamizu have now shown in succession that the skills built in tennis, padel, and soft tennis can be converted to world level in a year or two. For those with competitive experience, it's not too late to take on the challenge even from around age 30. The second is thejunior single-focusroute. Sawaki reached a PPA deal with a year and a half of playing experience, showing that a strategy of accumulating points and results in international events during one's teens works.The teenage players entering the Tokyo Openincluded, Japan's junior development has entered a phase not of "whether it's in time" but of "who systematizes it first."
Ripple effects on the industry—the going rate for corporate sponsorship shifts
Sansan's model is a vertically integrated one bundling athlete support, tournament sponsorship, and facility operation. In July, the opening of Tokyo's first large facility, "Sansan Pickleball Court Ikebukuro" (3 indoor courts, 4 outdoor courts), is also on the horizon. Combined with17LIVE's move to field three pros at a tournament, the way domestic companies engage has clearly shifted from "putting up a title sponsorship" to "holding players and courts." With two contracted pros now born, the bar rises for later companies searching for whom to support. From the players' side, an era has arrived where turning your results into numbers at international events becomes a bargaining chip.
What to watch and where to go this summer
The two players' contract announcement was made right before "PPA ASIA 500 Sansan TOKYO OPEN 2026 Produced by TBS," held July 1–4 at Arena Tachikawa Tachihi in Tachikawa, Tokyo. Contested on 11 climate-controlled courts, theTokyo Open's event designis also the stage for the two newly contracted pros' "triumphant first match." On July 10, the aforementioned Ikebukuro court (Higashi-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo, a 3-minute walk from Higashi-Ikebukuro Station) is set to open, so the flow from spectating to actually playing will be completed within Tokyo.
Summary—from "watching" to "measuring"
The PPA deals for Seiga Hatakeyama and Kei Sawaki brought a "world-standard yardstick" into Japanese pickleball for the first time. What to do next is concrete. See the two play live at the Tachikawa Tokyo Open, and measure the distance to your own skill. Racket-sport veterans should design a conversion timeline; junior parents and coaches should design a backward schedule toward international events, working it out by subtraction from these two careers. Players in a country that has produced contracted athletes can do exactly that.
