Inaugural OCBC-Great Eastern Pickleball Open draws over 1,000 players in Singapore
The essentials: The first OCBC-Great Eastern Pickleball Open brought more than 1,000 players aged 13 to 75 to OCBC Arena from 23 to 25 October 2026, one of South-east Asia's largest pickleball tournaments, with over S$100,000 in prizes.
SINGAPORE - More than 1,000 players took part in the inaugural OCBC-Great Eastern Pickleball Open at OCBC Arena from 23 to 25 October 2026, making it one of South-east Asia's largest pickleball tournaments.
The doubles-only competition drew participants aged 13 to 75 across four categories - novice, open, the Bank of Singapore Corporate Challenge and the invite-only Bank of Singapore Invitational Championship - with more than S$100,000 worth of prizes on offer. Players travelled in from across the region as well as from Australia and India; the novice category alone welcomed first-time competitors such as 56-year-old Thai national Punnee Amornviputpanich, and 75-year-old Sam Ho, the tournament's oldest participant, who picked up the sport only months ago.
Corporate money meets community pickleball
The Open sits inside a broader OCBC Group pickleball programme launched in October 2025 with Kallang Alive Sport Management, which runs The Kallang (the former Singapore Sports Hub). Eight dual-use courts opened there in January, a four-weekend introductory series preceded the tournament, and under a two-year partnership with Care Corner Seniors Services, 100 seniors will receive free pickleball training - ten of them competed in the novice category here. OCBC says it has committed more than S$2 million since 2025 to senior-focused programmes under OCBC SeniorCare.
The scale of a bank-backed, thousand-player Open landing the same week that, across town, Sengkang Town Council voted to confine pickleball to nine courts over noise complaints captures the sport's current moment in Singapore: booming participation and corporate sponsorship on one side, and municipal noise management on the other. We covered the Sengkang decision here.
OCBC's head of group brand and communications Koh Ching Ching called the turnout proof of the sport's cross-generational pull and said the inaugural event 'signals a strong start to our support of pickleball'.
Sources
Sources checked 25 Oct 2026. Header photo: The OCBC Arena entrance in Singapore, pictured in 2014. Generic file photo, not of the specific people, products, or events described. Photo: Exec8, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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