Cak Susilo has been instrumental in leading pickleball’s growth in Indonesia.
Seven-thousand miles from Anchorage, in the Southeast Asia country of Indonesia, pickleball’s popularity is booming, in great part due to one man.
Cak Susilo is a 50-year-old East Jakarta resident with a Ph.D in Physical Education and Training. Cak fell love with pickleball several years ago and is a 5.0 player. He introduced pickleball in 2019 to Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country with 280 million people.
Some of Cak Susilo’s young students.
Cak built two pickleball courts next to his home with his own money and conducts lessons and tournaments. He told me when he began instructing players five years ago, he had a total of five students. Five. Today he says there are more than 10,000 pickleball players in 34 Indonesian provinces. They range from elementary school kids to the elderly. Cak estimates that 80 percent of the players in the region are at the 3.5 level.
I’m proud to say that the company for which I write this weekly blog, Hudef Sport, supplied Cak with dozens of free paddles, equipment bags, hats and t-shirts.
“I am so happy because many people here play pickleball,” Cak said. “It makes them more active and more healthy.”