Padel is more fun than pickleball. But can the pricey racket sport enjoyed by America's top 1% win over the whole country?
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- Padel is gaining traction in the US but faces accessibility and cost barriers.
- The sport, popular in Spain and Argentina, requires specialized courts, unlike pickleball.
- Growth in the US hinges on youth programs and increased visibility through the Pro Padel League.
I first stepped onto a padel court in 2022. I was visiting my brother in Philadelphia and he drove us just outside city limits to a multi-purpose fitness center called PADELphia.
As a tennis purist who first picked up a racket in 1995 and was generally underwhelmed by other racket sports — including America's latest obsession (pickleball) — I had low expectations for this game that had been described to me as a cross between tennis and squash. But it was my little brother's one request. And it turned out he knew something I didn't: padel is electric.
My first observation was that entering a padel court feels distinct from walking onto any court in the racket-sports family. There's no chain-link fence, which is practically synonymous with a public tennis court. It's enclosed, but not in the claustrophobic way a squash court is. A padel court is surrounded by four glass walls, which gives less of a stuffy, stifling feel and more of an open, airy one.
Importantly, the court entrances remain open. You enter a padel court through one of two cased openings on either side of the net, which serve more of a purpose than simply granting a player entrance; the open doors allow players to hustle outside the court mid-point to retrieve a ball that's bounced over the glass walls and attempt to keep the point alive.
As a tennis player, the game is fairly simple to pick up. The scoring is the same, and the strokes are similar enough. I wasn't chasing down overheads that flew outside the PADELphia court, but I was able to string together sophisticated points my first time playing the sport. I was hooked. After our 90-minute court time expired, we were able to tack on another 30 minutes before the next reservation arrived.
While my tennis experience gave me a headstart, it's far from a prerequisite for the average person to enjoy the game. In fact, the hardest parts about tennis (the serve and generating topspin) are irrelevant in padel, as you serve underhand and the paddle doesn't have strings.
"It's easy to pick up," confirmed Los Angeles-based tennis and padel coach Daniel Wulff. "It's definitely easier than tennis. The learning curve is quicker. There's no strings, so it's very easy to interpret how to hit the ball."
Aaron Bencid
Wulff, who grew up playing competitive tennis in Venezuela, was introduced to padel in 2017 while living off the coast of Spain in Mallorca. "I found a job in a padel center, and I started playing," he said, adding that the courts were consistently "packed." After his stint in Mallorca, he moved to LA, where the sport was virtually unknown at the time, and tucked away his newly developed skill.
Fast-forward seven years to 2024, and coaching padel is his main source of income. He primarily works with high net-worth clients who have built private courts in their backyards.
For years, to play the game in LA, "you had to know someone," said Wulff. That's only recently starting to change with the opening of The Padel Courts, a two-court club in East Hollywood, and Taktika Padel, a four-court club located in the LA Galaxy facility in Carson.
Now, you don't necessarily have to know someone; you just need money — and the patience to sit through LA traffic. Booking a court at The Padel Courts costs $50 per half hour. That's $150 for a quality 90-minute session, or about $38 per person when you split the court four ways. Taktika is cheaper and maxes out at $13 per hour per person, but 23 miles away from my apartment.
It's not worth it, even for me, a padel-loving Santa Monica resident. Tennis and pickleball are less fun but more accessible. I can bike to public courts and walk through the chain-linked fence free of charge — and that's a major problem for padel.
The barriers holding padel back from exploding in the US
As I've found firsthand, it's hard to play padel in the US. I have limited court options in LA, where I live. When I lived in Brooklyn last fall, I was within walking distance of Padel Haus Dumbo and could pay $60 an hour (per person) during peak hours to play on one of the four pristine, indoor courts, meaning a 90-minute session would cost me about $90. There's a reason this sport is popular among high-net-worth individuals.
Unlike pickleball, where you can set up your own court on practically any level surface with a portable net and tape to mark off the lines, padel requires a facility.
The sport, which dates back to the 1960s and is linked to a Mexican businessman who set up a court at his holiday home, was originally for the wealthy.
"It started in 1969 in Acapulco with Enrique Corcuera," said Christ Ishoo, cofounder of the venture firm EEP Capital, which invests specifically in the padel market. "He did it in a way where it was a high-society sport in Mexico. It was never a sport for the people, so it never hit off." Until, that is, Argentine friends of Corcuera "took it to Argentina, and from Argentina to Spain."
Spain and Argentina have had the best players in the world for the last 30 years, Ishoo added, "without a doubt."
Courtesy of Christ Ishoo
It's not a coincidence that the world's top players are coming out of countries with accessible courts and programming. The lack of junior padel programs in the US means there's not yet an American superstar, which Ishoo believes is essential for the sport to take off: "To make this happen in the US, I need star quality."
While court access is still generally limited in the States, there is one exception: Miami. The game has become so big in the south Florida city that Ishoo is looking elsewhere to invest.
"It's over-saturated," he said. "I'd rather be in Charlotte than in Miami because they've already built their community. They've already been there for seven years, so you need to do a very special thing to succeed in Miami."
Why Miami? Ishoo points to the demographics: "Right now, it's a Latino sport. In the public eye, it's a Latino sport. This sport will be played by everyone, but we need to be accessible for everyone — and today it's not."
The future of padel in America
Ishoo, who first played the sport in Sweden in 2013 and has been building courts across Europe ever since, moved to the US in 2019 to grow the game. He's all-in, predicting that, in the US, there will be "10,000 courts in about 10 years." He's adamant that one key to growth will be incorporating youth programs: "How do we get the kids involved? Because that will create superstars for the future."
He's also trying to create more buzz around the Pro Padel League (PPL), North America's first of its kind. Ishoo owns the LA Beat, one of the 10 pro teams that compete against each other from April, the start of the season, to November when the season culminates with the PPL Cup Final.
To capture viewer attention, Ishoo says the league, which is only in its second season, needs to be more "Americanized."
"You need to have a ring," he said, adding that gaining viewership will also require creativity. "How do we think differently? How do we do this in a way that excites people? It's too quiet. It's too in the shadow of tennis."
Courtesy of Daniel Wulff
Ishoo, like the author, had a moment with the sport when he first picked up a paddle.
"I played and, what a beautiful sport. It's athletic, sexy, and fast," he recalled. "As a human being, we want to be good at stuff, and this makes you feel good very fast."
Wulff, a master of racket sports, recognizes the magic of padel perhaps better than anyone.
"It's like four-dimension tennis. You have an afterlife: When the ball goes by you in tennis, it's over; in padel, the ball can come back. It opens a new world," he said.
But is the magic of the game enough to create a movement in the US? He's not as convinced as Ishoo, especially with a behemoth like pickleball to compete with.
"Pickleball, to me, is in the DNA of Americans. It's cheap, or free in most places, and the court is smaller, so you don't have to move that much," said Wulff. "It doesn't have the sexiness but it gets people going, it gets people playing, it gets people saving money. How do you beat that?"
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