Padel is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. In its basic form, padel is a mixture of tennis and squash. Padel is similar to tennis in that you play it on a court with a net that separates you from your opponent. The balls are also very similar and the scoring system is identical. There are a few differences, however. The court is a little bit smaller and has different markings: the court does not end at a baseline and sideline but instead the boundaries are a cage consisting of glass (concrete in the past) and a grid with 3 and 4 meter walls that you can use to some extent. This is where the similarities with squash appear, another sport where you can use the walls in your play.
Padel as a sport is quite simple in its ruleset compared to something like tennis. Regardless of previous experience, you will be able to get a sense of the game pretty quickly; it won’t take long before you understand the movement of the ball and can really start to have fun. In addition, you almost always play doubles — that is, two players against two — which makes padel a fun team sport. There is also a singles variant, although this is a rather unusual form of play.
The history of Padel
The story begins with Enrique Corcuera who came up with the sport in Mexico in 1969. He then showed it to his Spanish friend, Alfonso de Hohenlohe, who, in 1974, took the sport home to Spain and built the first two courts in Marbella. You can read about the history of the sport here!