Pickleball and padel are two exciting racket sports that have been gaining popularity worldwide. Both sports offer fun, social, and competitive experiences, making them attractive to players of all ages and skill levels. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the similarities and differences between pickleball and padel, exploring the gameplay, equipment, rules, and benefits of each sport.

Origins and History

Pickleball originated in the United States in 1965, created by a group of friends looking for a fun and accessible game to play with their families. The sport has since grown exponentially, with millions of players in North America and around the world.

Padel, on the other hand, was invented in Mexico in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera. The sport quickly gained popularity in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries before spreading across Europe and beyond. Today, padel is one of the fastest-growing sports globally, with a rapidly expanding fan base.

Gameplay and Rules

Pickleball is a combination of elements from tennis, badminton, and table tennis. It’s played on a court similar to a badminton court, with a lower net and smaller playing area. Pickleball is typically played in doubles, although singles matches are also possible. The game starts with an underhand serve, and points are scored by the serving team when the opposing team fails to return the ball or commits a fault.

Padel is a blend of tennis and squash, played on an enclosed court about a third the size of a tennis court. The court has walls on all sides, allowing players to use them to play the ball, much like in squash. Padel is almost exclusively played in doubles, and the scoring system is identical to that of tennis.

Equipment

Pickleball is played with a perforated plastic ball, similar to a Wiffle ball, and solid paddles made of wood or composite materials. The paddles are larger than table tennis paddles but smaller than traditional tennis rackets.

In padel, players use solid rackets with no strings, typically made from a composite material with a perforated surface. The ball used in padel is similar to a tennis ball but has slightly less pressure, resulting in a slower bounce.

Accessibility and Fitness Benefits

Both pickleball and padel are easy to learn and accessible to players of all ages and skill levels. The sports emphasize hand-eye coordination, strategy, and teamwork over physical strength and endurance, making them appealing to a broad range of participants.

Pickleball and padel provide excellent cardiovascular workouts, improving endurance, agility, and balance. Both sports offer a low-impact exercise option, putting minimal stress on joints and muscles, making them suitable for older players or those recovering from injuries.

Popularity and Growth

While pickleball has been more popular in North America, padel has seen significant growth in Europe and Latin America. Both sports are experiencing rapid expansion, with new courts and clubs being built worldwide and an increasing number of tournaments and competitive events.

Conclusion

Pickleball and padel are two exciting racket sports that offer engaging, social, and accessible gameplay for players of all ages and abilities. While they share some similarities, each sport has its unique characteristics, rules, and equipment. As their popularity continues to grow, more and more people are discovering the joys of pickleball and padel, making them excellent options for those looking to try something new or add variety to their fitness routines.

I’ve played both sports and while I find padel much more exciting and enjoyable, pickleball is more accessible and easier to set up since it doesn’t require any construction work to prepare a court, beyond the painting of the lines and the net. So

Ultimately I’m excited about the growth of both sports, because they are both helping people get back into sports after long absences, as well as providing a healthy way to socialize.

Padel is not just for the pros, in fact, one of the best things about the sport is that anyone of any level and age can have a great time and even take part in competitions.

There are competitions being held all over the major cities in Spain, and now also internationally. In this article, I’ll mention the best ones I know of in Barcelona, and also some of the international ones.

Players of different levels look for different kinds of tournaments, so the first thing you should do is consider your level and experience in competitive padel. Click here to find out your padel skill level.

If you’ve just started playing and don’t know many people who play padel, I would suggest you don’t play any tournaments and start looking for Americanas. These are events where you have 20-40 people and you get to change partners every match, so you can go alone and get to meet many people. Some of them give prizes for winners but mostly they are just for getting to know people, having fun and gaining experience. If you’re single, this might also be a great place to meet a guy or girl who shares your padel passion 😉 Participation in Americanas is quite close to 50/50 in terms of male and female most of the time.

Once you’ve got several Americanas under your belt, have found one or two partners that gel well with you and are ready to take things to the next level, you should start looking at tournaments.

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Well, what can we say about 2020? It was a real shit show for the whole world really, and my padel journey got heavily affected by the whole COVID crisis and lockdowns.

I started the year strongly, winning the first tournament I participated in. The rest of January was quite tough though, as right when I was hitting top form I got injured during a match and had to nurse my shoulder for the rest of the month, doing physio and recovery work.

I took the opportunity to do some reading and continue watching video tutorials of padel and tennis. I had bought some tennis courses and had then on my todo list for a while, so I worked through those during these lower intensity days. A lot of things transfer over to padel from tennis, but we’re now starting to see the first baby steps in English padel tuition as well, which is a good thing for the expansion of the sport.

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My third year of padel was a real mixed bag. I started out 2019 at peak enthusiasm for padel, and I wanted to train even more regularly and as similar to a pro as possible.

I approached Marcela Ferrari, then coach of number one player Fernando Belasteguin as well as Gemma Triay and Lucia Sainz, to see if she could mimic their training routine for an amateur player like me. It almost worked out until I got hit by a mysterious illness that really threw my plans off course big time.

All plans thrown off course

The situation was that after certain matches, I would get a high fever and be weak and bedridden for the next 2 days, then the fever would disappear and I’d be back in full fitness again.

As you can imagine, there were several problems with this situation:

1. I had a newborn back home to take care of, and I didn’t want my wife to end up taking care of both him and me.
2. I was worried about this fever, as I had never experienced anything similar, so I wanted to know what was causing it.
3. The fever seemed pretty random, so I could not plan anything, much less daily training sessions.

This was around February, so I had to abandon my plans to train at Marcela Ferrari’s academy, and notify my padel partners and other coaches of the situation, and that I might have to cancel things at last minute depending on how things went.

This obviously led to a decrease in my padel commitments, as I didn’t want to leave anyone high and dry due to a spontaneous episode of fever on my end.

I visited several doctors and they had me undergo a ton of tests, none of them which led to any conclusions. As a side note, I learned that with private insurance, doctors have an incentive to have you undergo as many tests as possible, while with the public system, it’s the other way round. The ideal is to be somewhere in the middle, but unfortunately, the onus on striking that balance rests on the patient, as doctors are incentivized to do otherwise. I have to say that I felt very frustrated with the situation, as it felt like nobody was ready to actually listen to me describe my symptoms and try to see what diagnosis could be had.

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