A sporting fad might rob us of the next Wimbledon star

Telegraph

19-02-2025

The craze for the Johnny-come-lately game of padel tennis, an addictive hybrid of squash and tennis, is sweeping the country – but not among those living near the quaint and affluent Northway Tennis Club in Hampstead.
Local residents are massing, probably with pitchforks and flaming torches, to object to the club's plans to install five new padel courts. They insist the 'noisy' game will disrupt their 'tranquillity and mental wellbeing'. At first sight it looks like classic Nimby-ism. But if they've lived with the blood-curdling oaths and meltdowns emanating from most tennis clubs during knife-edge league matches with a title at stake, they can surely put up with a bit of 'splat…splat' and cheerful padel banter.
But I suspect it's not just the noise that bothers the genteel residents. Closer inspection reveals a whole class divide between lawn tennis, still bedevilled by its charmingly retro, bourgeois origins, (C'mon Tim!) – all cucumber sandwiches and Miss Joan Hunter-Dunn – and the phenomenon known as padel. With celebrity devotees including David Beckham, Emmanuel Macron and Serena Williams, padel is invariably described as 'the 'world's fastest-growing sport'', with an estimated 30 million players globally and around 50,000 Brits giving it a go.
But what's the appeal, and why do so many within the tennis establishment fear its soaraway success since its invention in Acapulco in 1969 by a jet-set couple, keen to alleviate the boredom of long days spent sunning oneself, cocktail in hand, beside pristine seas?
A few weeks ago, in windswept North Cornwall, I played my second ever game of padel tennis – and my first in 40 years. My original initiation was on a sun-drenched court in Andalusia with an old tennis mucker Judy Congdon, later Spanish ladies' padel champion, thanks to remorseless consistency and low cunning.
The Cornish outing, a 'cruel but fair' doubles with three tennis and Real Tennis buffs with a 'die-for-the-Emperor' approach, was exhilarating, if somewhat crude. Thwacking the bouncy ball over a net and around the back and side walls of the enclosed court with solid paddles, like large table tennis bats, we ran like rabbits for three hours, eventually collapsing in a giggling heap. It was huge fun and even at our rudimentary level, we could instantly play a hard-fought match.
Happy days, you'd think. But as President of Warwickshire Tennis, I hear endless club officials bewailing the rise of this cuckoo in the nest. The LTA has embraced padel warmly, directing county associations to divert sparse funds to build padel facilities. It's irresistible for cash-strapped tennis clubs as padel courts, costing as little as £45,000 are heavily used and a licence to print money. The LTA evidently believed padel would act as a gateway drug to the more complex and technical sport of tennis.
Wrong. Too often talented youngsters try padel, get an immediate buzz and stay with it for life. It's hard enough to attract working-class kids into tennis – though Davis Cup hero Dan Evans, Warwickshire's favourite scamp, would make the perfect poster boy for this. The tennis equivalent of 'The Victor' comic's 'Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track', Evans's silky skills, nurtured in the mean streets of Hall Green, have brought him undreamed of fame – and the national game is missing a trick if it doesn't exploit his 'bad boy' allure – just don't let him take up padel!