As Pickleball gains popularity globally, the small pacific nation of Tonga aims to improve the ranking of its national team. “In order to up our game, we need to play the toughest competition in the world,” said captain Pita Taufatofua, who has represented Tonga in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
With the 2023 World Championship to be held \u00a0in Bali, Indonesia, it may be a long shot to have the championship in the same region. “We are offering to pay for flights and hotels to all participants in order to bring the best competition to our island nation,” declared King Tupou IV. “It is our destiny to win an Olympic Gold medal one day and we aim to be the first nation to win, once Pickleball becomes an official Olympic sport.”<\/p>\n
Pita echoed his kings declaration by adding, “I can’t wait to beat these Pickleballers using my homemade racquet made of bamboo and coconut shells. I always play barefoot and shirtless as it gives me better agility and speed over court shoes and tech shirts.”<\/p>\n
The final bids for the World Pickleball championships will be June 30 and other nations expected to bid include other small nations such as Canada, Uruguay, Iceland and Cape Verde.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Pickleball gains popularity globally, the small pacific nation of Tonga aims to improve the ranking of its national team. “In order to up our game, we need to play the toughest competition in the world,” said captain Pita Taufatofua, who has represented Tonga in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. With the 2023 World […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mediapub.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/ball.jpg?fit=502%2C336&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peiQC1-QE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3265,"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions\/3265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediapub.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}