Padel has now overtaken tennis when it comes to reputation in Spain. The game is now making an attempt to extend its international attain.Padel is enjoyable, social and straightforward to play. It seems like an oasis within the desert of Spain’s sport disaster.
Padel has overtaken its ‘older brother’ tennis as the first sport in Spain. Yearly, round 900,000 padel racquets are offered in comparison with 400,000 tennis racquets. This padel mania is spreading all around the nation and is now not a secret that many Spaniards cheated on tennis and fell addictively in love with padel.
However what’s the important thing to success within the sport?
“Padel provides me lots of pleasure and enjoyable,” Pascual Cuesta, an newbie padel participant, advised Al Jazeera. “It’s very dynamic and interesting and it additionally permits me to satisfy new individuals.”
Social networks have been an vital enhance. They actually helped gamers organise matches in addition to tournaments
Adrian Lopez, Padel membership proprietor
There are greater than two million newbie padel gamers in Spain, in line with a examine carried out by Mediapro Group. This quantity is anticipated to rise.
Padel at a click on
The web can be enjoying a key function within the growth of the game.
“Social networks have been an vital enhance,” Adrian Lopez, a padel membership proprietor, mentioned. “They actually helped gamers organise matches in addition to tournaments.”
Padel’s originsEven although Spaniards have develop into crazily hooked on this sport, let’s be clear: they didn’t invent it.
Paddle was born in Mexico in 1969. It then unfold to different Hispanic American international locations resembling Chile and Paraguay but it surely was Argentina the place it has expanded massively for the reason that early 70s.
Now, after 4 many years, the baton has been handed on to Spain.
Former Spain prime minister José María Aznar helped popularise the game after he was seen enjoying padel 15 years in the past. Now, one of the best padel gamers on this planet are Argentine with Juan Martín Díaz sitting prime of the world rankings.
“Padel remains to be a younger sport, however I feel it has grown extremely in Spain within the final 10 years,” Diaz mentioned.
Spanish paddle gamers are actually additionally hitting the paddle scene in a giant means. Marta Ortega has been three-time world champion within the junior class on the tender age of 17.
The struggles {of professional} padel
Padel might need overtaken tennis as a major sport in Spain, however it’s nonetheless means removed from having the identical skilled standing.
Skilled tournaments are struggling to get sponsorship and have little media protection. One of the best gamers on this planet are nonetheless unknown internationally.
“The disaster has affected sponsorship in all sports activities normally,” former skilled padel participant Javier Casadesus mentioned. “We’re fortunate as a result of brewery Estrella Damm is investing in skilled paddle in these troublesome years.”
Padel lovers have been working exhausting to get worldwide recognition and have created the World Padel Tour, a collection {of professional} paddle tournaments aimed to advertise the game and its finest gamers internationally.
“Final yr it was World Paddle Tour’s inaugural yr and I feel many issues have improved since then however there’s nonetheless extra work to be finished,” Díaz added. “I’m certain we’ll see increasingly padel being performed in different international locations and that may make World Padel Tour much more worldwide than what it’s now.”
After final yr’s success, World Padel Tour (WPT) occurred in Barcelona this yr.
“WPT is engaged on growing the variety of tournaments overseas, particularly in these international locations the place there may be already a substantial variety of padel supporters just like the UK, Germany, Mexico and Portugal,” WPT organiser José Luis Serrano mentioned.
Manuela Lanza