Pádel

 

Pádel is the most popular sport in Spain. When Philippe chose his flat in Madrid, the guy renting the flat was especially pleased to tell him that the flat was right near two pádel courts. P didn't really know how to answer that, never having heard of pádel. Now, though, he plays it regularly with his colleagues... and had decided to teach me to play as well. The big difference being that his colleagues had already played tennis, which I hadn't, unless you count a few sports lessons at Sandford Middle School twenty years ago.

Pádel is played on a 20m x 10m court with fences and windows all the way round. It's like tennis in that you serve diagonally, the ball is allowed to bounce on the ground once only and you're not supposed to hit it out of the court. It's more fun than tennis in that once the ball has hit the ground once, it's also allowed to bounce several times off the sides before you hit it. When serving, the ball is allowed to hit the windows. After the service, the ball can hit any part of the court casing. It adds a rather unpredictable edge to the game, it lets you hit the ball more wildly than you would normally and it makes your opponent work harder and put him/herself in some rather strange positions trying to hit the ball back.

Scoring is the same as in tennis. The rackets are made of plastic, foam and epoxy, they're solid, no strings the way tennis rackets have. They're also shorter and have an arrangement of holes in the middle, rather like a solitaire board. Also, the balls are slightly less pressurized than tennis balls, they don't bounce quite so easily. The courts can be made of synthetic material, earth or concrete. The one we play on in Madrid is synthetic.

There's a French foundation for pádel, the Ligue Nationale de Padel, and an English one too, the Padel England Association, though the English website (http://www.padelengland.org/) confuses pádel and paddle tennis. The big difference is that the first was invented in Mexico, the second on a British cruise ship. Also, the rules are slightly different.

Doesn't always work out as planned, though.