The Bandeja Magazine Issue 1

kevin palmer
Andy Murray and Peter Crouch
kevin palmer
The padel
phenomenon
an unstoppable force
by Kevin Palmer
From 30 padel
courts in 2018 to
more than 150
now, there’s no
stopping the
march of this
highly addictive
game across the
UK. Here Kevin
Palmer charts its
rise and rise, from
being a ‘delicious
secret’ to Klopp’s
winning weapon
and now the
favourite sport
of thousands
of players.
Roll the clock back to 2018 and
there were just 30 padel courts
in a UK market still largely
unaware of the sport’s potential
- but how that has changed.
Back then, the sport we all know and
love so well was a delicious secret
being kept by the padel hotbeds
such as Spain and Argentina, but the
landscape was about to be hit by
a revolution that would change the
sport forever in Britain.
The Lawn Tennis Association’s
decision to hire UK pioneer Tom
Murray to front up their padel division
and add the sport to its family was
a decision that has proved to be
pivotal to the stage where we are
now seeing a growth that appears
to be unstoppable.
Since the day Sport England, Sport
Scotland and Sport Wales officially
recognised the sport as a discipline
of tennis, to the vast investment
in padel courts from a variety of
ambitious backers, there is a sense
that we are on the cusp of something
unique with a sport all The Bandeja
readers share a passion for.
‘New’ sports rarely get a platform
of this magnitude to launch
themselves, but padel is being driven
by a momentum that appears to
be unstoppable.
The loans being offered by the LTA to
install padel courts across the country
are changing the way tennis clubs are
viewing the sport, with an appreciation
of the financial benefits of including
a padel court on your list of offerings
now at the forefront of decision making
when padel courts are installed.
Premier League fans
In addition, padel has been given
the kind of star power publicity that
could never have been provided by
an expensive PR campaign. Take the
example at Liverpool Football Club,
where manager Jurgen Klopp and his
assistant Pep Lijnders discovered the
sport when they were on a pre-season
training trip to Tenerife.
At first, Klopp and Lijnders were
bemused by the sport they saw as an
‘extended version of table tennis’, but
that stance quickly changed when they
got padel rackets in their hands and
experienced what so many of us have
felt as we quickly found a new love.
“We built a court for us at the training
ground and now we are playing this
game almost every day,” Lijnders
confirms. “The game has been a nice
distraction from our daily routine.
Sometimes we come up with the best
ideas to solve issues during these
games. We sit down on a bench in
between two sets and we discuss
solutions for football problems. In
fact, we do that a lot. When you are
constantly playing matches or doing
top-level training sessions every day,
there is no time to wind down.”
Such an endorsement from Liverpool’s
leaders is just one of many that
have put padel on the map. Two-time
Wimbledon champion Andy Murray
has invested in a padel business
and former Scotland rugby star
Max Evans and one-time England
captain John Terry are regular padel
rivals when at their holiday homes in
Quinta do Lago, Portugal.
Few sports looking to make a
breakthrough in a crowded marketplace
have promoters of that calibre driving
the message, but they are not alone in
appreciating that this is a sport ready
to move to another level.
PSG’s pro tour
Confirmation that the Qatari owners
of French soccer giants Paris
Saint-Germain are ready to take
padel to a new level by launching a
pro tour that will offer big prize money
may just be the next phase of a
journey laced with promise.
The building blocks required to build
a phenomenon rarely slot into place
quickly, yet the latest participation
Sports journalist Kevin Palmer will be
writing for The Bandeja on a wide
range of padel topics. Some of you may
know him from his brilliant coverage
for Tennis365 and he’s worked with Sky
Sports, ESPN, Yahoo, Goal.com, Planet
Sport and femalefirst.co.uk. His Twitter
account has been named the most
influential in Irish sports media for the
last four years. We are delighted to
have him onboard!
figures for padel in the UK confirm
89,000 active players are now playing
the sport and 15,000 of those are hitting
the courts on a regular basis.
While the pandemic has stunted
plans for court development across
the country, those participation
numbers are a triumph for a padel
community that is growing at a pace
that suggests the future is only
heading in one direction.
Addictive
The Bandeja readers don’t need to be
told how gloriously addictive padel is
and we all have a duty to get our friends
on court to experience the sport that
sets our collective pulse racing. After all,
we are all the groundbreakers in taking
padel into the mainstream in UK sport.
New sports rarely
“
get a platform of this
magnitude to launch
themselves, but
padel is being driven
by a momentum
that appears to
be unstoppable.
”
22 thebandeja.com the UK padel magazine - May 2022
23