ABOUT PADEL
HISTORY OF PADEL
In the 19th century, a version of padel was played on British cruise ships, but it wasn’t until 1969 that a Mexican called Enrique Corcuera invented the game as we know it.
One of Enrique’s friends was Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe who was persuaded to build two courts at his famous Marbella Club, and that’s how it got started in Spain.
Meanwhile, in 1975, an Argentine friend of Alfonso de Hohenlohe decided to import the sport to his country after being a direct witness of its success. In Argentina is where Padel gets unprecedented importance becoming the second most practised sport.
In 1991 the International Padel Federation was formed (FIP) by Julio Alegria Artiach, and in 1992 the first World Championships was arranged and hosted in the dual cities of Madrid and Seville.
However, it was not until 2000 when it started to blossom in Spain and then spread slowly across Europe.
In 2005, the Padel Pro Tour (PPT) was created, a professional circuit of tournaments where players from around the world compete for world ranking positions. In 2013, the World Padel Tour (WPT), a new circuit of professional tournaments was launched with an important commercial partner, Estrella Damm (a leading Spanish beer brewery). Over the course of the past 15 years, padel has begun to spread rapidly to the rest of Europe, the United States and Asia.
WHAT IS PADEL?
Padel is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. It is the racket sport played extensively in Spain and Latin America.
Padel is racquet sport that combines the elements of tennis and squash, and it can be played both indoors and outdoors. It’s usually played in doubles on an enclosed court surrounded by walls of glass and metallic mash. The Padel court is one-third of the area of a tennis court. The scoring and the balls used are the same as tennis, just with less pressure.
The nice bonus is that you get a second chance to retrieve a shot as it will come back from the wall, this makes rallies much longer than in tennis.
Padel is excellent for players of any ages and abilities, as it is both fast and easy to pick up, and is less physically demanding than similar sports like squash, making it a fun and addictive sport to play.
So, the game is very similar to tennis if you don’t consider the walls, but it takes some time getting used to it, and here is where squash players have a big advantage.
No matter if you have any racket sports experience, or if you don’t play racket sports because you have no coordination.
You can play padel!
Bakul Rajput and Team