So the tennis club where I play pickleball 95% of the time is hosting a woman’s WTA tournament, The Credit One Charleston Open, over the next couple of weeks. This year, as part of build up for the tournament, the club constructed an outdoor padel (tennis) court, where some exhibition matches will be played.
Looks similar to this. The dimensions are 10 x 20 meters surrounded by a 4 meter high glass wall and fence.
After pickleball last Sunday, a couple of us went over to watch some padel being played. According to Wikipedia, padel originated in Acapulco, and is primarily popular in Spain, Sweden, and Portugal. In fact in those countries it is reportedly more popular than tennis. The game is described as a cross between tennis and squash and I would have to agree with that, other than the racquet is very much different in length and weight. Funny, the Wikipedia article on padel says that it is played with stringless bats. I’m down with some bat warfare 
In comparison, our club’s padel court is supposedly the only one in South Carolina. Outside of tennis, pickleball rules in the US and Canada. I’ve read where over 30 million people have tried pickleball and there are something like 5.9 million active players. Padel boasts ~ 25 million, which surprised me. I hadn’t even heard of the game until it was played by some of the drivers in the runup to last year’s Miami Grand Prix.
What’s funny is to hear my fellow American club members refer to padel and pah-del, accenting the second syllable, like it’s some sort of exotic French activity. They are incredulous and feel compelled to correct me when I refer to the game as padel, sounding like paddle. Hey, I watch Spanish YouTube padel channels and feel like I know what it sounds like. Pass me a Stella Artois @Victork2, my UK homie.
Back to Sunday…after we watched a couple of sets to get a feel for the game, one pair of players had to leave. Thinking that it was game over, we stood to leave, but instead were invited to be their replacements. They split us newbs between the experienced pair and off we went.
One thing that I liked immediately was that the game was played on turf (artificial grass) with sand lightly sprinkled. It felt much easier on the knees that the concrete pickleball courts we frequent. It took some time to get comfortable with the racquet, which incidentally looks to me like something that should be called a paddle, and my partner and I managed to win the first set in a 6-6 tie breaker. Luckily, the scoring is similar to tennis. One less thing to wrap your head around while under tutelage.
I didn’t find the serve, ground strokes, or overheads particularly difficult at the level we were playing, but getting the ball off the wall, especially in the corners was a challenge. That surprised me having played a fair amount of squash as a young man, but the timing of the heavier, shorter, racquet had me looking like a cat chasing its tail a few times.
Most importantly, we found that it was huge fun and that we wanted more. I ordered a “bat” when I got home. Wife is going to kill me of course.
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