Those of you that follow the news about Padel in Spanish will no doubt be aware of Padel Pro-Tour – the new professional circuit for Padel players that caused a stir when it was launched a couple of months ago because of its confrontation with the official Federation of Padel in Spain.
For those of you that don’t follow the Spanish stuff, basically what the PPT is trying to do is increase the professionalism of Padel across the board through greater investment and more business-like management.
They will be organising a series of tournaments throughout the Padel season (20 are planned for 2006 – including at least 14 Mens and 8 womens) and the idea is to attract the worlds best players by obtaining more sponsorship for the events, more prize money for the players, more publicity and TV coverage of competitions.
So far, so good – more investment in the sport and increased publicity should help to develop the game. The biggest problem however is that the creation of the PPT divided the sport of Padel right down the middle – in particular because it seems that players that opt to participate in the tournaments of the Padel Pro-Tour will not be eligible to play in those organised by the Spanish Padel Federation…. (more…)
With the two best tennis players in the world, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, about to contest the Wimbledon Mens Final in London, there has been a lot of discussion about the way different surfaces suit different players. Federer for example, is arguably the best tennis player in the world on grass and therefore goes into the final today as favourite, whereas it is well-known that the young Spaniard Nadal prefers a harder surface like clay, and is having to change his game to adapt to grass – concentrating more on his serve and closing in at the net more than he usually would.
In tennis the distinction tends to be between a ‘fast’ court and a ’slow’ court – on a fast court (like the grass of Wimbledon for example) the ball tends not to bounce up as high, favouring big servers and serve-and-volley players, whilst on a slower court (like the clay of Roland Garros in Paris) the ball will bounce higher thus favouring baseliners, especially those with long strokes. (more…)
