6th THAILAND OPEN MASTERS GAMES – GATEBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS
The sixth Thailand Open Masters Games Gateball championships was held from 8 January – 11 January 2026, with the teams event on 8-9th January and a relational triples event on 10-11th January.
This year the tournament was held in Bangkok near the National Stadium, which was a very convenient location.
The tournament was larger than I expected with 40 teams and 68 Triples entries, representing 11 countries and regions from Australia, China, Chinese Taipei, Europe, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macau and Thailand. This meant that I could catch up with some old friends and also make some new ones.
As the sole Australian representative, I played with a local Thai team, Ranong, who had made a 9 hour bus trip from near the border with Myanmar. They were lovely folks and very kind and patient, and a large part of our day was centered around food.
As it turned out, it was a good job they were kind and patient, as my gateball was not great. Yes, the court conditions were far from ideal, but I spent a lot of time unable to get on the court, and so in the team games was either substitute or substituted off.
In the Triples, in the first game I did not manage to get on the court at all, in the second game I did get on but didn’t play very well, and the third game showed some improvement. It is worth noting that after the first round of 10 balls, only balls 7 and 8 were on the court and both were out-balls. I came on in round 2, but only by overhitting the ball and ending as an out-ball.
We were playing a Japanese team from Hiroshima, and we all struggled with the conditions in a see-saw game that eventually ended 10-10 and tied on countback, and so we had a shootout [ie each ball takes turns to pass gate 1]. After the first 10 balls, surprisingly the scores were tied at 4-4. Unfortunately, our team lost in the next sudden death round on the first ball.
The other thing to note is that the young Indonesian teams were very strong, finishing in each of the top four places in the Teams competition and 3 out of 4 in the Triples competition [with the Indian team finishing 3rd].
I understand that Gateball is now a school sport in Indonesia, with Government support and even University scholarships, and so we should expect strong Indonesian teams for many years to come.
Geoff Crook
SA Gateball Coordinator
