Visitors at the Australian Open this year encountered a strange sight at one of the exhibition centres on the grounds of Melbourne Park: four players smacking a tennis ball with wooden paddles in a court enclosed by glass walls.
Strap on your sweatbands and trainers because this is probably the next big thing in Australian recreation. A combination of tennis, pickleball and squash, padel is already a phenomenon in Europe, and has gained a foothold here, with clubs in Perth, the Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne. Now that it has the blessing of Tennis Australia — which featured a practice exhibition court during the two weeks of the Open and also hosted the Australian Padel Open — expect it to start popping up everywhere.
Tennis fans already know the rules of padel (more or less). It’s played in doubles, uses the same ball and scoring system, and includes all of your favourite shots: ground strokes, volleys, overheads and drop shots (often called “chiquitas” because the game was invented in Mexico and is extremely popular in Spain. When you play, expect to hear a lot of Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese).
As for padel’s differences with tennis, serves are underhand — great news for rotator cuffs — and it uses a stringless racquet that’s made of graphite. It’s a bit smaller than a tennis racquet, so don’t be surprised if you whiff your first couple of shots.
However, the major difference is that you can play the ball off the walls. If you’re used to tennis, pickleball, or badminton, it can be hard to wrap your head around this added layer of complexity. For example, if you’re about to crush an overhead, don’t be surprised when your opponents run toward you (something else that takes a bit of getting used to). That way, they can return the ball after it bounces off the back wall, by which point the ball may have travelled so close to the net that they easily tap it into a winner.
Because it’s harder to end the point with a 160km/h smash, padel is more about placement, finesse and court awareness than raw power. That’s bad news for those who like to wail on the ball (sorry, Andrey Rublev) but great news for beginners looking to play with more experienced players and not feel out of your league the entire time.
Still, expect to be frustrated when you start. You’re likely smash your racket into the glass (on accident the first few times and then out of frustration) and you will be lobbed incessantly. Pro tip: force yourself to take the ball off the wall when your opponents hit deep, even if you could hit a normal ground shot instead. Once you’re able to take advantage of the walls, the points become hypnotic, with players constantly running forward and backward, lobbing, volleying, attempting passing shots and diving to catch the ball as it bounces off the glass.
Unfortunately you’ve just missed the first Australian Padel Open. It was the world’s largest professional padel event and the first of its kind in Australia, with a prize pool of $20,000 (significantly less than the $106,250 you’d earn losing a first-round match at the Australian Open, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?). But fear not. You can find a place to play here, and once you’re ready for the big leagues, there is the International Padel Federation that organises competitions.
With an estimated 20 million players across more than 90 countries, padel is likely to be here to stay. Olé.
