What is padel?

History

Padel is a relatively young sport that has been practiced since the 1980’s. It is a sport both collective and individual, whose players, in order to obtain a common result, in front of the adversaries that, with the same resources, have the opposite purpose. It is a sport that requires a highly technical and physical state. It is played in couples and consists of three material fundamental elements for its development: the ball, the racket or blade and the padel court. Its rules are well defined and it is represented by federations and associations. Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay and Spain are countries where padel has experienced a high development. The PPT (Padel Pro Tour) is the most important circuit of this sport in the world, without missing the world championships of padel. In the last years it has had a great implementation in Spain.

The English word «paddle», spelt «pádel» in Spanish, was included in the thirteenth edition of the Spanish Dictionary of the Real Academia Española. This helps us to differentiate it from a homonymous sport practiced in the United States with different rules and which is known as paddle tennis.

It is in 1975 when this sport appears in Argentina, where in a few years later is going to have a great boom, with more than 2 million players and 10.000 courts along the country. Amongst the most important players in the Argentina’s male circuit are worth mentioning: Alejandro Lasaigues, Mariano Lasaigues, Gustavo Maquirriain, Roberto Gattiker, Cristian Ferreiro, Agustín Gómez Silingo, Fernando Belasteguin, Gabriel Reca, Sebastián Nerone, Juan Martín Díaz, Matías Solana and the brilliant young Junior category player Juan Cruz Grosso.

In 2005 Padel Pro Tour is born, which is the Professional Padel Circuit. The best players in the world participate in this tournament which takes place in Spain and Argentina, where Juan Martín Díaz and Fernando Belasteguín are the best. The first is Argentine-Spanish and the second one is Argentinean, though he lives in Spain.