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The emerging racquet sport booming in popularity

Dafydd Morgan
BBC News
Getty Images Four people playing the raquet sport padel at night on an artificial grass court. There are two people on one side of the net, one wearing an orange hoodie with white shorts and another with a black jacket and blue shorts. There are two others facing them.Getty Images
With more than 30 million padel players worldwide, the sport is booming and has never been more popular

The emerging racquet sport of padel is growing so fast that courts "will be full for the next 10-15 years", the national governing body for tennis has predicted.

Padel - a blend of tennis and squash - was invented in Mexico in 1969 but in recent years has grown in popularity, with an estimated 30 million players across the world.

Tennis Cymru said it expected there would be 4,500 padel players in Wales by the end of 2025, and more than 6,000 by 2026.

Roger Wheatley, 64, from Cardiff, who has been playing the sport for more than four years, said he wished he had found it "20 years ago".

"I was getting to an age where squash was becoming too much for me and my bones were aching," said Mr Wheatley.

"So I was looking to play tennis, and I'd been to Spain and I'd seen this game [padel] and I thought 'that would be lovely in the UK, but it's never going to happen'."

Roger Wheatley, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, stands in front of a net. He has a padel racket in his hands and is wearing a blue shirt and wristband.
Mr Wheatley says he wishes he had started playing the sport years ago

Mr Wheatley said he bumped into a friend who told him about a padel court in Penarth that was open to non-members.

"He invited me along for a taster and it's just gone from there," he said.

"It's a fabulous game, it really is.

"It's got the element of squash in it with the ball coming off the glass at the back, and the tennis side of it as well.

"It's super sociable, and a game where you can just play some amazing shots. It's good fun, it's good exercise."

What is padel?

is a racquet sport that uses the same scoring conventions as lawn tennis but is played on courts around a third smaller.

The game is mainly played in the doubles format, with players using solid racquets with no strings. The courts are enclosed and, like in squash, players can bounce the ball off the walls.

Padel balls are smaller than those used in tennis and players serve underarm.

The game was created by Mexican businessman Enrique Corcuera and his wife Viviana as they enjoyed their holiday home in Las Brisas, a suburb of Acapulco.

The couple began throwing a ball at a wall, and Viviana quickly fell in love with the rudimentary version of the game.

A court measuring 20m (65ft) long by 10m (32ft) wide was built out of cement, making it easy to maintain, with walls of up to four metres (13ft) on each side to prevent balls from escaping onto neighbouring land.

The sport soon caught on abroad, reaching Europe and the UK.

In 1992 the British Paddle Association was formed and since then the sport has grown throughout Britain, In 2020 Tennis Wales was recognised as the national governing body for padel in Wales.

There are now county championships held in Wales and Tennis Wales hopes to host international competitions in the future.

Kate, wearing a turquoise top, looks at the camera. She has dark brown shoulder-length hair which is tied up, with sunglasses on the top of her head. She has a silver necklace on, and is stood in a padel court with the glass wall behind her.
Kate Llewelyn went to Malaga with her friends and they played padel all weekend

The sport is considered inclusive, open to people of all ages and abilities and played on a smaller court.

Kate Llewelyn, from Swansea, started playing after a court opened in the city.

"Me, my sister and a couple of friends thought 'let's give this a go', and we played, and we didn't get off for four hours because it was so much fun.

"We didn't know any rules, we didn't understand the glass, we were just whacking the ball back and forth and it was really fun, and then we started playing once a week."

The 31-year-old has now been playing for a year and a half and said for her 30th birthday they went to Malaga and played all weekend.

"I think it's quite a fast game, so if you turn up you can just get into it.

"You don't have to serve like tennis, because I can't serve, so I couldn't hold my own in a tennis game.

"But with the underarm serve it's so easy to pick up and it's so much easier to find three other girls to play with.

"We used to play netball together, we couldn't find 14 girls but we could find three."

Two people on a court playing padel. They are holding racquets and there is a net in the foreground of the shot which is blurred in the picture
The sport was invented in 1969 by a husband and wife duo on holiday

There are around 17 padel courts in Wales at the moment. Four years ago there was only one, but now there are plans to double the current number to 32 by the end of 2026.

Work has already started on a new padel court in Llandaff in Cardiff, one of the many new courts that have popped up in the capital city over the last few months.

Padel chair for Tennis Cymru, Hywel Lewis, said: "Growth is going to come down to the number of courts and venues because we can only get so many people on court at the moment.

"If you compare the number of courts we have to tennis or squash we're very much a minority sport at the moment.

"But in terms of participation it's such an engaging sport and so easy for everyone to get involved, I think that we'll fill the courts, however many courts get created, for the next 10 to 15 years at least."