How to Train Tennis, Ping Pong, and Squash Players in Pickleball

Malaysia’s pickleball community attracts athletes from a wide range of racket sports. Tennis, table tennis, and squash players often transition into pickleball with pre-existing strengths but also deeply ingrained habits that require thoughtful coaching.

Against this backdrop, coaches in Malaysia are encountering a diverse influx of athletes from other racket sports and that’s shaping training methods on the ground.

Tennis Players: Power Meets Precision

Many new players arrive with a tennis background, a sport that, while not among the most popular in Malaysia (~1.83% participation), still produces a steady flow of athletes transitioning to the pickleball court. These players bring powerful groundstrokes and confident overheads, but they often need help translating long, looping swings into compact, controlled swings suited for pickleball’s smaller court space. Coaches focus on shortening backswings, refining footwork, and sharpening reaction timing to help these players adapt.

Ping Pong Athletes: Net Savvy and Soft Hands

Malaysia has a strong table tennis culture (with table tennis participation around ~2.7% of the active sports population), and players from this sport show up on pickleball courts with excellent reflexes and soft touch at the net. Their strokes may look unorthodox, but when they demonstrate consistent drives and volleys, coaches are often selective about correction: rather than forcing textbook mechanics, they adapt what works into the pickleball context, preserving speed and feel while improving depth and control.

Squash Players: Movement Advantage Meets Ball Control Tweaks

Although squash accounts for a smaller slice of Malaysia’s sports participation (~1.05%), the lateral lunges and explosive direction changes common in squash translate well to fast court coverage in pickleball. The primary coaching challenge is helping these players adjust to pickleball’s shot pace and trajectory, which is less about hitting into corners and more about controlled play and strategic placement.

Building Coaching That Matches Malaysia’s Pace

Across these backgrounds, a consistent coaching philosophy is emerging in Malaysia: function over form. With pickleball’s local popularity growing so rapidly and with tens of thousands of players joining weekly games on apps like Reclub coaches are prioritising outcomes (consistent rallying, effective decision‑making, and adaptive strategy) over rigid swing “textbook” mechanics.

This approach has two major benefits in a market expanding as quickly as Malaysia’s:

1. Faster player retention and satisfaction, especially for adult crossover athletes who want immediate success without feeling like they need to unlearn everything.
2. Better long‑term development, because early confidence builds willingness to practise, compete, and stay in the sport which is a key factor as Malaysia continues hosting more tournaments and building broader competitive pathways.

In a nation where pickleball participation has become one of the fastest‑growing sports movements in Asia, coaching strategies that respect individual backgrounds while guiding effective pickleball mechanics are proving essential for sustaining the momentum.

This article is based on our conversations with 002 Pickleball Club Academy Founder Colin Tan.