What are the Differences Between Padel and Other Racquet Sports?

Video Transcript

Padel is fun and sociable because it’s normally played as a doubles it’s a confined space it’s great fun. It’s easy to turn defence into attack.

I noticed that when I’m playing Padel it’s a lot noisier than playing tennis and also it’s fast because you haven’t got to go and pick the balls up. So it’s definitely a fun and sociable game with lots of noise and action going on. It’s played in doubles because of the size of the court.

You can play singles but it’s quite tricky. You could play half court singles, but generally it’s played in doubles. Imagine playing tennis with the tram lines in singles, that would be the best way to describe it. Again this adds to the social aspects of the game.

Well the wall is either the glass or it’s the metal. So it’s a good shot if you volley against the metal but it’s got to bounce before the metal and then you know what angle the ball is coming off. And the back wall and some of the side walls is like squash, you can hit it off at the back. So you get a lot of lobbying in Padel. So if you can’t, if it’s a really good high lob then you have to use the back of the wall to try and lob it back or you could actually hit an aggressive shot off the wall, and also off the side wall which doesn’t happen so much, you can play a squash like shot off the side wall which hopefully goes over the net.

The challenges that tennis and squash players will have, is in Padel you generally have to serve and volley, and there’s a lot of volley and smashing. So in some tennis you see a lot of people at the back of the court, so it’s definitely a more attacking game, it’s also more smashing and lobbing. And when you volley, you have to swing a little bit where in tennis the volley is a lot crisper, and when you smash, you don’t smash aggressively unless it’s an easy smash. So a lot of the time you’re playing tactical smashes into the corner.

Squash players will struggle a little bit because they swing more so they’re going to have to cut down their swings, and also it’s going to be an alien to them to serve them volley, and obviously there’s positional aspects to consider as well.

The options for learning the game here at East Glos is to come along and do a taster session, or have a go with hopefully me and have a go on the court. It will be open to the community that they will be able to book the courts online. Obviously there will be a cost to that but we’re hoping that they get so involved that they’ll then join the club and enjoy all the different sports and social sides of the club.