Padel Tennis – Grassroots news from the UK and beyond …

In 1974 Alfonso de Hohenlohe Enrique Corcuera traveled to Mexico to stay with a friend and during his stay became interested in a new sport that his friend had recently created. The sport incorporated a court with two 3m walls facing each other, a net across the middle andwire meshing along the sides. The game was played with wooden paddles and thus became known as Padel Tennis.

In his enthusiasm for the new sport, when Alfonso Hohenlole returned to Spain, he perfected some of the details of the court and the rules of game, and then set about constructing the two first courts in Spain in the Marbella Club.

He then began to promote the game of Padel amongst his jet-set friends, who immediately become fans. The rapid success that the sport achieved in such a short time attracted some outstanding figures from tennis such as Manolo Santana, and matches were organised to spread padel across the Costa del Sol, and several clubs began to construct their own courts.

In 1975, the Argentine millionaire Julio Menditenguia, a good friend of Alfonso de Hohenlohe, and a regular visitor to Marbella, witnessed the success of padel, and decided to develop the sport in Argentina. In just a few years he had achieved in raising padel to be one of Argentina’s leading sports, with than 2 million players and 10,000 courts constructed.

In subsequent years padel has extended to other countries like Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, etc. with numerous fans. Its influence has also spread in North America and Canada.

On the 25th July 1991, the International Federation of Padel is constituted in Madrid and the presidency is granted to a Spanish man, Julio Artiach Joy, who was charged with creating a circuit of international matches and drawing up a specific set of regulations for the international game.

In 1992, in the facilities of the Moral Golf Club and the Seville Expoas the 1st World Padel Championships were contested between the delegations of 11 countries of America and Europe.

At present, padel is extending through different European countries, and already federations have been formed in France, Italy, Belgium, Austria and most recently the UK.