Padel is a racquet sport played in doubles on an enclosed court measuring 10m x 20m, surrounded by glass and wire mesh. Originating in Mexico in 1969, it blends elements of tennis and squash: the ball can bounce off the walls, making rallies unique and strategic. Accessible to beginners, it is experiencing explosive growth in France.

 ATTENTION! Padel should not be confused with paddle… 

 This name often refers for a large majority of French stand-up paddle, a sport that is practiced with a large surfboard and a paddle on the water. 

 Padel is actually a condensed end of several racket sports, tennis and squash in particular. 

Padel in a few words

It is played in doubles with rackets without rope but consists of a compact foam with many materials such as carbon, kevlar or graphite. The balls are very similar to tennis and different simply in terms of pressurization. The land is twenty meters long and ten meters wide.

It is cloistered by plexiglass walls three meters high by the width, surmounted by a grid of one meter. There is a fence two meters high along the length of the land and the access doors are in the middle. The rules of the game are very close to those of tennis.

The origins of padel

The origin of Padel dates back to the XNUMXth century according to different versions of its history. In order to entertain the passengers of English ships, a sporting activity was proposed which consisted of hitting a ball against the walls of the ship with oars. In the basement, the boat being partitioned and with a reduced space, it is in this spirit that the conception of Paddle Tennis and that of Platform Tennis was born.

Paddle Tennis is developing in the United States from 1898 where Franck Beal uses it to facilitate the learning of tennis for the youngest. It spreads very quickly in the area and especially in the neighborhoods.

In parallel a few years later, two Americans Freseddenn Blanchardy and James Cogswell modify some rules and allow the practice of sport in winter. It is the birth of the Tennis Platform which is democratized among wealthy people. The latter is getting closer and closer to the Padel current, both in terms of the structure of the field, the playing material, and the format of the matches. Some even consider Blanchardy and Cogswell to be its pioneers.

For FIP, it's Acapulco

However, the International Federation of Padel It is estimated that the padel practiced today appeared in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1969. At that time, Enrique Corcuera had a small tennis court built on his property, which he enclosed with walls.

Some time later in 1974, Alfonso de Hohenlohe, a friend of Corcuera, became a fan of this new sport and decided to export it to Spain. This marked the beginning of the success of padel which developed very quickly in all Spanish-speaking countries in particular.

A sport that is becoming international

Padel has long been a sport practiced only in Latin America and Spain. However, it has gradually been expanding to the rest of Europe in recent years.

Today, even if it is difficult to know the exact number of sportsmen in the world, it is easy to say that the country that counts the most is Spain. Indeed, even if its explosion was not immediate, there was a sharp increase in the number of installations, practitioners and licensees in the 90 years.

The Spanish Federation of Padel was therefore created in 1997 in order to supervise and regulate the practice. Twenty years later, ahead of tennis and behind football and basketball, padel is one of the most practiced sports in the country, with around 4 million regular padeleros…

It is especially in Spain that the competitions of the World Padel Tour, the professional padel circuit.

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovered padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since then, padel has been part of his life. You often see him touring France to cover major French padel events.

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