Sophia Tran, Tya Karina Crowned Women's Doubles Pro Champions at Tomaz Cup

It was Tya Karina's debut playing the right side of the court as Sophia Tran's doubles partner, a real positional switch inside an already-working partnership, and it ended in a gold medal. Sophia Tran Phuong Anh and Karina won the Women's Doubles Pro title at the 2026 PPA Asia 125 Tomaz Cup, held at Tomaz Pickleball Club in Subang Jaya, Selangor from 27 to 31 August. Tran only got around to posting about it days later, joking that she'd "actually forgot" she was supposed to share the win at all.

Vietnam's Fastest-Rising Player Adds Another Title

At 16, Tran is already Vietnam's youngest professional pickleball player, currently ranked 15th globally by DUPR. She moved into the sport from tennis after a shoulder injury interrupted that career, and her 2026 has been busy: four gold medals at the World Pickleball Championship in Indonesia and two more at the PPA Tour Australia-Vietnam Open, before this Tomaz Cup win. Karina, playing out of Bali, Indonesia, came to the sport with no prior competitive racket-sport background at all, picking it up casually with friends who later became her coaches, and has built a reputation as a strategic player who wins on court sense rather than raw power.

The pairing's gold medal match played out on the Tomaz Colosseum show court, with sponsor branding from PPA Asia and Unifi visible on the backdrop behind the podium.

A Malaysian Stage, a Regional Field

The inaugural PPA Asia 125 Malaysia Tomaz Cup, presented by MSPL Sports and Tomaz Pickleball Club, carried an amateur prize pool of more than RM100,000 alongside its Pro divisions, with division champions earning a qualification spot into a PPA Asia 500 Open event. Pickle361 has already covered several other results from the same event, including finishes from Lim Lynn, Jimmy Liong and Shi Sheng, and Agnes Fan, but Tran and Karina's win is its own story: a Vietnamese-Indonesian pairing taking a Pro title on a Malaysian court, in a region where the same handful of tournaments increasingly draw players across borders rather than one country's own field.

This article is based on social media posts and historical data tracked by Pickle361.