Run a padel tournament, or just keep the score

A padel racket is solid and stringless, with a perforated face full of holes, an EVA or foam core, and a carbon-fibre or fibreglass hitting surface. It is shorter than a tennis racket and, by rule, carries a wrist strap that must be worn to stop the racket flying out of the hand. Head shape drives the feel: round rackets balance control and are friendliest for beginners, teardrop shapes split the difference, and diamond shapes concentrate power for advanced players. Leading brands include Bullpadel, Head, Nox, Adidas, Babolat, Wilson and StarVie.

A padel ball is a pressurised felt ball that looks much like a tennis ball but runs at a slightly lower pressure, which gives a marginally lower bounce suited to the enclosed court and wall rebounds. Balls are supplied by brands such as Head, Wilson and Bullpadel and must meet FIP specifications for size, weight and bounce. Like tennis balls they lose pressure with play, so competitive matches use fresh balls and clubs get through them steadily.

A padel court is an enclosed rectangle of 20 × 10 metres, walled on all sides with a mix of glass and metal mesh that are part of the game. The net stands about 0.88 m high at the centre, rising slightly towards the posts, and divides the court into two halves each marked with service boxes. The surface is usually a sand-dressed artificial turf that gives grip and a consistent bounce. The walls — glass at the back and sides, mesh above — are what let rallies rebound and stay alive, and they define how the sport is played.

Padel is played mostly on sand-dressed artificial turf, so the right shoes matter. Dedicated padel and court shoes use a herringbone or omni-style outsole that grips the surface without clogging with sand, plus lateral support for the quick side-to-side movement the enclosed court demands. Running shoes are unsuitable — they lack the lateral stability and can slip. Many players use tennis or padel-specific models from the major racket-sport brands, chosen for the surface they play on most.

Beyond the racket, players use overgrips to fine-tune the handle, keep a spare wrist strap to hand, and carry a racket bag built for the sport. Protective eyewear is optional but sensible in doubles, where fast exchanges happen at close range near the net. Moisture-wicking apparel, a towel and water round out a typical kit. Because the racket is stringless and the ball is inexpensive, the ongoing cost of playing padel stays low compared with most racket sports.

Padel was invented in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera at his home in Acapulco, Mexico. Short on space for a full tennis court, Corcuera walled in a smaller rectangle beside his house, added a net, and turned the surrounding walls into part of the game — a ball rebounding off the concrete stayed in play rather than going out.

That single decision defined the sport. Enclosing the court and making the walls playable produced longer rallies, rewarded touch and positioning over raw power, and made the game far easier to pick up than tennis. Corcuera's court in Acapulco, known as Las Palmeras, is widely regarded as the birthplace of padel, and the core layout he settled on — an enclosed rectangle with an underhand serve and walls in play — is still the game played on hundreds of thousands of courts today.

Padel left Mexico through two friends of Corcuera. Alfonso de Hohenlohe, a Spanish aristocrat, played the game in Acapulco and built the first courts in Europe at the Marbella Club in Spain in 1974, where the jet-set crowd of the Costa del Sol took to it quickly. Around the same time the sport reached Argentina, which would become its second heartland and produce a long line of world-class players.

For the next three decades padel grew steadily in these two countries while remaining almost unknown elsewhere. Spain built clubs by the thousand, folded padel into tennis facilities, and developed a competitive circuit; Argentina turned it into a national pastime. National federations formed, and the International Padel Federation (FIP) was established in 1991 to govern the sport and run a World Padel Championship for national teams. By the 2000s Spain and Argentina were producing the athletes who would carry padel into its global boom.

In the 2010s padel broke out of its two heartlands and became one of the fastest-growing racket sports in the world. Spain led the way — padel courts overtook many other sports facilities in number — and the game spread rapidly through Italy, Sweden, France, the Nordics, the United Kingdom, the Middle East and the United States. Clubs went up in warehouses, on rooftops and beside gyms, and the low barrier to entry did the rest: a beginner can rally within minutes.

The boom was social as much as competitive. Padel is almost always played as doubles, it is easy to organize with three friends, and the enclosed court keeps rallies alive, which makes it forgiving and fun for newcomers. Investment followed the players. Facility operators, equipment brands and, eventually, a professional tour backed by serious money turned a regional favorite into a global sport in barely a decade.

Professional padel took shape around the World Padel Tour (WPT), which ran from 2013 to 2023 and staged the leading circuit for the world's best pairs. In 2022 a new tour, Premier Padel, launched with the backing of Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) and sanctioning from the FIP, setting up a period of rival circuits.

The split did not last. QSI acquired the World Padel Tour in August 2023, and from the 2024 season the WPT was absorbed into Premier Padel, unifying professional padel under a single circuit run with the FIP. The unified tour brought bigger prize money, a global calendar of Majors and tour events, and far more television and streaming coverage. Alongside the pro tour, the FIP continues to run the World Padel Championship for national teams, keeping a country-versus-country title at the top of the sport.