Many of my tennis friends are also playing padel. Meanwhile, I have never tried it. Can you learn anything from playing padel?
I mean, can you learn anything related to tennis from playing padel? What are your thoughts? Have you tried padel? What do you think about it and how does it compare to tennis?
Padel has been around in countries like Argentina and Spain for a long time. But a few years ago the bug hit Sweden and now it’s spreading faster than a certain virus. I focus my sporting attention on tennis and find the obsession with padel to be quite annoying, but I guess I should be happy that people exercise and enjoy racquet sports, even if it isn’t tennis. Maybe it could even be beneficial for your doubles communication, your volleys, your footwork, or hand/eye coordination to play padel. If you have the time and place for it.
Why is padel growing so fast?
There are a few benefits to padel compared to tennis (although tennis has more history, requires more effort, is more skillful, and is a “real” sport :)).
It’s social because you always play doubles.
It’s easy to get going, it doesn’t require the technical ability of tennis, which can be frustrating to learn.
It doesn’t require the same physical effort, it’s a smaller court, you are two players and the ball doesn’t travel as fast (and is softer).
Influencers took to padel like flies to dog shit and post pics/videos of themselves holding a padel racquet, before/after padel sessions, and so on.
Celebrities and investors realized there was money to be made from the padel bug so invested in padel by building padel courts everywhere you look. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is one of them with his Padelzenter, but there are many examples of ex-athletes and other celebrities putting their money into this growing “sport”.
I’m sure you can learn plenty of stuff from playing padel and it’s far better than watching Netflix and eating pizza.
1 comment
Padel is a sport once the level is high enough. For the majority, it seems more like a fun game. For sure, it could benefit ones tennis level but realistically, if you want to improve your tennis, the hours are better spent…..playing tennis !!
I have tried padel perhaps 5 times. Not for me. I want my pulse to be 130-180 as much as possible and get a good workout. Tennis, playing one against one, is for sure a lot more physical. The feeling of hitting a tennis ball really hard, is just immensely pleasurable. Padel with no strings can’t match that feeling and since you also use the walls, it is no point hitting really hard.
The sad reality is however that building padel courts is a better investment case. Smaller courts and better profit margin for the investor. The challenge of tennis is that the learning curve is steep. Especially if you start as an adult, you really need to put in the hours before you acquire a level where you really start to enjoy it more. With padel, one can pick up a racquet and get the ball over the net quite easily starting from the first time.
As long as tennis is around, I don’t really care about padel growing. The risk long term however, is that there might be less tennis courts around and more padel courts.