What is Padel

The padel it is a team sport that has been enjoying increasing success in recent years, as demonstrated by the ever-growing number of fields and practitioners.

If you're wondering what does padel mean, you should know that its name comes from “paddle tennis” (i.e. paddle tennis), as the original wooden rackets that were used resembled the paddles that were used for rowing.

The history of Padel

Padel is now the very fashionable sport in Italy, but its origins are very distant. There history of padel started in 1890, when some passengers on an English ship invented the game, taking inspiration from tennis, undoubtedly its precursor.

But the year in which padel takes its current form is undoubtedly 1969, when Erique Corcuera decides to build in his residence in Mexico a small tennis court, due to the space available, and then closed by concrete walls and metal mesh, to prevent the ball from leaving the court and ending up in the neighbor's court, who was complaining. It was therefore automatic to continue playing when the ball bounced off the surrounding wall. The rest is history.

Later, thanks to Corcuera's Spanish friends, the game spread earlier in Spain, where a little later, in the nineties, padel spread so widely as to reach a million active players, and then exploded throughout the world with frightening growth.

What are the differences between Tennis and Padel?

Although padel derives from tennis, exist substantial differences between the two sports.

Primarily the field it has different dimensions, but it is also structured differently, as if it were a cage, closed by side walls, a characteristic that makes it similar to another sport played with rackets, namely squash.

Also the rackets (also called “blades”) are structured differently. Forget the racket with strings, typical of tennis. The padel rackets they are full, similar to beach rackets, with holes in the plate. The balls however, they are aesthetically identical, although their internal pressure is lower, to facilitate game control, limiting the rebound of the same.

Eventually they change the rules compared to tennis, with the ball that can bounce off the side walls and still remain playable, making the walls an integral part of the court and the game. This allows padel to be a game that is as fun as it is spectacular, with shots that leave you speechless. This is just one of the differences, but we will discover all the rules of padel in another article, to pay special attention to them.

Certainly padel players (called "padelisti") who come from tennis can have an edge in terms of technique, but padel has substantial differences that make it a sport much more accessible to everyone, it has a learning curve much shorter fundamentals and therefore results can be achieved in the short term.