Former British No 1 tennis participant Annabel Croft believes padel has the potential to change into an enormous sport within the UK.
Chatting with Tennis365 at a Game4Padel occasion, the favored former participant turned TV presenter and analyst spoke about her love of the game that’s gathering in recognition at an exhilarating fee.
Padel can greatest be described as a cross between tennis and squash, performed on a court docket surrounded by heavy-duty glass that enables gamers to hit the ball after it bounces again off the wall.
Now Croft suggests it has the potential to change into a sport that reaches out to an enormous viewers, with non-tennis gamers embracing the game in rising numbers.
“There may be plenty of momentum behind it now,” mentioned Croft. “You hear increasingly more individuals speaking about it. I hear a lot of younger individuals speaking about padel and eager to get into it.
“It actually seems like the sport is on an upward curve. It may have interaction with individuals who may discover tennis too troublesome and that’s the fantastic thing about padel.
“Every time I play padel, I come off with a giant smile on my face. It is extremely comparable abilities to tennis due to all of the volleying and the contact and really feel.
“I haven’t fairly mastered the again wall but, however it’s a very social recreation. There are at all times plenty of smiles on court docket and it’s a nice recreation. I actually take pleasure in it.”
With Britain’s LTA providing grants to golf equipment to put in padel courts proving to be a profitable enterprise, the Game4Padel group Annabel Croft and two-time former Wimbledon champion Andy Murray are backing taking that course of to the following degree.
Putting in padel courts at golf equipment and taking a slice of the income that comes from them, it is a challenge with star backing that would take padel to an entire new degree.
“I’m nonetheless making an attempt to study all of the totally different abilities and I’ve discovered that high spin doesn’t work in padel,” he added. “It’s a lot simpler to select up. Serving is so much much less irritating as you actually simply bounce the ball and slice it into the court docket.
“You possibly can have nice rallies and even if you’re not a tennis participant, your degree can come up fairly rapidly. Clearly the professionals that play might be on a distinct degree, however I actually take pleasure in enjoying.
“Game4Padel is a superb initiative as they’ll come and set up a padel court docket and take a income share. For golf equipment that may’t afford to place a padel court docket in, it is a nice strategy to make it occur.”
This sport has enormous celeb backing with the likes of David Beckham and Liverpool supervisor Jurgen Klopp among the many followers of the game, so it appears the one means is up for padel.