Editor’s note: The following (lightly edited) feature article is the seventh installment of a new “How I Became Obsessed With Padel” series we’re rolling out from regular guest contributor, Scott Matulis, a former PR Director for the Worldwide Senior Tennis Tour who discovered padel in Vegas a few years ago and can now hit balls off of the glass occasionally. He is the author of the LinkedIn and Substack serial novel The Applicant and his own padel Substack.

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Will Boyce is another one of those super-smart, young guys who is driving the growth of padel in the U.S. After a collegiate tennis career, an MBA, and a stint in the finance world, Will discovered padel and realized that there was a great business opportunity for padel in the United States.

He founded Padel39 in 2024 in Austin, TX. Just two years later, it has expanded to two Austin clubs, with a third planned for South Austin. This past January, Boyce also bought an existing club in Dallas (formerly known as the Dallas Padel Club), and is transforming it into a Padel39-branded club offering much, much more than padel.

I sat down with Will, asked him how he became obsessed with padel, and how he sees the opportunity for Padel39 in Texas and the U.S. as a whole. Here’s what he told me…

I know you’re French, you’re a former college tennis player, and you’ve got an MBA, but how did you become a padel person?

For me it’s a bit unique, because I became a padel player and a padel business owner at the same time.

As you said, I played a bit of college tennis back in the day, and all my friends in France were starting to pivot to padel. All the good tennis players were starting to get better, but also all of the non-tennis players. Everybody.

When I saw that, the total addressable market just seemed so big for padel. There were so many people getting excited about the sport, and there was nothing in the U.S.

I got excited about the business. I had played padel only a few times with my friends back home because I was already living in the U.S. In New York there was nothing. It was right before Padel Haus opened.

I was playing a little bit in Europe. I saw that it could be a great business. I started wanting to play more in the U.S.

Where did you start playing in the U.S.? What club?

I went to Miami the first time just because I was curious about the clubs there. The first time I played in the U.S. was at Wynwood and Ultra.

I had probably played about 10 times before that in France. I went down there because I wanted to check out what the clubs were like in the U.S.

Then I went to Padel Haus once it opened in New York. I fell in love with the game, and that kind of made me say, ‘Okay, I think this game is amazing. It’s going to be super fun to see it grow in the U.S., and I think there’s a really good business opportunity as well.’

Tell me about the very first time you ever played padel. What was your first impression?

I thought it was fun instantly and I was excited about the learning opportunity. And I was intrigued by the whole tactical aspect. I felt great about the contact point and the workout and the fact that the points were longer. The contact point was amazing.

In pickleball, the contact just feels dead, and in tennis, you have to train a lot — and if you don’t train anymore and you’re not hitting the sweet spot all the time, it’s frustrating.

In padel, it’s the opposite. The contact feels really pure, and the points are longer, so it’s more fun.

I also almost felt like I had a headache to some degree because you need to use your brain a lot more in padel, especially when you’re new to it.

You’re thinking, ‘How does this angle work? If this guy is left-handed, why does it go in this direction versus if he’s right-handed? Do I go side wall first or back wall first? Do I try to do something else?’

There are just so many more tools.

For me, the hardest part coming from tennis was the overheads and the people from other countries making fun of me in languages I don’t understand. How about for you?

Defense. Letting the ball go and using the walls.

Every tennis player tries to take everything on the volley instead of slowing the game down as much as possible.

I think slowing the game down is probably the hardest part.

In your opinion, where is the U.S. padel market right now? Is it just at the beginning? How many padel clubs can it support — or is it really just city by city?

I think I have a bit of a controversial opinion there.

Right this minute, I’d say we’re still somewhat at the beginning, but we’re also starting to feel some skepticism from operators about its viability.

For the last two years, all we heard was, ‘Padel is going to take the U.S. by storm. We’re going to see 30,000 courts by 2030,’ or whatever the number was, and everybody is going to be crushing it.

I think it’s simply not the case.

Most operators in the U.S. struggle when you talk to them. Only a few — ourselves and others in that category — are lucky enough to have a good business, more because we diversify our revenue streams and try to provide an experience that goes beyond padel, whether that’s sports, social and so forth.

The people who are solely focused on the sport itself and are purely transactional — come play because you love padel and then leave — are struggling. That’s because the sport has had slower adoption than we thought.

It’s supply and demand. I think there’s a high barrier to entry in the U.S., whether it’s regulatory or capital constraints. That makes it difficult to build.

I’m still extremely bullish on the fact that the sport will take off. But I think it’s always going to be a balancing act between growing supply in order to create demand. We’re struggling to get more and more sustainable supply out there.

I’m bullish on the sport on its own, and I think it’s going to go extremely well, but I think it’s still going to take time for the education piece.

I’ve interviewed quite a few club owners and everybody talks about community and building community. Is that what keeps people coming back, beyond simply how much fun the sport is?

If the question is how important community is for padel, it’s the number-one answer in almost any survey we run, and even in Playtomic reports.

Why do people play padel? The number-one answer is social.

You have four people on a court that’s 20 by 10 meters. It’s quite small. You get more interaction. You get to talk more than on a tennis court. There are all of those factors that make the sport much more social than others, and that’s the essence of what drives people to it.

If you’re able to build community, create the right spaces and program around that, community becomes a key factor.

And in the U.S., I think Americans want to belong to something, whether it’s a country club at older ages or a social club for millennials and Gen Z. There’s always a desire to belong somewhere.

The operators who focus on the community aspect and can create those spaces should succeed.

Is that why you decided to build Padel39 the way you did?

We always built Padel39 around padel, social, and wellness. Those were the three pillars, and they still are today.

Where we have started to focus more is really on the social side and building a space that will retain people for longer than just an hour and a half.

In order to do that, you usually have to focus on hospitality and food and beverage, and that’s where we went in that direction. We wanted community.

It’s also a business decision. If you’re able to bring hospitality into it, the economics can be quite different.

I see two levers. There’s a purely strategic P&L decision, but there’s also a real marketing opportunity.

In this sport, we’re doing the hardest thing right now, which is the awareness and education stage in the customer journey.

If you’re able to build a good hospitality program that sits on top of your padel business, you can leverage that as an awareness and marketing tool to bring new people to padel.

For us, it was a combination of those two things.

Everybody I talk to says the challenge is attracting new padel players because nobody knows about the sport.

It seems to me that the people in the U.S. who know about padel are wealthy people who’ve traveled to France, Portugal, or somewhere abroad and discovered it there or else Hispanic people who already know the sport. Is that fair?

You’re spot on with the early adopters.

There’s definitely a Hispanic demographic, although maybe the caveat is that it’s people within that demographic who have the disposable income to afford it.

The early adopters are more or less the ones you described: cosmopolitan people, Europeans who already have awareness of it, and South Americans as well. So there’s a strong Hispanic demographic in that sense.

Then you definitely have the wealthiest segment. It has become part of the VIP scene in the U.S. It’s that networking sport and so forth.

There’s definitely a trend factor to it within VIP circles. Those two categories are early adopters.

I’m guessing that you’re a soccer fan as well. How long do you think it will take before the U.S. dominates padel the way we dominate soccer?

I enjoy watching soccer. Especially the French national team and PSG. Those are probably my two favorite teams. As for your question, I think it’s still going to take a while for the U.S. to dominate soccer, and I think padel will take even longer.

I’m probably not the right person to ask this. I don’t think I have that macro experience or knowledge about the life cycle of sports within a country.

But my uneducated opinion would be that it all starts with bringing in great professionals and having great infrastructure that allows you to create the right training culture and bring in the right experts who can develop athletes from the youngest ages to the highest level.

It’s a matter of infrastructure, culture, and coaching quality.

Then you need to have a sport that’s popular enough and has good incentives for the average American to choose it instead of tennis or American football and so forth.

Americans have focused their best athletes on football, basketball — the big four sports. They haven’t had their best athletes in soccer because it’s not as popular.

It requires a structural shift plus expertise in general. You’re talking about 50 years for all of that to happen. I don’t see it anytime soon.

To learn more about Padel39 and its current locations in East and North Austin or future locations in South Austin and Dallas, please be sure to visit their website or follow them on Instagram.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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I first wrote about the controversy surrounding how to properly pronounce “padel” in the U.S. clear back in December 2023 for my former site, The Padel State.

At the time, we had just a small fraction of the courts, clubs, and players that we do now. Yet despite all the growth we’ve seen since then — both infrastructure- and awareness-wise — the debate (unfortunately and frustratingly) continues to linger on.

However, I’m hoping that may soon start to change thanks to some higher-profile figures in the U.S. padel world coming out and attempting to set the record straight recently. This includes Michael Dorfman, the CEO of the Pro Padel League (PPL), who waded into the topic a few weeks back on CNBC:

Keep in mind, Dorfman isn’t the only CEO in the U.S. padel world who has come out and pronounced the sport properly on a CNBC segment about the sport, either (and no, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s not “puh-DEL”).

In fact, Wayne Boich, who is the founder and CEO of Reserve Padel, has now appeared on CNBC multiple times (often alongside superstar athletes turned padel addicts like Derek Jeter and Jimmy Butler) and pronounced it as it should be, which is “paddle.”

Given that the guy owns a half dozen of the highest profile padel clubs in the U.S., runs a series of ultra-luxe professional padel tournaments around the globe, and regularly plays with some of the best players in the world from Argentina and Spain, you’d think if anyone would know how it’s pronounced it’d probably be him, right?

Even so, there are still plenty of U.S. players and even club operators, for that matter, for whom “puh-DEL” is a hill they are willing to die on.

Untangling This Seemingly Never-Ending Knot

The first argument you’ll usually hear the “puh-DEL” camp roll out (if they even have one) is the fact that “paddle” actually refers to platform tennis — which some people call “paddle tennis” and is a similar enclosed-court racquet sport played largely in the winter in small (often very wealthy) enclaves of the U.S. in the Northeast and Midwest.

Therefore, in their minds, padel should obviously be pronounced “puh-DEL” to account for this.

The only problem with this argument is that, while it’s true that many people do colloquially refer to that sport as “paddle” (and will no doubt continue to do until the end of time), it has officially been known as platform tennis since clear back in 1950 when the American Paddle Tennis Association unanimously voted to change its name to the American Platform Tennis Association — ironically enough to help distinguish it from other racquet sports that were often also called paddle tennis.

To that point, there is another niche (albeit very fun) U.S. racquet sport — which is played almost exclusively in warm-weather spots like Venice Beach, California — that has also been commonly called “paddle tennis” over the years. However, yet again, this sport was officially rebranded as POP Tennis back in 2015, as you can see in the image below from their website.

In other words, as I also pointed out in my recently published padel book, for over a decade now there hasn’t been any racquet sport here in the U.S. whose official name is “paddle” or “paddle tennis” — despite many people and/or players of platform tennis and POP tennis continuing to refer to them as such.

So, there really shouldn’t be any need to mispronounce padel in order to differentiate it from these other sports.

Confusion Over Where the Confusion Even Comes From

Of course, there’s also a second camp of “puh-DEL” diehards who insist that since “padel” derives from Spanish and is often written as “pádel” in Latin American countries, the proper pronunciation is obviously “puh-DEL.”

Many will even immediately go on to cite a native-Spanish-speaking player or pro they know who pronounces it this way to heighten their case.

While that’s all well and good — and I’ll admit that, yes, I know a few who do, too — the fact of the matter is that having the accent over the “a” rather than the “e” means the emphasis should be placed on the first syllable and not the second, like those in the “puh-DEL” camp pronounce it.

What’s more, “padel” wasn’t even officially recognized as the proper way to spell the sport until 1997 (nearly three decades after the sport’s invention) — with many Latin American countries, including the padel powerhouse of Argentina, spelling it the same way it’s actually pronounced up until that point (as you can see in the images below from a leading global padel publication at the time).

Oh, and here’s one more thing to consider… one of the very first courts built in the U.S. (which, sadly, was recently torn down) was in Chattanooga, TN, clear back in 1996, and if you look closely at the dedication plaque (pictured below) you’ll notice something interesting: it’s called the Katherine Jackson Johnston ‘25 Paddle Court.

Blame It On Marketing

Prior to getting involved in the padel world, I spent 15+ years working on the direct-response-marketing team for a financial-advice company where anytime anything went wrong, from a missed budget to an unhappy customer, the easiest solution seemingly was to just “blame it on marketing” (i.e., us).

However, when it comes to the U.S. padel world’s ongoing pronunciation problem, it really is the “fault” of the marketers — namely a group of enterprising individuals who began importing courts into the U.S. about a decade ago and decided to market the sport as “puh-DEL” so as to differentiate it from platform tennis or POP tennis, which as discussed earlier, some people still mistakenly refer to as “paddle.”

The only problem is that in their attempt to reduce confusion about what sport they were selling, they’ve inadvertently spawned a whole lot more confusion about the name of the sport we’re now all playing.

Just ask Mike May. He was one of the earliest pioneers playing and promoting the sport here in the U.S. clear back in the early 1990s, and went on to both serve as the President of the U.S. Padel Association for 21 years (!) and represent Team USA in 13 consecutive World Padel Championships (!!).

He’s been doing everything he can to help clear up the confusion, including recording the following video with Daniel Patti, the former President of the International Padel Federation…

… and chiming in on social media posts suggesting that “puh-DEL” is how it should properly be pronounced in the sport’s native tongue of Spanish with responses like:

Actually, everyone here in Spain, where I am right now with my Spanish wife, says it the correct way. They laugh at the American pronunciation. They don’t pronounce it that way either.

Who Needs Facts When You Have Opinions?

In my experience, the less time someone has been playing padel the more likely they are to not only call it “puh-DEL” but also vehemently argue their case.

And then there’s the final camp of folks who say that they simply don’t care how it’s supposed to be pronounced and are going to keep calling it “puh-DEL” because they think it sounds so much “cooler” or more exotic.

For the most part, my take on the whole thing has basically just been: who really cares how you pronounce it as long as you have fun playing it?

However, with The Sports Business Journal now declaring that padel is the fastest growing sport in the U.S., I do also think that perhaps it is time for us to all start rallying behind a single and proper pronunciation…

And to that end I’m happy to see everyone from Michael Dorfman to Mike May to the racquet brands like Play Henry and even the American Collegiate Padel League doing their part to help set things straight.

My hope is that if enough well-established figures within the sport continue to champion the proper pronunciation and enough newbies take a moment to educate themself about how the sport actually should be pronounced and why, we can eventually just fall in line with the other 99%+ of the padel playing world.

Then again, given that the U.S. is the kind of place where the “official” names of mammoth bodies of water can be changed practically overnight (after decades or even centuries of being called something else) based on the whim of a single former reality television star, perhaps it only makes sense that padel will forever be known as “puh-DEL” here in America.

I guess we’ll see…

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If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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Dear Padel Nation,

Practically all eyes in the U.S. padel world were focused squarely on Southern California this past month thanks to a flurry of events that took place there in August (several of which I was lucky enough to attend in person), including:

• The second leg of the 2026 Pro Padel League (PPL) season, which took over the famed Barker Hangar in Los Angeles from August 13th - 16th and brought more than 50 of the world’s top pro padel players to the area for four days of team-based competition…

• A “Youth Development Day” co-hosted by the Los Angeles Padel Club (LAPC) and the L.A. Beat of the PPL, which was held at LAPC on August 9th in the lead up to all the PPL festivities the following weekend…

• World-renowned, U.K.-based padel coach and founder of The Padel School, Sandy Farquharson, embarking on a SoCal teaching tour with stops at multiple clubs in L.A. and San Diego (including Padel N9NE where he did his best to try to fix my forehand service return)…

• RacquetX hosting one of its City Series stops at FairBanks Ranch Country Club in Rancho Santa Fe, just north of San Diego on August 18th, and…

• Padel Up (which just celebrated its two-year anniversary this month) not only hosting a PPL II competition in conjunction with the PPL’s second event, but also a USA Padel 250-level tournament August 22nd - 23rd and a grassroots, community-building tournament known as The Clash of the Clubs this past weekend (highlights here).

This month, I also had the pleasure of playing at one of the U.S.’s most unique and longest-standing padel clubs, now known as The Padel Courts, on famed Sunset Boulevard in East Hollywood — which will be the subject of an upcoming feature article as I think it’s one of the most fascinating venues in U.S. today.

Beyond that, some other very notable and newsworthy things happened across the U.S. padel world this month, like:

• Team USA qualifying for the 2026 World Cup — which is to be held in Doha, Qatar later this year — on both the men’s and women’s side of the ticket after two nail-bitting, winner-take-all matches at the North & Central American Qualifiers that were held just outside Toronto at the beginning of the month…

• The U.S. Junior National Team delivering its best-ever result at the American Junior Circuit III in Veracruz, Mexico…

• USA Padel announcing that the 2026 US Open Padel Championships will take place October 2nd - 4th at Padel Haus in Brooklyn, with a $40,000 Division 1 prize pool — which is the largest in the tournament’s history. (For a detailed primer on everything you need to know about U.S. padel tournaments and national teams, be sure to check out this recent piece from regular guest contributor, Scott Matulis).

• Padel Haus further announcing that it has officially partnered with the New York Atlantics PPL franchise, and…

• PPL CEO Michael Dorfman weighing in on the never-ending debate about the (mis)pronunciation of “padel” in the U.S. on CNBC 🙌 🙌…

Finally, we published a handful of feature and guest articles exploring the brands, clubs, communities, and culture driving the U.S. padel revolution, which you can check out directly below.

As always, thanks for reading — and play up!

ae

««« 12 Perfect Photos from the PPL in L.A. »»»

If you weren’t able to make it to Santa Monica to catch the action live earlier this month, this photo-essay from Ben Blair might just be the next best thing. Enjoy!

««« Is Multi-Sport the Future of U.S. Padel? »»»

With a few cracks starting to show in the great American padel dream, some new data from our preferred partners at Playbypoint highlights a bright spot for U.S. racquet clubs that offer multiple sports in addition to padel. Here’s what you should know.

««« Six U.S. Padel Clubs to Keep an Eye On »»»

While these six U.S. padel clubs may not get quite as much attention as some bigger-name outfits opening across the country, they are (somewhat quietly) set to bring a lot more padel to states including NY, SC, TN, TX, WI, and MS (yes, Mississippi!) in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future.

Who knows, maybe you’ll even find yourself playing at one of these clubs someday soon (like I have been at the one pictured above).

««« More Tales of Padel Obsession »»»

For our ongoing “How I Became Obsessed With Padel” series from regular guest author Scott Matulis, this month we highlighted two padel-obsessed people actively working to build and grow the sport here in the U.S.:

• Hollye Sheperd, who is founder of the recently opened Hive Padel Club in Salt Lake City, UT, and…

• Will Persson, the new Head of Communications and Community for the PPL.

These are their stories.

… and that’s a wrap — until next month at least!

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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Each of the past few months, I’ve teamed with my friend, fellow padel scribbler, and globetrotting nomad, Aris Sevastianos (of the El Remate newsletter), to publish a list of notable new U.S. padel clubs that will be opening in the not-too-distant future.

And while there are no shortage of exciting new big-name clubs to highlight month after month — including Conquer Padel’s planned expansion to Jacksonville, ACE Padel reportedly finally opening clubs in Coconut Grove, FL, and Denver, and M Padel bringing new clubs to metro areas including Boston, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and San Antonio — this month we wanted to focus on a few somewhat-less-talked-about (yet still very intriguing) padel club openings around the country.

These include:

The Point Racket & Social Club (Charleston, SC)

Clear back in January, I (Austin) published an article about the coming padel boom in my home state of South Carolina.

Since then, a total of eight new courts have gone up at a dedicated padel club outside Greenville and at three existing racquet clubs around the greater Charleston area (with as many as 15+ more courts, both indoor and outdoor, supposedly set to open in the Holy City in the coming months).

Meanwhile, in the coming days, The Point Racket & Social Club will officially bring the first-ever dedicated padel club to the Lowcountry at Trophy Lakes in Johns Island, SC — which is also home to a legendary water-ski lake and the Charleston Aqua Park, a local attraction that draws more than 30,000 visitors each summer.

(In fact, I played there for the first time just last night with some friends, and based on first impressions alone, I’m guessing we’ll all be back as often as we can going forward.)

Founder Nick Saltmarsh, a 20-plus-year hospitality GM, will open Phase One with two outdoor courts, a repurposed shipping container that will serve as a boutique pro shop, ample socializing spaces, and various membership options available from day one.

Phase Two, which is already actively being planned, will see the club grow into a five-court, membership-based social hub designed to foster community connection as much as intense competition.

Estimated Opening Date: September 2026 (with soft-opening already underway)

The Arena Club (Chattanooga, TN)

As discussed in a recent feature, Chattanooga, TN, was actually home to one of the very first padel courts in the entire U.S. (built clear back in 1996) — but, unfortunately, that notable piece of U.S. padel history was recently unceremoniously torn down with little to no warning to — or approval from — its original benefactors.

The good news, however, is that the Scenic City will soon be home to two brand new climate-controlled, indoor padel courts (along with 12 pickleball courts) at The Arena Club, a sprawling racquet, fitness, and social club in the Southside neighborhood of Chattanooga.

In addition to pickle and padel, The Arena Club will offer a rooftop pool and hot tub, golf simulators, luxury locker rooms, and extensive upscale food and beverage offerings.

An upcoming “Summer Mixer” — which is scheduled for September 10 — will give current and prospective members a chance to tour the space, explore membership opportunities, and enjoy food, drinks, and giveaways while connecting with other potential members and getting a preview of what’s ahead for The Arena Club.

Estimated Opening Date: Fall 2026

Padel Society ATX (Austin, TX)

Austin is world famous for many things: barbecue, live music, and South by Southwest among them. And to that list you may soon be able to add padel, thanks in part to clubs like Padel Society ATX, which is getting ready to open six air-conditioned, indoor courts just a 12-minute drive from downtown.

In fact, Padel Society ATX bills itself as “Austin’s only air-conditioned padel club … with a bar worth hanging out at, world-class coaching, and a community that feels like home from day one.”

Although founding memberships are already sold out, it’s still possible to join the waitlist for regular memberships once the club opens.

Estimated Opening Date: Fall 2026

Epic Padel (Milwaukee, WI)

While previously announced locations in Northern Virginia and Salt Lake City, UT, mysteriously never materialized, it appears that Epic Padel will soon be opening its first standalone padel club in Milwaukee, WI — at least according to an article published earlier this month by Fitt Insider.

Once open, Epic Padel Milwaukee — which will be the city’s second dedicated padel club along with Padel MKE — will feature eight indoor courts, warm-up areas, locker rooms and showers, social lounges, co-working spaces, and grab-and-go food and beverage options.

Estimated Opening Date: Fall 2026

Cross Court Pickleball + Padel (Hawthorne, NY)

Thanks to Cross Court Pickleball deciding to add four indoor padel courts from Sportsfield Specialites to their second location (along with six pickleball courts), Westchester County will soon finally have its first-ever publicly accessible padel courts — which will no doubt make a few folks I know in that area very happy.

According to its website, this second location — known as Cross Court Pickleball + Padel — will also feature, “food and beverage offerings, retail, spectator areas, and more opportunities for competitive play, clinics, leagues, and social events.”

Estimated Opening Date: Fall 2026

Prado Conservatory (Jackson, MS)

This past Tuesday found me (Austin, again) in Gulfport, MS, enjoying gumbo, scarfing down shrimp po’boys, and celebrating a close family member’s 80th birthday.

So, you can imagine my surprise when that very same day Aris’s latest edition of El Remate broke the news (to me, at least) that Mississippi would soon be getting its first ever padel court(s) just a few hours up the road in the state’s capital city of Jackson.

Having spent a fair bit of time in Jackson over the past two decades, I’m both selfishly excited about having something to do other than consume gumbo and po’boys on future trips to Mississippi and somewhat skeptical about padel’s future there (though I think the sport could thrive just up the road in Oxford thanks to Ole Miss).

For now we know that at least one padel court is in the (recently approved) plans for a group known as PraCon Global Investment Group to transform a long-vacant former YMCA near downtown into a $60 million, nine-acre “live-work-play” development that will eventually house 160 apartments in a five story building.

And given that the development group has strong ties to the birth nation of padel (with offices in Mexico City), hopefully my skepticism will be entirely misplaced.

Estimated Opening Date: Unknown

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

Editor’s note: The following (lightly edited) feature article is the sixth installment of a new “How I Became Obsessed With Padel” series we’re rolling out from regular guest contributor, Scott Matulis, a former PR Director for the Worldwide Senior Tennis Tour who discovered padel in Vegas two years ago and can now hit balls off of the glass occasionally. He is the author of the LinkedIn and Substack serial novel The Applicant.

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I feel a kinship with Will Persson. We’re both racquet sports guys who spent a lot of time working in communications and tech. We’re both obsessed with padel.

Originally from the Northeast and now based in Miami, Will was nationally ranked in tennis, platform tennis, pickleball, and padel in 2023. (Meanwhile, I tore a muscle in my left calf after playing squash three times.)

He’s now the Head of Community and Communications for the Pro Padel League (PPL), which just held its second event of the 2026 season in Los Angeles the weekend before last.

I asked him how he became obsessed with padel and how he turned it into the next step in his career. Here’s what he told me…

How did you start playing padel — and when did you decide, “I’m making a career of this?”

I had already spent most of my life around racquet sports. I played college tennis, and afterward I kept competing in national tournaments across tennis, platform tennis, and pickleball, so I was probably predisposed to become obsessed with padel, too.

I started seeing the sport everywhere on Instagram, but there were still very few places to play in New York or New Jersey. My first real experience was on a pop-up court at a tennis tournament in the Hamptons, and I immediately wanted to play again.

A few months later, I entered a tournament and, despite barely having played, I ended up making the final, which probably accelerated the obsession. Not long afterward, I went to Miami for my bachelor party. We played on the first day, and then somehow ended up playing every day of the trip.

When I came back to New York, I never really stopped. I started writing about padel — first through a blog and then through longer research papers and playbooks —because I wanted to understand where the sport was heading and how the different parts of the industry fit together.

That work introduced me to players, founders, and people building padel communities across the country. In the summer of 2025, I started working part time with the National Padel League, supporting its first two seasons.

Then, a few months ago, I had the opportunity to join the PPL full-time and lead community and communications.

That was really the point where the two sides of my life came together: the professional craft I had built in communications and the sport I had become obsessed with.

What else can you tell me about padel at your bachelor party?

We played at Ultra on the first day, and somehow a quintessential Miami bachelor party turned into a padel trip. We ended up playing every day.

What really stuck with me was that everyone loved it. Some of my friends were serious tennis players, while others barely had a racquet-sports background, but they could all get on the same court and have fun together.

That was one of the first times I realized how uniquely social and accessible padel can be –- and how quickly it can bring people together.

What do you think makes padel so accessible, especially compared to tennis?

You can have fun playing padel almost immediately, and I think that’s pretty unique. Tennis has a much steeper learning curve — you can spend a long time just learning how to serve or sustain a rally.

With padel, the ball stays in play longer and you spend more time doing the part of racquet sports that people actually love: hitting the ball back and forth. That makes it easier for new players to feel involved in the game from the beginning.

For you, what was the hardest part of transitioning from tennis to padel?

The hardest adjustment was shortening my backswing, especially when defending off the glass. I understood where I was supposed to be and what shot I needed to play, but years of tennis had ingrained this bigger swing that simply doesn’t work when the glass is right behind you.

The other big adjustment was the overhead. Early on, you can hit a tennis-style overhead and think, ‘This is great – I’m really good at this.’ Then you start playing better padel players and you realize that unless you’re actually finishing the point, you may just be giving them a better ball back.

I had to get burned enough times to learn to slow the game down and stop trying to win every point by hitting the ball as hard as I could.

At what point did your interest in padel start turning into something professional?

I think it happened pretty gradually. I was spending more and more of my free time playing, writing about the sport, trying to understand where the industry was going and building relationships with people across it, and over time padel became much more than something I just did outside of work.

When the opportunity came to join PPL full time, it felt like a very natural next step. What made PPL especially exciting to me was that it was operating across so many different parts of the sport at once.

You have some of the best players in the world competing in major markets and really distinctive venues like the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City and the Barker Hangar in Los Angeles, but you also have national broadcasts on CNBC, PPL II creating another pathway for players, and activations with clubs and communities to introduce more people to the sport.

That combination really appealed to me because it felt like an opportunity to be involved in not just the professional product, but in helping connect a lot of the different pieces that are driving padel’s growth.

Where do you play now — and how often do you play?

I’m playing about three times a week now. I live in Miami, but I travel a lot, so I end up playing at different clubs and with a pretty wide mix of people wherever I am.

I also play a lot of USA Padel tournaments, which has been a great way to meet other people who are serious about the sport and keep pushing my own level. A lot of the people I play with now are people I’ve met through those tournaments, but I also have a big network of players from tennis, platform tennis, and pickleball who have gotten into padel over the past few years for a lot of the same reasons I did.

That crossover has been one of the coolest parts for me. Padel has brought together people from all of these different racquet-sports communities who otherwise might not have ended up playing together.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

Editor’s note: The following (lightly edited) feature article is from regular guest contributor, Scott Matulis, a former PR Director for the Worldwide Senior Tennis Tour who discovered padel in Vegas two years ago and can now hit balls off of the glass occasionally. He is the author of the LinkedIn and Substack serial novel The Applicant.

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Since I’ve started writing about padel, Scott Colebourne has been one of the most gracious, helpful and cool-to-talk-to people I’ve met. He’s knowledgeable, connected, has a sweet accent and introduced me to Angel Espadas.

I caught up with Scott as he was driving to Toronto for the FIP World Cup North and Central America qualifier and asked him to lay out how the domestic padel tournament circuit works and to explain the USA National Team setup.

Here’s what he told me…

How exactly does the Nox USA Padel Circuit by Psycho Bunny work?

There are two aspects to our domestic circuit. First, we have the USA Padel Circuit which includes more than 250 tournaments around the country. These are 100-, 250-, 500-, 750-, 1000-, 2000- and 2500-level tournaments. The number reflects the number of points that the winning players receive. We also have the US Open Padel Championships, our flagship event, and our end-of-year championship as well.

Typically every tournament has Division 1 through 4 or 5 for men and Division 1 through 3 or 4 for women. You can find your level, enter a tournament, see how you compete against your peers, and earn a national ranking. These tournaments do not have age groups. They are created by divisions based on level.

Our tournaments feature a mix of amateur, semi-professional, and professional players. The US Open Padel Championships has a prize pool of $40,000 that is split across Division 1 men’s and women’s.

The 750-, 1000-, and 2000-level tournaments have varying degrees of prize money and some of the 500s do also. A 2000-level tournament has a minimum prize pool of $25,000. A 1000 has a minimum prize pool of $10,000 and a 750-level has a minimum prize pool of $7,500. We anticipate these numbers will continue to go up as higher-level players enter our tournaments and clubs invest more in the tournaments they host.

At USA Padel we are extremely lucky that we have many amazing clubs that choose to be Premier Members of the Association. This means that they have contributed financially through their membership and that gives them the right to host USA Padel circuit tournaments.

Those clubs that are hosting high-level tournaments are experienced operators delivering amazing events, creating a great on-court and off-court experience for the players. The clubs are financially responsible for all aspects of the tournament and the majority of them have made the tournaments feasible through entry fees, sponsorship, and increased food and beverage sales over the course of the event.

To sign up to play in a 100 level tournament, players are required to have a USA Padel registered player account, which is free. If you’d like to play in a 250-level or higher, it does require an adult membership, which costs $50 per year, or a junior membership. All the tournaments are listed at www.padelusa.org/calendar where players can find all the relevant information and links to register.

The USA Padel Competition Committee assigns tournaments based on an annual application period that allows all clubs the ability to host tournaments of varying levels. Clubs that do not submit applications during this time period can add small-level tournaments throughout the year. However we are committed to publishing our main tournament schedule well in advance to allow players and clubs to plan.

What about the USA Padel Seniors Circuit?

The second part of the domestic circuit is our senior tournaments. Next year, these senior tournaments will follow the official FIP senior categories of 40+, 45+, 50+, 55+, and 60+. And this is for pairs where both players are over the category age. So, in the 40+ category they could be 41 and 42.

We have senior tournaments around the country for those age groups. It’s a great way for players to compete against players of their age group and find people of a similar age group to hang out with and socialize with.

We also have senior national championships, which were recently won in the 55+ age group by former pro tennis players, Alex O’Brien and Jared Palmer.

Is the U.S. Padel Senior Nationals only for Americans?

So yeah, good question. To be a member of USA Padel, you just have to purchase some type of membership. You can be from any country in the world. All of our tournaments are open. We have no tournaments that are restricted to US citizens only.

So in the Senior Nationals, we had Palmer and O’Brien, who are both American, playing together. They played in the final, against a Canadian team. All of our tournaments at the moment are open to anyone from any country. And frequently, in the top tournaments, the 1000s, the 2000s, we have top 100 FIP ranked players from around the world coming to play, both men and women.

How many of the players playing USA Padel tournaments and playing on the national teams are pros vs. amateurs with day jobs?

Whether or not the person is a pro is maybe not the best question. The better question would be, are they playing full-time? And I would say on the men’s side, maybe like five or six are playing full-time. So that’s their job, they’re playing, they’re competing and they’re training. Others are still trying to maintain a full-time job or a part-time job, and then play.

For the women, it’s about the same, half of them have got full-time jobs and play as well, and the other half are, you know, dedicated to playing full-time.

Let’s move on to the various U.S. National Teams. How many are there and how are they selected?

We have over 250 athletes traveling every year to represent the U.S. It’s an amazing opportunity to play padel internationally and to spread the love of the game.

There’s a team for most levels of competitive play between seniors, juniors, “Absolute” and “Cat Libres,” and we’re super excited to have the clothing company Psycho Bunny as our official apparel partner and major sponsor of our USA National Teams.

Our national team program is overseen and governed by the USA Padel National Teams Committee, which is a committee of dedicated volunteers. The committee chair is Tomas Galvez Santaella from San Diego, and that committee sets the procedures and policies for the national teams.

The committee appoints volunteer coaches and a delegate (manager) for each team. USA Padel is able to cover the coach’s travel and accommodation expenses, but they are volunteering their time. They’re usually appointed for a two-year term, which lines up with the World Cup happening every two years.

Historically, there are two types of international competitions. There are the global competitions, which are governed by FIP, and then there’s the Padel America, or Pan American competitions, which include countries from North, Central and South America playing against each other.

About 12 weeks out from each tournament, we open up registration for players that want to play for the USA National Teams to indicate their interest. The coaches evaluate everybody who’s registered, they make selections, contact the players, the players sign a commitment letter, and then they’re on the team. We do hold scouting and training sessions for certain teams but we do also rely on the national rankings and performances on the USA Padel Circuit.

What can you tell me about the “Absolute” team?

That’s a padel term: “Absolute.” Essentially, it’s the top team, the professional team, the top-level national team. We have men’s and women’s teams but they compete separately.

This team has eight players on it. The coaches are less focused on tryouts and more about identifying the top players on the different circuits, whether it’s a USA circuit or the Premier Padel circuit.

The women’s Absolute coach is Richy Bailey. The assistant coach is Mariana Talarico. Richy played for the U.S. 10+ years ago, has coached for different federations around the world, and is a world-class coach. Mariana has coached and played on the U.S. women’s team for many years. They actively communicate with the top players from the U.S. throughout the year.

The men’s Absolute coach is Jacobo Blanco. Jacobo is from Spain originally and is a former World Padel Tour top-30 player. He’s a former number one on the USA circuit as recently as three years ago, still a regular player on the circuit, a great mentor and supporter of many of the players on the circuit.

His assistant coach is Jose Pablo Arizpe, who’s from San Antonio, Texas, has played for the USA many times at the Absolute level.

We just recently played in a World Cup qualifier against Canada and Mexico to qualify for this year’s World Cup. The way that the World Cup works is, to qualify, the men have to finish in the top two against Canada and Mexico, and the women have to finish first.

This year the World Cup will be held in Qatar in early November, and it’s known as the pinnacle of the sport. Only the top 16 nations in the world compete and it features all of the best players, including those playing professionally on the Premier Padel Tour. In the past the USA has played against Federico Chingotto, Juan Lebrón, Alejandro Galán, Agustín Tapia and Arturo Coello.

The World Cup, as I mentioned, is held every two years and the other years our teams play the Padel America Championship against the best teams from North, Central, and South America.

And how is that different than the “Cat Libres” team?

The next team is what they call the “Cat Libres” team or what we call the amateur team. It’s open to non-professional players. Coaches select players in categories 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. It’s loosely based on the Argentinian category system, and it’s a great opportunity for players that are not playing professionally to apply and to represent the U.S.

Nico Agritelley has played on this team. Vinny Di Francesco has played on this team when he was younger. It’s a great opportunity to wear the stars and stripes, experience international travel, represent the U.S. and compete against other countries.

That tournament is every year in Central or South America. We actually won the Cat Libres in 2023 in Cancun. That was such a high for that team. Registration for all the teams is at www.padelusa.org on the National Teams homepage. For each team, USA Padel provides a coach and delegate. We strive to fully fund the Absolute team but all our teams receive varying degrees of financial support.

What about the Senior National Teams?

We also have Senior men’s and women’s teams. The senior teams also compete in the FIP Senior World Cup every two years, as well as in the Padel America Championships and the Pan American Seniors Veterans Championships.

The age groups are 40+, 45+, 50+, 55+, 60+. This is the team that Angel Espadas coaches, the World Cup team is very, very competitive to get into. There are a lot of great players on the team. For example, we have players on the men’s and women’s side that are current or former members of the Absolute team and now playing on the World Cup Seniors team. So it’s super, super competitive. Both of our teams finished inside the top 10 at the last Senior World Cup and we’re very, very hopeful of competing for the top 8 at this year’s World Cup.

Every year we also field a team in the Pan American Championships which is in November of this year. It is still very competitive, although not as competitive as the World Cup. We take a team of 50 to 60 players. We can have multiple teams per age group. You could have an A team, B team, C team, competing in the different age groups. It’s a really big, exciting, fun tournament, with lots of opportunities for people to play. We encourage people to register online for that team.

So, for the Senior National Team you register online and then tryout — where are the tryouts and how do people find out about them?

We hold them (tryouts) in different places around the country. We’ve done them in San Diego before and also in Miami, Connecticut, and Texas. It’s not always easy to see or evaluate every player. So that’s why playing on the USA Padel Circuit is super important. We can look at results and see how players are doing. That’s a big part of it. There are also players playing internationally that are U.S. citizens that want to play on that team and those players are considered as well.

Finally, let’s talk about the juniors. How does that work?

The fourth team is our junior program. It also plays a World Cup, and every other year, the Padel America Cup. When we compete in that, we send three age groups, under-18, under-16, and under-14 and they play country versus country.

The coaches for that team are a brother and sister from Spain, Jaume “Tato” Rouillon Jimenez and Lorena Rouillon Jimenez. They’ve been coaching the team for three years now. We competed in the World Cup in Spain last year, and this year, we have the Padel America Cup, which is the continental championship, and that’s going to be in Mexico.

For the junior team, players are selected based on their play in USA Padel Circuit Tournaments, FIP Promises Tournaments, and other play opportunities. We are looking forward to launching a Junior National Championship and Junior Circuit in 2027.

There are also international tournaments that the junior team plays in, so for instance, we have 30 athletes going to Mexico this month to represent the U.S., this is a pairs competition rather than a country versus country.

While that’s certainly a lot to digest, should you have any further questions about U.S. padel tournaments, national teams, or competitions, please be sure to visit USA Padel.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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After traveling to Spain last month for the Premier Padel P1 tournament in Málaga and Southern California this month for the second leg of the Pro Padel League’s 2026 season in L.A., it has become clear to me that the magic and mastery of professional padel can be rather difficult to put into words.

So I reached out to Ben Blair — an L.A.-based creative director who has worked with brands like FILA, Boast, and Nike, and is also an avid tennis and padel player and sports photographer — to ask for some help.

Here’s how this past weekend’s Pro Padel League debut in Los Angeles unfolded in Ben’s own “words” (all amazing photos his, all questionable captions mine):

To learn more about Ben Blair and his work, please visit BenBlairDoneThat.com

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

Share

I won’t sugarcoat it…

Things aren’t looking quite as bright in the U.S. padel industry as some people might have you believe — or as many self-proclaimed pundits predicted they would be a few years ago.

Yes, clubs and courts still continue to open from coast to coast and everywhere in between… Yes, the sport is starting to gain more awareness in the U.S. thanks to padel pop-ups at Coachella and CNBC broadcasting Pro Padel League matches… And yes, USA Padel is pulling out all the stops in an effort to get more people playing.

But there also appear to be a growing number of storm clouds on the horizon…

Once loud, seemingly baseless calls for 30,000 courts in the U.S. by 2030 eventually fizzled into still-confident-sounding predictions of 20,000. More recently that bar has quietly been dropped yet again, with many insiders now admitting that even getting to 10,000 by 2030 may be a serious stretch (which, keep in mind, is still monster growth!)

Meanwhile, clubs have started closing in once-promising padel strongholds like Houston and Orlando, and by some accounts, in certain (and often surprising) parts of the country, as many of half of all padel clubs are now discreetly up for sale.

There Are Some Bright Spo(r)ts However…

In fact, in a recent conversation with Jo Vos (who serves as the Chief Marketing Officer of our Padel Nation preferred partners at Playbypoint) about the current state and future of the U.S. padel market, she tells me:

Over the last twelve months, established multi-sport facilities on Playbypoint handled 124% more monthly bookings than padel-only clubs, and served 53% more unique players. For an operator weighing what to build, the multi-sport model isn't a hedge. It's a growth strategy.

I’ll be honest, I was a bit shocked by those numbers, especially as someone who has always leaned more towards padel-only in the whole “Should padel clubs also have pickleball courts?” debate.

But I tend to give a lot of credence to this data given that Playbypoint powers a wide variety of notable multi-sport padel clubs around the U.S., including:

• Ballers in Philadelphia, PA (with padel, pickleball, squash, indoor soccer, and more)…

• Three Rackets in Broomfield, CO (which will soon open with padel, pickle, and squash)…

• Nicol NJ in Fort Monmouth, NJ (also featuring padel, pickle, and squash)…

• The Sports Haus in Norwalk, CT (which offers padel, pickle, and golf simulators)…

• CityView Racquet Club in Long Island City, NY (with tennis, squash, and padel from the team at Brisas)…

… and that’s just to name a few.

Then there’s my home padel club in Charleston, SC, which is known as LTP Daniel Island and has dozens of pickleball and tennis courts along with three of the first — and still some of the only — padel courts in the region (though that’s all about to change big time, with many new SC padel clubs coming online also being powered by Playbypoint).

Of this particular variety of multi-sport facility, Jo further tells me:

For clubs running padel, tennis, and pickleball together, the median club logged about two and a half times the monthly bookings of a padel-only venue, and its players came back more than twice as often. Breadth of sport turns straight into depth of engagement.

What the Data Doesn’t Say

Yes, those numbers are pretty stunning. But, for clarity’s sake, Jo is also careful to add:

What's interesting is where the advantage doesn't come from. It's not that multi-sport clubs squeeze more out of each court. It's that they pull in more players, and those players play more often. The story is broader demand and deeper engagement, not tighter utilization. That's a healthier flywheel for a club to build on.

Alex Luscher, who serves as director of operations at Ballers, obviously agrees with this sentiment, telling me:

Multi- means more! More sports, more players, and more opportunities to socialize. Padel might just be your new favorite sport you've never heard of, it might be the perfect compliment to your golf sessions, and you might've found Ballers by searching for the best smash burger in town. Offering so many activities within one club is the special ingredient that allows our community to flourish.

Jess Nicol, co-founder and CEO of Nicol Sports, dives even deeper into this concept, telling me in a recent email exchange:

What we’ve found at Nicol is that the different sports really do serve different people, and that’s what makes the multi-sport model so interesting.

Squash is strong for juniors — they can get on court, hit the ball as hard as they want and just let it rip, but there’s also a very real pathway through high school and into college squash.

Padel is becoming a really exciting option for junior tennis players who can see where the sport is going and where the opportunities might be, particularly compared with how saturated tennis has become.

And for adults, padel is both fun and competitive. A lot of people who have played tennis or pickleball for years are ready for something new, and once they try it, they tend to get hooked pretty quickly. Both Peter and I come from squash and now almost exclusively play padel (the addiction is real).

We want people to have a reason to keep coming back, to improve, compete, meet people and feel like they’re part of something that improves their lives. Offering different sports under one roof helps achieve that goal.

(However, she also points out that while pickleball is a fantastic sport for certain segments of the population, future Nicol clubs will not have it and instead just focus on padel and squash.)

The Best Path Forward?

While many people are happy to argue whether tennis or padel or pickleball or squash is the better — or best — sport, Jo (and the entire team at Playbypoint) clearly take a much more pragmatic approach to the debate, with her ultimately concluding our conversation by telling me this…

Programming is the real engine, and multi-sport clubs simply have more to program. More clinics, more lessons, more leagues across more skill levels and more sports. On our platform, established multi-sport clubs ran nearly four times the clinics of padel-only clubs. That's what turns a court into a calendar, and a calendar into a community.

… and showing me this:

Let the Debate Begin Continue

After hearing everything I do day in and day out from U.S. club operators, owners, and consultants, do I think padel is doomed in the U.S.? Absolutely not — far from it, in fact!

But at the same time, I also don’t think it’s going to end up being the easy, get-rich-quick scheme that many people were led to believe it would be.

The majority of club founders I know are pouring an incredible amount of blood, sweat, and tears into just getting their doors open, let alone their courts filled.

At the end of the day, we’re still very early in this game…

And I think that the U.S. padel pioneers who have the brains (and guts) to stay the course and play the long game will ultimately be rewarded as the sport continues to meaningfully grow across the U.S. — especially if they can find ways to capitalize on the trends that this stunning data from Playbypoint brings to light.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

Share

Editor’s note: The following (lightly edited) feature article is the fifth installment of a new “How I Became Obsessed With Padel” series we’re rolling out from regular guest contributor, Scott Matulis, a former PR Director for the Worldwide Senior Tennis Tour who discovered padel in Vegas two years ago and can now hit balls off of the glass occasionally. He is the author of the LinkedIn and Substack serial novel The Applicant.

If you live in the burgeoning U.S. padel mecca of Salt Lake City but haven’t heard of the sport yet, Hollye Shepherd will likely be the one to introduce it to you.

After discovering the sport in Portugal four years ago and then becoming obsessed with it in Spain last year, she quickly recognized that its appeal went far beyond just playing. Since then she’s become a self-proclaimed padel promoter, telling me:

I saw the power of padel to bring people together, build community, and create connections beyond the court. Since falling in love with it, I find myself telling literally everyone about it… the AT&T salesman, our janitor, the guy installing our cabinetry, the glass cleaner, everyone.

Hollye and her husband even built a court at their Park City, Utah home (pictured above and below) — and pretty soon so many players were coming out that she had to start using OpenCourt booking software to keep everything straight.

In just a few weeks, The Hive — a Salt Lake City padel club that Hollye co-founded with Daniel Lasso, a semi-pro Equadorian soccer player — will officially open on the west side of the city with five indoor courts, showers, a cafe, huge fans, and an air conditioning system that cannot be beat.

Ahead of the club’s upcoming soft opening this Saturday, August 15th, I sat down with Hollye at The Hive and asked her how exactly she became obsessed with padel and what her plans are for the future.

How did you go from falling in love with padel in Europe to building a court at your house to launching a club in Salt Lake City?

I learned to play in Portugal four years ago. I was at an international schooling program there with my kids called Boundless Life. And all the parents would drop their kids off at school, and then we would go to a club and play padel. At first, I was like, ‘what is this sport?’ And they were like, ‘it’s like tennis.’

So I went — and I fell in love with not only the sport but how it brought all of us together as a community. Over the course of three months, I watched these people who had never played a racquet sport before get better, lose weight, become more nimble and more active. It was transformative. Portugal planted the seed.

Then I went to Spain with the same program last spring and started playing again, and it fertilized that seed. I saw the same thing that happened in Portugal happen in Spain. A group of people who didn’t know the sport started playing it, and after just a month, we were all competing in tournaments with each other. Every one of us was hooked and I became the best version of myself.

I realized Portugal wasn’t just a one-off. It was happening again. Two hours of sweaty play made me feel like I was reverse aging. I felt better physically than I had in a long time. I was thinking, ‘We need more of this in the U.S. I want to keep this feeling in my life and I know others do, too. This sport is medicine for the soul.’

I was originally going to start a different business, with the intention of working on it while I was in Spain, but I was playing so much padel and falling in love with the sport again that I couldn’t help it.

You know when that feeling starts nagging at you and you literally can’t stop thinking about something? You know it’s going to take a lot of sacrifice on some level, but you get to the point where you just don’t care.

I kept waking up thinking, “This is going to take so much work, but I have to say yes or no.’ The universe was pushing me in a ‘yes’ direction, and I was just being open to it.

I thought to myself: ‘If certain things come my way, I’ll make this happen, because it’s a giant time and financial commitment.’ After a series of small miracles, I knew I was on the right path.

How did you select the space for the Hive?

Real estate is the hardest part and as everybody knows, it’s the most important piece. It was tricky, because a lot of the newer buildings have gorgeous, beautiful ceilings but their cost is prohibitive and they’re restrictive with build outs. I want to survive in this business to be able to continue throughout the years. So finding a space that was affordable was key.

I needed to find something that wasn’t a brand new build, where I could cut into the floors. In warehouses, they don’t want you to tear up the floors, which is what you have to do when you want to put in a cafe, showers, etc.

And my thinking was, ‘If I can find a space, I’ll make it happen.’ Luckily, there was a pretty high vacancy rate at the time when I got this (site) and it was a decent deal. So I knew I would be able to stay afloat for a while. It was a year ago, this month, that I found the space.

How did you find it? Just driving around with a real estate agent?

Trial and error. I used to work in commercial real estate so I have a feel for the market. I went on LoopNet, and I was looking within certain parameters of what I wanted space-wise.

The layout was extremely important. I wanted to be able to have run-out space around the courts. The most important things, when I stepped into this were court quality, great coaches, and a good vibe. For me that means music, coffee, and beer.

And coffee can be interchanged with beer, or it can be interchanged with matcha, or can be interchanged with any beverage that allows people to play, stay, and converse. I’m inspired by the culture in Latin America and Europe, where you play and stay for a while. Siesta culture.

I wanted a space where I could build community, with places where you could commune — like a mezzanine or a cafe. We’re not a ‘hit and run’ facility. I say this a lot when I talk about the club: the idea is not to come, hit, and then run. It’s to play and stay.

So, it needs to be comfortable, it needs to have air conditioning, it needs to have food. It needs to have places where people can hang out.

This is a great looking space. It seems perfect. How were you able to get it?

So, nobody wanted this space. It had been on the market for a year. It’s not desirable for industrial use. It only has two bay doors.

And those have since been changed out. The old ones were pretty gnarly. We put new ones in. We called this place ‘the bowling alley,’ because when we first came in, there was long, narrow office space with cubicles. It was pretty nasty. The transformation from a dingy warehouse to this was dramatic.

How did you decide how upscale you wanted to go, whether you wanted the club to have ice baths or whirlpools or whatever?

Yeah, so ice baths are really tricky in Utah. There are certain hoops you have to jump through for ice baths and it wasn’t really a priority for me. I wanted saunas because I love longevity hacks, but I personally don’t like ice baths. They stress me out. So to me, I’m like, ‘Just take a cold shower. We’ll make the water really cold in the shower. Just go jump in there.’

And showers were important because I wanted people to be able to come play and then shower and go to work. I didn’t want people to have to go home. I live 30 minutes away, so I didn’t want to have to go home and shower and then come back.

So you settled on showers and saunas, but no ice baths?

Saunas are just as important as showers, because I’m a big believer in the power of saunas to improve your life. And again, it’s communal. You sit in a sauna, you’re sitting, sweating next to somebody, getting into a conversation. There’s a nice bonding moment you can have there.

I’m trying to find all these spaces where people can bond. The mezzanine can be members only or whatever we end up deciding. And then in the lounge area we’re hoping to do barbecues, so we’ll lift up the bay doors, and we’ll do some barbecuing up there.

For me, the community is the number one part of it, because that’s what drew me to the sport. I was hanging out with all those people in the beginning and falling in love with it. Padel was making us all the best versions of ourselves.

Bringing women into the sport and building a place for them to go is a big issue in U.S. padel at the moment. I’m guessing from what you’ve told me about community that you feel the same way?

I do. That’s why I have a (mural of a) lady on my wall. I’m trying to bring in a feminine vibe. I can tell if a club is female run or where there’s a woman on the board.

I go into their bathrooms (immediately know) a woman is involved. There is soft seating, amenities like hair ties, the color scheme is spot on. You can feel the difference.

Some insiders say if you want to open a padel club, it has to be your full time job. Do you agree?

Yes. Because there are too many details. Even just running the Park City court with myself and my friends, I’m constantly scheduling, you know? You have to be on it.

I love this sport, but someone told me, ‘Make sure you don’t fall out of love with it, now that you’re working in it.’

I’m like: ‘I don’t care. It’s so fun. I’m a people person. I love the people. I love the game. I love being active. I love the way I feel when I hit the ball, and I’m building a space that I feel comfortable in that I think people will enjoy.’

The Hive Padel Club will soft open this Saturday, August 15 at 1915 S 4800 W, Salt Lake City, UT 84104. For more information, please visit their website or follow them on Instagram.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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While there will be no shortage of action all across the U.S. padel map this month, it’s a safe bet that most eyes will be on Southern California given the confluence of padel activities taking place there in August, including:

• The second event of the 2026 Pro Padel League (PPL) season, which will take over the famed Barker Hangar in Los Angeles from August 13th - 16th and bring more than 50 of the world’s top pro padel players to the area for four days of team-based competition…

• A “Youth Development Day” co-hosted by the Los Angeles Padel Club (LAPC) and the L.A. Beat of the PPL, which will be held at LAPC on August 9th in the lead up to all the PPL festivities the following weekend…

• World-renowned padel coach and The Padel School Founder Sandy Farquharson embarking on a SoCal teaching tour with stops in L.A. at The Padel Courts August 15th and Padel Up August 16th, along with an extended San Diego stint August 19 - 23 at Padel N9NE…

• RacquetX hosting one of its City Series stops at FairBanks Ranch Country Club in Rancho Santa Fe, just north of San Diego on August 18th, and…

• Padel Up (which will be celebrating its two-year anniversary this month) not only hosting a PPL II competition in conjunction with the PPL’s second event, but also a USA Padel 250-level tournament August 22nd - 23rd and a grassroots, community-building tournament known The Clash of the Clubs August 29th - 30th.

The Main Event

With this many different padel events going on in Southern California, it may be hard to pick and choose which ones to attend (I’m actually facing this dilemma myself), but it’s hard to argue against with the PPL’s showcase event — and not just because of the level of competition that will be there but the actual venue it will be hosted in.

Built in 1954 at the Santa Monica Airport by Learjet founder Bill Lear, Barker Hangar eventually transitioned from a warehouse for private aviation manufacturing and engineering to an iconic 35,000-square-foot L.A. event and production venue that has hosted everything from the Critics’ Choice Awards and Billboard Music Awards to VIP events for the National Basketball Association (NBA) to countless charity galas.

(Oh, and it boasts incredibly lob-friendly, 43-foot-high ceilings to boot. So, let the globos reign — and rain!)

Of the PPL’s decision to host an event in L.A. and what it may mean for the sport’s future in the region, the PPL’s Head of Community & Communications, Will Persson tells me:

We’re elated to bring the Pro Padel League to Los Angeles for California’s only professional padel event of 2026.

Los Angeles is a racquet-sports haven with the international reach, cultural influence, and appetite for new experiences to become one of padel’s most important American markets.

Working alongside the clubs, operators, creators, and players leading that growth —and seeing the week extend through PPL II with activations across the city and a national broadcast on CNBC — has reinforced our conviction that Southern California will play a defining role in the sport’s future.

The Bigger Picture

While I certainly won’t argue with Will’s assessment of the SoCal padel scene, I might even go one step further and say that all of these events — plus the upcoming L.A. openings of clubs like Ballers and Bay Padel — will actually put the City of Angels squarely in the conversation about what will be U.S. padel’s “second city” after Miami along with other U.S.-padel strongholds like Austin, Chicago, Houston, and New York City.

One of the many people helping to build towards that goal is Andre Brown, the co-founder and CEO of Padel Up, which has both an indoor location in Culver City and a rooftop outdoor location in Century City.

Of the upcoming Clash of the Clubs event they are set to host (which will be powered by our Padel Nation preferred partners at Playbypoint) he tells me:

Clash of the Clubs is a tournament unlike any other, because the intention is not to focus on competition but rather to bring clubs and their communities together. Yes, there is a prize pot of $5000 and yes, there is competitive play — but the intention is for players to meet other players.

It’s meant to be a meeting of the minds and the forming of a panel of thought leaders in the padel space, while giving their communities the opportunity to meet other people in other cities. This is actually a community-building exercise for the clubs.

Brown further explains that the idea is to scale the concept and eventually take it beyond L.A., but the fact that grassroots initiatives like this are already taking place across the region makes me think that August is far from the last time that Southern California will be squarely in the U.S. padel spotlight.

Going to be in Southern California for the PPL or any of these other events? Drop me a line and maybe we can meet up — or even hop on court!

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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Dear Padel Nation,

This past month was yet another action-packed one in the U.S. padel world…

Though I will admit that — along with millions of other people around the globe — I was briefly and completely distracted from all these goings on by the antics of a 2,200+ pound elephant seal terrorizing a tiny Tasmanian town in the most loveable and life-affirming way possible. But back to padel…

First off, we saw new padel clubs officially (or unofficially) open everywhere from Bellevue, WA… to Brooklyn, NY… to San Jose, CA… and even West Jordan, UT.

Secondly, there was no shortage of news out of USA Padel — mostly about upcoming national and international competitions, including the fact that Montreal-based premium lifestyle brand Psycho Bunny will be the new official uniform partner of USA Padel National Teams. (There was even a celebratory kick-off party at Ultra Padel Club to commemorate the partnership).

Speaking of partnerships, much of the U.S. (and global) padel world had kittens over the fact that Nike debuted its initial line of padel gear at a private event hosted by oft-dissed Canadian rapper Drake and attended by actual padel celebrities, Agustín Tapia and Juan Lebrón.

The U.S. padel world similarly lost its mind over two big media mentions about the sport last month, with The Wall Street Journal publishing a story exploring “The Push to Make Padel the Next Pickleball” and Yahoo! Finance describing padel as, “the ‘new golf’ for young professionals [that is] taking over the U.S.”

While these three news items got plenty of attention and generated even more excitement in some circles, I’m not entirely sold on whether the trickle-down effect of big headlines like these will actually help grow the sport here in the U.S., where clubs are constantly struggling with permitting and occupancy issues and a majority of players struggle to be able to afford court fees — but I guess we’ll see.

Finally, on a more positive note, this past month I was lucky enough to go to my first-ever Premier Padel tournament in Málaga, Spain — where I got to see both the men’s and women’s world No. 1s play (and coincidentally also got to be in country for three straight Spanish World Cup victories on their way to the eventual crown).

Although I think it may take a lot of time and effort for the U.S. market to embrace pro padel the way we embrace other professional sports, it was definitely encouraging to see the stadium packed and fans riveted (and actually watching the action far more than looking at their phones)…

And this month I’ll get to see how the U.S. pro padel market is actually progressing when I attend the Pro Padel League’s second event of the season August 13 - 16 in Los Angeles (after they kicked the season off in style last month in New York City).

If you’re going to be there, too, please let me know so we can try to meet up or even hop on court. In the meantime, please be sure to check out everything else we covered in the U.S. padel world last month directly below.

As always, thanks for reading — and play up!

ae

««« Five New U.S. Padel Clubs to Know About »»»

Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, and Virginia will soon have 20+ new padel courts to play on at five brand-new clubs, including in several U.S. cities that currently have no padel courts to speak of whatsoever. Here’s where you can find them.

««« The U.S. Tech Duo That’s Reshaping Padel »»»

When it comes to finding and organizing padel matches and then booking courts, there can admittedly be a lot of headaches to deal with. And while I’m skeptical about how outsized of a role tech (and especially AI) should play in padel, I did sit down last month with Julia Schwartz and Russell Einbinder — who are the padel-playing tech savants behind Padel Browser among other projects — to learn more about how they are using AI to reshape how we all play padel.

««« "How I Became Obessed With Padel” »»»

In parts three and four of our ongoing “How I Became Obsessed With Padel” series from frequent guest contributor, Scott Matulis, we profiled two big names in the U.S. padel gear space to learn about their own personal padel journeys.

Namely, Rene Lewicki, the U.S. Padel Business Development Manager for Wilson, and Scott London, the streetwear fashion legend behind brands like Zoo York and Wu Wear and founder of GLDN PNT (which is a Padel Nation sponsor and preferred partner).

««« Padel Relations Coming to NYC This Fall »»»

For the first time ever, our friends at Luxembourg-based Padel Relations will be hosting one of their signature padel events for global padel industry decision-makers, club owners, and entrepreneurs on U.S. soil.

Everything you need to know about Padel Relations and this event, which is set to take place September 21 and 22 in Brooklyn, can be found right here.

««« Padel Up Hosts “Rally for Venezuela” Event »»»

While it didn’t get nearly the attention as some of the other headline-grabbing padel news covered earlier, L.A.-based Padel Up did host a special event to raise money and support for the devastation that occurred in Venezuela at the end of June when two massive earthquakes rocked the South American nation. And while the event has passed, you can still donate to the GoFundMe they launched right here.

««« Padel Finally Comes to Hilton Head Island »»»

Last but certainly not least is the fact that just last week we got word that our premier partners and site sponsors, AMET International and Wakit Padel, have finally brought a padel court to the tennis and tourist mecca of Hilton Head Island, SC — and within hours of publishing this article about it, we were already getting emails from both U.S. and international padel players living in Hilton Head who were beyond thrilled to finally have a place to play. Love to hear it!

… and that’s a wrap — until next month at least!

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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Earlier this year, I penned an article about the sudden explosion of padel courts and clubs across South Carolina, including in places in or around Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and even more off-the-beaten path locales like Marietta (at The Cliffs at Mountain Park).

But there was one very well-known, highly trafficked part of The Palmetto State that was conspicuously absent from this list. Namely, Hilton Head Island — which, if you’re not familiar, is an extremely popular beach and golf destination about an hour northeast of Savannah, GA and two hours southwest of Charleston, SC.

However, thanks to the efforts of the team at Wakit Padel, including U.S. padel OG Tito Moreno — whose parents owned and operated one of the very first padel clubs in the U.S. outside Houston and competed on the original Junior Team USA clear back in 2013 — that’s all about to change (which will no doubt be music to the ears of at least a dozen padel addicts I know who spend a significant amount of time in the area!).

Small Island, Huge Potential

Despite covering only about 45 square miles (which is roughly equivalent in size to the Bronx, Nantucket, or San Francisco), Hilton Head Island is world renowned not only as a major East Coast tourist destination — with well over 2.5 million visitors each year — but also a fabled U.S. racquet-sports hotbed.

In fact, this small barrier island boasts over 300 total tennis courts (with surfaces including hard, Rubico/Har-Tru clay, and even grass) and has one of the highest concentrations of tennis courts per square mile in the entire country.

What’s more, Hilton Head is also home to:

• Massive multi-racquet-sport clubs like Palmetto Dunes, which offers up 24 pickleball courts in addition to a world-class tennis facility…

• Tennis legend Stan Smith, a former U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion, who signed on as the touring pro for Sea Pines Resort back in 1971 and established his famous academy there, cementing the island's racquet-sports reputation, and…

• The prestigious Van Der Meer Tennis Academy — which just turned out a Girls’ 14-and-under junior Wimbledon singles champion earlier this month.

So, it’s been a bit surprising that is has taken “the world’s fastest growing sport” of padel this long to arrive on the island, to say the least.

The First of Many?

While a single padel court popping up on a small island with over 300 tennis courts might seem like a drop in the bucket — especially considering South Beach Racquet Club is already home to eight tennis courts and 12 pickleball courts — Wakit Padel founder Tito Moreno tells me:

Honestly, even just a year ago, I didn’t realize how important it was to put a padel court in Hilton Head. But then I visited for the first time and saw firsthand what seems like the mecca of country clubs in the U.S. It was really breathtaking and astonishing.

There is so much racquet-sports history there and its a sports-driven community — and to not have one single padel court in an hour-and-a-half radius or more was completely mind-boggling to me, so it just seemed like the biggest opportunity ever.

At the end of the day, it’s a true American market. As someone who didn’t grow up in that country club world, I know it’s not an easy process, but just to get the opportunity to bring padel to a market that’s so predominantly American and traditional is super unique and cool.

I can only hope that amongst the 20 or so golf, tennis, and country clubs that are there someone else is going catch the padel fever and want to grow the sport — and that we at Wakit and AMET can be part of that leading force to provide the courts and services and coaching and everything else that is needed to make it happen.

If You Build It…

Meanwhile, Wakit Padel’s National Sales Manager Paul DiPaolo — who actually worked as a ball boy at Hilton Head’s tennis courts back in the 1980s — recently told local media outlet The Island Packet that he sees the addition of this court as truly “historic” and believes other local clubs will adopt padel in the near future.

While it remains if padel will truly catch on in Hilton Head and how quickly, according to DiPaolo, for now the plan is to keep this temporary court from Off the Glass (which was installed on top of an existing Har-Tru tennis court) up and running for at least the next six months or so.

Plans are also being fleshed out for a multi-day, padel-focused event at some point this fall which will feature industry-related programming, professional exhibitions, plenty of opportunities for newbies to hop on court for the first time, and possibly even a celebrity/VIP component — so please be sure to stay tuned for further updates!

In the meantime, you can visit Hilton Head’s first-ever publicly accessible padel court beginning this Saturday, August 1, at 230 South Sea Pines Drive (directly across from the legendary Salty Dog Cafe — which reportedly gets over a million visitors per year!) or call the director of padel operations, Lee VanValkenburg at +1 (734) 674-9266 for more information.

(And given that this court is just down the road from me, chances are you may well see me there — so feel free to drop me a line if you’re planning a visit and maybe we can get a game together!).

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released earlier this month. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

Editor’s note: The following (lightly edited) feature article is the fourth installment of a new “How I Became Obsessed With Padel” series we’re rolling out from regular guest contributor, Scott Matulis, a former PR Director for the Worldwide Senior Tennis Tour who discovered padel in Vegas two years ago and can now hit balls off of the glass occasionally. He is the author of the LinkedIn and Substack serial novel The Applicant.

For the sake of transparency, please note that GLDN PNT is a Premier Partner of Padel Nation — and, as always, we’re very grateful for their support in allowing us to keep this publication rolling.

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Scott London is a longtime entrepreneur who has helped build and commercialize legendary apparel brands including Wu-Wear, Zoo York and Baby Phat. His latest venture, GLDN PNT, is a clothing and lifestyle brand created specifically for padel.

London is also every bit as obsessed with the sport as the people he designs for — and, like many tennis converts, he still sometimes hits an overhead when he should be hitting a bandeja.

I recently sat down with him to talk about how he became obsessed with padel and why he thinks padel is the new Burning Man.

How did you first discover padel and how did it become more than just something you do for fun?

It’s interesting because my padel story is very similar to the progression of padel in Miami itself.

A lot of people were introduced to padel by Wayne Boich, who owns Reserve now. He had a padel court at his home. And there were a couple of small clubs with padel. There was Real Padel Miami and Wynwood Padel Club, which is really where I first started playing padel on a regular basis. It was right before the pandemic — or just as the pandemic was starting.

I was still playing tennis every day, and then I started playing padel. And padel, as everybody knows, is super addictive. So I decided I’m only going to play tennis on Tuesdays and Thursdays and play padel the other days.

I remember on the days I wouldn’t play padel, if I saw those guys that night or the day after, and they’re talking about their match, I would be so mad that I wasn’t playing just those two days. So I gave up tennis completely, and started playing padel all the time.

I went from playing at Wynwood to playing at Ultra Padel, with someone who, unfortunately, just passed away (Fernando Alarcón). He had the first indoor courts [in Miami], and I started playing there whenever it would rain.

Then there was a place in Miramar, which is about an hour away. And I remember the first time driving out to Miramar with a bunch of guys and thinking to myself, ‘This is obviously a real addiction.’ I would never have driven an hour to go play tennis. I’ve played tennis my whole life. But I would never have driven an hour just just for a regular game.

Eventually I ended up at Reserve Seaplane, and then last year, I joined Sunset Padel, which is very close to me. And so, like I said, my progression in padel has [largely mirrored] padel’s progression in Miami. And now I’m sort of playing all over the place. If I drop my son at school, I’m playing at Ultra because it’s nearby.

I went to Burning Man for years, and I always say that padel is the new Burning Man. It’s the new obsession. Years ago you were always talking about Burning Man and who was going and whose camp were you in and how many days you were going for.

But now you’re out to dinner, and everybody is talking about padel, the game they had yesterday, the game they’re going to have tomorrow, the game they had today, and who beat who. There’s so much trash talking and everything. It’s so fun.

There’s a lot of stuff being written about the padel community and that the sense of belonging is different than it is in tennis and other sports. Do you agree that tennis and padel are different in that context?

Look, the number one thing about padel is the community, which is why I decided to start GLDN PNT. The community is just so strong.

The thing about tennis is it’s a very heady game. It’s a very individual, mentally gritty game. Especially at a high level. And you’re out there on your own. Even to the point where in a fun game, you’re having fun, but you’re still an individual. Just to make a point, I would go as far to say that there is no community in tennis.

I think about this all the time: ‘Why is there such a sense of community in padel?’ I think it’s proximity. First of all, it’s a doubles game. The teammates are very close together, so you’re talking much more than in tennis. It’s a communication game, where you’re hitting the ball, you’re constantly talking, your opponents are constantly talking. All four people are talking.

People say that padel is the ‘new golf.’ You could never say that about tennis, right? I think it’s because of the walls. It’s very intimate because of the walls. It’s four people doing something together. Not an individual, not two people, but four people doing something together.

So, whether you are trash talking each other, you know, across the net, or whether you’re just communicating, just having fun, or just saying, ‘What are you and your wife doing for dinner tonight?’ in between points, whatever the thing is, you’re actually talking. There’s something about those four walls, I think, that make it more intimate.

People get addicted to tennis, but to me it seems like the addiction to padel is more aggressive, more all-consuming, if you get what I mean. What’s behind that in your opinion?

First of all, padel is a thinking-man’s game. And then of course it’s very dynamic. Also, even if you’re not good, even if you don’t have the perfect form, with padel, you’re still going to have a lot of fun out there. Where in tennis, you’ve gotta really learn the top spin. You’ve got to learn the strokes, you know?

A novice tennis player could not play against a very good tennis player and both of them have fun. But a novice padel player can have fun with a good padel player. The beginner can play with the expert, and it happens all the time in pro ams and things like that. In tennis, that could never happen. You’d just be picking up balls all over the place, right?

I think the other thing that’s really interesting about padel is that every now and then you can do something that a pro does. You know what I mean? Whether it’s a trick shot or you get it off the wall or whatever happens, you’re like, "‘oh my God!’

In tennis, you’re never doing that. You’re never hitting the ball like Federer no matter what you do. But in padel, you’re going to be able to hit the ball out of the court. And eventually you’re going to learn how to run out of the court and hit it back.

Okay, so how did it go from, “Well this is super fun, I’m not playing any more tennis” to “this is a business?” What was the need that wasn’t being met and how did you decide to step in?

So, I’m sure many people have thought, ‘Oh, it would be a great idea to have a padel clothing line.’ But they have no idea how to actually make that happen. Because of the nature of my background, fortunately (or unfortunately), I actually knew how to make that happen.

When I talk about this, I’m not sure that I always get the point across: It’s not that I looked at the padel community and thought, ‘Oh, I want to have a brand and sell to the padel community.’

The importance of the community for any clothing brand — or any brand that we can think of in the world — is that the brand starts from a certain community, and then people want to be associated with that community.

I say that padel is to tennis what snowboarding is to skiing. It goes back to your question about community and tennis. There is that community there, but it’s different. Same thing with skiing. It’s just different. It’s more individualized than snowboarding. And now you see the big ski companies emulating the snowboard companies. All the skiers want to dress like their cooler cousin. You know, they want to dress like the snowboarders dress.

So, it’s not that I wanted to build a brand and just sell it, because, let’s face it, the padel community is relatively small. But, at the end of the day, I think that people are going to want to be associated with what padel players stand for.

If Tom Brady picks up a golf club or a tennis racquet, nobody actually cares. If he picks up a padel racket, it’s in the paper, right? Same with Alcarez. Same with Nadal, etc. They pick up a padel racquet, everyone’s like wow, look at them, they’re so into padel!

So what’s the difference between padel clothes and tennis clothes?

There isn’t one.

So, it’s funny… when I first started, I told a very good friend of mine, ‘I’m gonna start a padel collection.’ And he’s actually an ex-pro athlete, and he said, ‘Oh, that’s great, because there’s nothing to wear.’

And I said, ‘Ronnie, you know there’s a world of tennis clothes out there. I’m not gonna actually do anything different. It’s basically the same.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, but you know, I’d still rather wear padel clothes.’

I think we’re still trying to figure out the vocabulary of what sets us apart from tennis. I think that our new collection kind of heads in the direction where we can get away with colors that are not necessarily tennis colors.

It’s easier to talk about it with the skiing and snowboarding analogy. In the beginning of snowboarding days, the kids were wearing grunge instead of ski clothes.

In padel, you see people wearing their favorite t-shirt, that they would probably never wear to tennis. In tennis, I feel like you put a tennis outfit on, more than you put a padel outfit on. In padel, you kind of bring your own personality to the court.

Clothing is clothing at the end of the day. But when we go to the store, we’re thinking about who we want to be. We’re playing. It’s a costume. It’s dress up. And when we pick it out of our closet, it’s the same thing. We’re thinking, ‘Who do I want to be and who do I want the world to know that I am?’

You can view GLDN PNT’s entire collection online here and get news and updates by following them on Instagram here.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last week. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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While other padel-related events like RacquetX and the Padel World Summit may get more attention, for my money the most interesting and intriguing one of the year will take place this September 21 - 22 at the first-ever Padel Relations member meet-up in New York City.

That’s because, unlike RacquetX, this two-day event will focus solely on padel (rather than the racquet-sports ecosystem as a whole) and, unlike Padel World Summit, it doesn’t require a multi-day transatlantic trip smack dab in the middle of one of the busiest times of the year for me racquet-sports-wise (though I’ll admit there are certainly much worse places to go than Barcelona in late May!).

Combine this level of convenience and padel-specific programming and you’ll start to get some sense of why everyone from the U.S. tech duo set to reshape how we play padel to Antonio Goes, the Founder of Courtr (which is an official parter of the event along with Weebora), has told me they’ll definitely see me there.

(What’s more, I’ve even talked to friends from the padel world who are considering traveling to the event from places as far flung as Budapest and Guyana.)

Standing Out in the Crowd

With so many padel-focused networking groups and associations out there (and more popping up all the time), it can admittedly be hard to keep track of them all. So, if you aren’t already familiar with Padel Relations, here are a few quick details you should know:

• It was founded by Victoria Pahlett, a Swedish-born, Luxembourg-based former Division 1 tennis player (for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte 49ers), who has over five years working hands on in the international padel industry, including stints at Playtomic and MATCHi…

• As of this writing, Padel Relations has welcomed over 135 padel clubs, businesses, and organizations (including Padel Nation) into its global padel network from over 35 countries, including Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Türkiye, the U.A.E., the U.K., and Zambia — just to name a few (in other words, it’s a truly global padel network), and…

• To date, the network also counts over 25 U.S. padel clubs and businesses among its ranks, including Mink Padel (in Harlem, NY), Olympus Padel (in Colorado Springs, CO), Mesa Padel Club (in Mesa, AZ), Boise Padel Club (in Boise, ID), Pick and Padel and U-Padel (both in San Antonio, TX), PadelUp (in Sterling, VA), Kraken Padel Club (in Dallas, TX), Union Padel Club and Proximo Padel (both in Chicago, IL), and The Padel Courts, Pura Padel, and Padel Up (all in Los Angeles, CA) — again, just to name a few.

(Although Victoria emphasizes that non-member clubs and padel businesses are more than welcome at the event, too, because, “the goal is to get everyone involved.”)

The Event Itself

One other very notable Padel Relations U.S.-member club is Padel Haus, so it’s probably little surprise that the actual playing portions of the event set to take place both days will be held at the recently opened Padel Haus Greenpoint location.

In addition to providing attendees with ample opportunities to network, socialize, and play padel at one of New York City’s (and the U.S.’s) preeminent padel venues, Victoria is also organizing both official and unofficial event dinners at stunning locations around Manhattan, including a rooftop location that is yet to be publicly announced but is sure to dazzle anyone who decides to join the party in the Big Apple in late September.

Ultimately, Victoria tells me:

We are super excited to bring the Padel Relations Event to New York this year as we see more and more people getting involved in the U.S. padel market. We look forward to some fun days with club owners and decision-makers and can’t wait to keep growing this global padel business network!

If past Padel Relations events across Europe are any indication, this will be one not to miss — so I do hope to see you there!

Learn More Here

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released last week. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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Here at Padel Nation we generally try to highlight the positive direction padel is taking across the U.S. rather than the negative direction so many other things are taking across our country and the world at large….

And today we get to highlight a positive (yet seemingly overlooked) direction that U.S. padel is taking to help a series of very negative and completely devastating events that happened in Venezuela just a little over a month ago — namely, two powerful 7.0+ earthquakes that shook the South American country, damaging or destroying an estimated 850+ buildings, injuring over 16,000+ people, and taking the lives of another 5,200+ according to recent estimates.

Granted, there have certainly been no shortage of worthy organizations raising money to help the Venezuelan recovery efforts in the aftermath of this catastrophe, including:

• International Rescue Committee

• U.N. Crisis Relief

• UNICEF USA

But one that particularly that has particularly caught my attention is one from LA-based Padel Up — which we’ve covered several times before for various events and initiatives and which, this Wednesday, July 22, will be hosting a “Rally for Venezuela” event to raise money for recovery efforts.

In fact, in the weeks following the Venezuela devastation, while so many others were focused on hype surrounding the World Cup, the Taylor Swift / Travis Kelce nuptials, and the U.S.’s 250th birthday, I saw an Instagram post from Padel Up stating:

If you’ve ever been to Padel Up, you know that Venezuela is a huge part of our community. Our coaches, staff and clients represent this beautiful nation proudly.

It’s been two weeks since an earthquake destroyed Venezuela and took so many precious lives. We can’t forget what has happened and must continue to drive support for Venezuela.

Padel Up is committed to raising funds to send to Venezuela. If you’d like to participate, you can find our GoFundMe link in our bio.

We will be announcing an event dedicated to Venezuela support shortly so please stay tuned. Padel Up is also committing 100% of our revenue from our weekly Link Up events every Friday this July.

Shortly thereafter, I came across this follow up, officially announcing the “Rally for Venezuela” event that will take place the day after tomorrow:

On June 24, powerful earthquakes changed the lives of thousands of families across Venezuela.

As a community, we believe that even small actions can make a meaningful impact.

Join us for Rally for Venezuela, an evening where we come together through padel, food, music, and community to raise funds for earthquake relief efforts.

Padel Up Culver City
Wednesday, July 22 / 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Can’t make it? You can still support by donating through the GoFundMe in our bio. Every contribution helps.

Thank you to all of our partners and everyone helping make this possible.

Together, we rally for Venezuela. 🇻🇪❤️

And, sadly to me, while dozens of AI-generated padel-related social media posts routinely garner hundreds, if not thousands, of likes and 🔥🔥🔥 responses, this very worthy cause (so far) seems to have fallen on deaf ears…

What’s more, the GoFundMe they’ve set up is still about 90% short of its goal, which I hope you’ll agree is a bit disheartening given that so many people in the U.S. don’t think twice about dropping hundreds of dollars per hour to play padel.

But I’m in for $250, whatever that’s worth — and I trust that at least a few of you who read this will contribute as much as you can, too (and, perhaps more importantly, pass this along to your friends, as well, whether they play padel or not).

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Plus, it seems that if anyone can pull off a big, meaningful padel event, it’s Padel Up — so hopefully we can all band together and show everyone what the U.S. padel community is really all about!

Donate to "Rally for Venezuela" now

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released this week. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

Editor’s note: The following (lightly edited) feature article is the third installment of a new “How I Became Obsessed With Padel” series we’re rolling out from regular guest contributor, Scott Matulis, a former PR Director for the Worldwide Senior Tennis Tour who discovered padel in Vegas two years ago and can now hit balls off of the glass occasionally. He is the author of the LinkedIn and Substack serial novel The Applicant.

And apologies for this week’s second article arriving a day late and very early in the morning (for U.S. readers anyhow). Publishing while traveling through Spain has proved trickier than planned, but we’ll shoot to get back to our regular schedule next week!

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Rene Lewicki leads business development for Wilson in the Western United States. He’s German. He’s also one of the people working to grow padel in the U.S., and he has a unique perspective on what it will take to make the sport popular here. He thinks Wilson rackets are better than your current stick.

Here’s how he became obsessed with padel…

Give me the origin story, how you discovered padel and how you fell in love with it.

So, I played padel the first time when I was 15 or 16. I was at a training camp in Spain for tennis, and my coach, who was from Chile, one day said, ‘Hey, we are going to play padel today,’ and we were all like, ‘What is that?’

He got us out on the court and we played. And we did that two years in a row when we went to this training camp in Spain. We always played one afternoon of padel. And we all had a blast, but in all honesty, thank God there are no videos from back then. It was probably the most hilarious thing because we were all good tennis players, but we had no clue how to use the walls.

So, fast forward a few years, I was a grown up, worked in the sporting goods industry, lived in Berlin, Germany. A friend of mine told me there is someone building these weird courts in Berlin. It looks like tennis but smaller. I was like, wait, wait, that sounds familiar. So I drove out there and I realized like, ‘Oh my god, those are padel courts!’

So, I played for just over a year, I played every day at this club. We played through the German winter. Any time there was no snow on the ground, we would play padel. We had the onion system of clothing. We came with like six layers.

And then I moved to the U.S. for a job by myself. And besides working, I didn’t have much to do. I was not married. My girlfriend back then was in Germany, so I found out that there were padel courts that today are called The Padel Courts in Los Angeles. I would drive in on the weekends.

The club was run by some super nice guys from Spain. I would go up there once a month and just play for one or two days. It was padel and I loved it.

When was that, and how was the padel community at that point in LA?

That was 2014. And it was mostly expats; people from Europe. There was this super fun crew who were all from Spain, mostly from Madrid. They all came here to study or whatever, and two of them ran these padel courts.

Without being negative, I don’t think it was the most profitable business because I can’t even remember being charged there when I played. They were happy that I came out and that I knew how to play a little bit.

Back then when I played on those courts, I would have probably played on a school backyard if somebody would have made a brick wall behind me.

People who knew padel were so desperate for padel courts that the standards were way lower than now. I mean, nowadays, if you want to have a top notch padel facility, you look at six courts plus restaurants, and all these nice things.

I was just at that club and one of the cool things about it is that it has a half court. I’d never seen one of those before. Back then, every court that existed was like gold. We played tournament matches on that half court. It was hilarious. We would play for fun, just like one against one, little freakish singles tournaments. They were fun. It was different.

Also, it’s not necessarily the width. It’s the length, it’s shorter. And that’s the tricky part. That really throws you off when you play there.

How did you end up working for Wilson?

I was in the sporting goods industry in different roles. And I spent lots of years in the racket sport industry, so tennis and padel were always very near. At one point, my other business ventures were over and it was time for a change.

I made a list of stuff that I care about, and that I could imagine working in. Padel was number one. Tennis was number two. Coffee wholesale trading was number three. Absolutely unrelated.

And funny enough, I was in Italy last summer, and I had an Airbnb with my family, and I walked one day to a pizza place in a town outside of Venice, and I walked by this super nice looking old villa, and I saw a sign that said, Amer Sports, Wilson.

And I was joking to my wife, ‘Hey, why don’t I just walk in there on Monday and ask them if they’re looking for a padel guy in the U.S.?’

And believe it or not, three weeks later, I was back home and I saw a job on LinkedIn that Wilson is looking for a business development manager for padel. So I applied, got the job and I love it.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… my brand-new 352-page padel book was just released this week. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Or if you’re a club owner and you’d want to carry a handful of copies in your pro shop for “padel curious” people who are interested in trying the sport out but don’t know quite where to start, let me know and I can connect you with my publisher’s wholesale department.

Many thanks in advance!

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While I didn’t have the privilege of attending the inaugural event of the 2026 Pro Padel League (PPL) season in New York City this past weekend myself (as I’m currently in Spain for the Premier Padel P1 in Málaga), it’s obvious from all the coverage I’ve seen that it was a real showstopper.

(And according to at least one spectator, more fun to watch than tennis — controversial as that may be!).

For starters, the event was held in Manhattan Center of the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, an iconic 120-year-old event venue with soaring, 75-foot frescoed ceilings on the west side of Midtown that was originally the home of the Manhattan Opera House. (Be sure to check out this virtual tour of the space if you want to see what all the fuss is about).

Then there were the players themselves, with over 50 of the world’s top men and women spread across the 10 teams that currently make up the PPL, including international superstars like Leonel “Tolito” Aguirre and longtime U.S. standout Brittany Dubins.

And finally, there was the fact that this was the first pro padel event to be broadcast live by a major U.S. television network, namely CNBC — which is perhaps not surprising given the network’s focus on investing news and the fact that the PPL has raised $25 million in funding over just the past 18 months, including a $15 million Series A round led by Charlotte Hornets Co-Chairman & Governor Rick Schnall (of the NBA).

Ultimately, the DC Matrix (which recently “re-located” from Arkansas) claimed the men's championship over the Toronto Polar Bears with this un-returnable por-tres kick smash, while the San Diego Stingrays captured the women's championship after breezing by the NY Atlantics 6-1, 6-1 in a little over an hour.

The tour’s next event (which I do plan on attending) will be in Los Angeles from August 13–16, followed by two tour stops in Mexico — first in Playa del Carmen from September 24–27 and next in Guadalajara from November 19–22 — before concluding in Miami, where The City's Cup will crown the league's men's, women's, and overall champions December 3–6.

The Bigger Picture

As stunning as the venue was and as exciting as all the action turned out to be, perhaps most impressive was the fact that the NY Atlantics team hosted a youth community clinic at Mink Padel — which connected local NYC youth from StreetSquash and Uptown Inner City League with professional players and coaches for an introduction to the sport.

Of this community-building, youth-focused outing, PPL CEO Michael Dorfman said on Instagram: "It’s all well and good that celebrities love padel. But to me, this is what it’s all about.”

Heading into the weekend he further told media outlets like Sports Destination Management:

Opening our 2026 season here in New York is an incredible moment for our league. This week represents everything we’re working to build — world-class competition, meaningful opportunities for our players, and new ways to introduce more fans to padel through our partners, broadcast reach, and community initiatives. We’re excited to welcome new fans to the sport and continue growing the game together.

Given everything I’ve heard and seen about the weekend, it looks like the PPL succeeded on all fronts — and I look forward to being courtside next month in Los Angeles to take it all in firsthand.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… I’ve actually got a full-blown padel book coming out in July. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by pre-ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Many thanks in advance!

For the third month in a row, I’ve teamed up with Aris Sevastianos (of the El Remate padel newsletter) to bring you a curated list of upcoming U.S. padel club openings that should be on your radar.

(If you missed our previous months’ lists you can find them here and here).

So far, we’ve detailed 14 clubs that are bringing 91 courts to eight states across the U.S., and this month we highlight five new clubs (including two that are opening this weekend) in five different states that will soon be bringing at least 20 new padel courts to the U.S. (Yes, that’s a lot to keep track of!).

This month’s list includes:

Bay Padel (San Jose, CA)

After bringing three previous clubs to the Bay area (two in San Francisco and one in Sunnyvale), Bay Padel is getting ready to open its fourth club further down the bay in San Jose.

In fact, this six-outdoor-court club will have its official soft opening this weekend, with a full day of padel (including a tournament), live music, and “Intro to Padel” sessions taking place this Saturday, July 11 from 9AM to 6PM.

This will be followed by Bay Padel opening yet another padel club in California later this year (this time in the Marina del Rey neighborhood of Los Angeles) — so be sure to stay tuned for more details on that one.

Estimated Opening Date: July 11, 2026 (Soft Opening)

Padel Park (West Jordan, UT)

Yet another padel club in the Western half of the country will have its coming-out party this weekend when Padel Park hosts its grand opening this Saturday, July 11 in West Jordan, Utah (just about 20 - 25 minutes south of downtown Salt Lake City).

As we covered a few months back, Padel Park is one of at least six padel clubs that will soon be open in the greater Salt Lake City area, and it will add another six indoor MejorSet courts (with 40-foot ceilings!) to the region’s rapidly growing roster of places to play.

From 10AM to 2PM this Saturday, you’re invited to come play, meet the community, enjoy free beginner clinics and open play, participate in giveaways, explore goods from local vendors, and see what Padel Park is all about. Just be sure to RSVP here.

Estimated Opening Date: July 11, 2026 (Grand Opening)

Three Rackets (Broomfield, CO)

A concept known as Three Rackets will soon join Nicol NJ, Ballers Philly and The Heights Racquet & Social Club (outside Minneapolis) on the the short — but growing — list of U.S. racquet clubs that offer padel, pickleball, and squash (though, sadly, The Heights is still the only one with doubles squash courts).

As you can see in this Instagram video tour, when it opens later this summer between Boulder and Denver, Three Rackets will feature five indoor Favaretti padel courts housed in a 34,000 square foot space with 32-foot-high ceilings.

This will accompany three all-glass squash courts and four pickleball courts along with spa-like locker rooms, lounge and social space, a fully stocked pro shop, and a kitchen and bar.

Estimated Opening Date: Summer 2026

Padeland (Chandler, AZ)

The greater Phoenix area will soon have even more places to play when Padeland brings three indoor padel courts (along with seven pickleball courts, a wellness space with cold plunge and sauna, a full restaurant, and a craft brewery) to downtown Chandler.

Of the project, co-founder Daniel Maldonado told AZ Big Media:

We set out to build something we couldn’t find here in the Valley: a fun social environment that blends movement, wellness and good vibes. Padeland brings together sport, community and great food and drink in a space that’s as exciting and inspiring as the game itself.

Speaking of the space, the 35,000 square foot building Padeland will soon call home is the former site of the LOOK Dine-In Cinemas facility — which, while I’m admittedly biased, seems like a great way to repurpose a huge amount of vacant real estate!

Estimate Opening Date: Summer 2026

Padel Foundry (Virginia Beach, VA)

On the opposite side of the country from Padeland, yet another former, long-empty movie theatre (once known as the Beach Cinema Alehouse) is being re-imagined as a padel club thanks to a new concept called Padel Foundry, which will bring the first-ever padel courts to Virginia Beach.

While the total number of courts has not been disclosed yet, we do know the founders plan to open, “a purpose-built indoor padel and wellness destination designed to bring sport, recovery, learning, and community together under one roof.”

Although the initial reception to the announcement was a bit frosty (on Instagram, at least), perhaps the rise of padel in other Virginia cities like Charlottesville, Richmond, and Sterling will eventually catch the attention of Virginians in the southern part of the state and convince them to give the sport a go.

Estimated Opening Date: Spring 2027

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… I’ve actually got a full-blown padel book coming out in July. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by pre-ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Many thanks in advance!

Subscribe now

Thanks to the influence of my proudly luddite father (who never owned a computer or a cell phone before he passed in 2020 — yet inexplicably loved his fax machine to the very end), I tend to be a bit of a technophobe myself.

What’s more, as I point out in the “Top 10 Reasons to Play Padel” chapter of my upcoming book, one of the things I personally love most about the sport is that it’s a refreshingly “analog” experience in what’s now an almost entirely digital world.

In fact, other than sleep, the hour or two I spend on a padel (or squash) court three or four times a week is about only time that that I’m not staring at a screen of one variety or another on any given day and actually being present in the moment.

And, to be honest, the last thing I want when I step off court is to instantly be shown AI-generated video highlights of how poorly I’m playing or get AI-driven coaching tips about how to improve my obviously mediocre game.

So, suffice it to say, as genuinely nice and obviously brilliant as they are, I was a little bit skeptical to hear about Julia Schwartz and Russell Einbinder’s plans for using AI to forever transform how we play padel. But I decided to hear them out…

The Path to Padel

The first thing that endears Julia and Russell to me when I first talk to them is that, unlike some other people I’ve come across in the padel space, they obviously love the sport itself and not just the upside potential they see in it.

Both grew up as tennis players, with Julia jokingly telling me she exited her career on a high note after she was the captain of her JV tennis team in high school. She also seriously brags on Russell and the fact that he was part of an NCAA championship-winning D3 tennis tennis team at Amherst (a fact he’s never once brought up to me, which is no surprise given his quiet, humble nature).

Both also discovered padel while living and working in New York City and almost immediately became obsessed. Julia informs me:

We’re both members at Padel Haus Dumbo in Brooklyn, so that’s our home base. It has been really special for us because it’s where we got hooked and where we’ve experienced firsthand how powerful the community side of the sport can be.

We’ve also been playing increasingly at Mink Padel (shoutout to Evan Brown!) now that the weather is warming up.

She goes on to tell me:

For Russell, padel has been a wild trip down memory lane, because he has reconnected with so many tennis players he grew up with on the USTA tennis circuit that he hasn’t seen since juniors.

He plays tournaments with his college doubles partner which has been an interesting arc in their competitive racquet sports journey.

Russell plays much more competitively and is regularly playing matches and tournaments, [whereas I’m] more on the social/open-play side — high beginner, aggressively campaigning for intermediate status, but very proud of my three wins at Monday’s high-beginner open play.

Once I’m convinced these two are far more padel-obsessed than they are padel opportunists, my mind opens a bit more to what they’re trying to do.

Solving Padel’s Many Pain Points

In order to understand where they are trying to go, I first ask about where they’ve been, to which Julia tells me:

We both come from pretty multidisciplinary backgrounds, which has ended up being really useful for building in a category like padel.

Before tech, Russell trained as an architect, earned his Master of Architecture from Columbia, and worked on a number of city and state buildings for New York and New Jersey. He then moved into startups and became Chief Growth Officer at Everyrealm.

I started my career in finance, having spent six-plus years in private equity before moving into startups and operating roles at early stage companies and finally Everyrealm, an a16z-backed blockchain and gaming company where I was a co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer.

Together at Everyrealm, we launched over 10 products, built communities into the hundreds of thousands, and managed large teams across engineering, product, marketing, and operations.

More recently, they’ve joined forces to start Unprompted, an AI product studio building custom agents and software products — which is where padel comes into the mix. As Julia explains:

We found our way into padel tech very organically. We became obsessed with the sport as players, and then immediately ran into all the same problems everyone else does: where can we play, how do we find people, what’s happening nearby, why is everything spread across WhatsApp threads, club websites, booking apps, and word of mouth? Padel Browser came from wanting to solve our own problems first.

Granted, I’ll likely always default to my very own low-tech U.S. padel map, which I created because I was finding so many AI-dependent sites giving out information like that the best place to play padel in the province (!) of Delaware is Houston, TX or that Lubbock, TX is home to nine different padel clubs, when it actually currently is home to zero.

But I have found it to be a very useful cross-referencing tool, and as they themselves point out, Padel Browser is far more than just a club-finding tool:

The North Star has always been simple: help more people play more padel.

Padel Browser started as a response to a basic discovery problem. When we got into the sport, it was surprisingly hard to answer simple questions: Where can I play? What clubs exist? What events are happening? What competitions are coming up? How do I get more involved?

So we started by mapping clubs and courts. From there, we expanded into competitions, programming, and events, and we’re now starting to build more around players and community.

Because discovery in padel is not just about finding a court. It is about understanding the whole ecosystem: where to play, who to play with, what is happening, and how to get involved. That is also a big reason we partnered with the USA Padel (formerly the United States Padel Association).

Taking the Next Step On- and Off-Court

They continue by telling me:

As we spent more time talking to players and working with clubs, we realized discovery is only the first step.

Once someone is interested in padel, there is still a lot of coordination required to turn that interest into actual participation. Players need help finding the right club, clinic, event, level, or group. Clubs need help capturing that demand, following up, filling programming, coordinating members, and making sure people find the right entry point. That is where our Front Desk Agents come in.

Padel Browser helps people discover the ecosystem. The agents help clubs activate that interest – by following up with leads, communicating directly with players, filling clinics and open plays, coordinating games between players at the right levels, and helping clubs run more proactively.

Having always been more of a visual learner, I ask them if they can show me what they’ve built rather than just tell me about it — and this is what they share with me:

While the tech behind all of this is admittedly all way over my head, I do start to see how this could also make life easier for players (and clubs alike) —especially as someone who has been constantly tasked with herding all the cats onto both the padel and doubles squash court over the years.

As they explain:

The biggest pain point is finding more people you can play with, so that you can play padel when you want, where you want, and with people at your level.

Padel has this funny paradox where the sport is incredibly social, but organizing a game can be surprisingly hard. You need four people, ideally at roughly the same level, in the same geography, with overlapping availability, who are all looking for the same kind of experience.

That’s a lot of coordination for something that should feel easy and fun. Right now, most of that coordination happens manually. Players text friends, post in WhatsApp groups, make open games on booking apps, wait for someone else to organize, or default to playing with the same three people.

Clubs also spend a lot of time trying to fill courts, organize open plays, match players by level, and answer repetitive questions.

So for us, the core problem is not just ‘booking’ or ‘discovery.’ It’s coordination. If we can make it easier for players to find the right games and easier for clubs to activate their communities, we think that directly grows participation (and retention for clubs, too).

After a half-dozen conversations with this fast-moving duo over the past few months, I’d venture to guess that this is just one of many AI-fueled, padel-focused innovations we’ll see from them going forward.

And, at the end of the day, I’m all for any technology that helps grow the sport and makes it easier for me to get on court — if only so I can get away from technology for a little while.

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

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Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… I’ve actually got a full-blown padel book coming out in July. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by pre-ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Many thanks in advance!

Dear Padel Nation,

While many exciting and positive things happened in the U.S. padel world this past month, June 2026 also brought some heartbreaking news on two separate fronts…

First off, we lost U.S. padel pioneer, Ultra Padel Club founder, and former Team USA player and coach, Fernando Alcaron, in a tragic accident in Florida at the end of the month that also took the life of his 18-year-old daughter.

While I didn’t know him personally, from the outpouring of support, grief, and fond memories on social media, it’s clear he was a true legend in his own time and much beloved by everyone who had the pleasure of knowing — or playing alongside — him.

Secondly, I got word that one of the very first padel courts to ever be built in the U.S. (in Chattanooga, TN in 1996 — pictured above) has been unceremoniously torn down with little to no warning to — or approval from — its original benefactors and/or ongoing supporters.

Coupled with the news that Orlando Padel Club Indoor is closing its doors and adding to a growing and troubling — yet probably inevitable — trend we’re seeing in U.S. padel, you might think June was a month best put behind us.

But, alas, all was not lost. Because this past month we also got word that:

• Municipal padel courts have recently opened in Amarillo, TX (per the very recently rebranded USA Padel — formerly the United States Padel Association) and just outside Detroit in Southgate, MI (per our friends at the El Remate newsletter)…

• Nicol NJ recently added three new outdoor padel courts to its indoor padel, squash, and pickleball offerings…

• Our friends at Padel Plant just set a new all-time attendance record for a USPA 100-level event at the recently held first edition of the Virginia Padel Open…

• Our friends at Clubhouse Sports held the first-ever Charleston Padel Cup here in Charleston, SC — and it was a smashing success despite the heat…

• Our friends (and Padel Nation sponsors) at Wakit Rakit held a FIP Promises Tour event at their recently opened club in Spring, Texas…

• CNBC is set to begin broadcasting the Pro Padel League starting with next week’s 2026 season debut at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City (as if I don’t have CNBC on enough already!)…

• USA Padel has declared October 2026 to be “National Padel Month” — with a number of initiatives designed to get new players on court and recognize the pioneers who have helped build the sport is the U.S. over the past 33 years, and…

• Pope Leo XIV (the first-ever U.S.-born Pope) was introduced to padel during the recent Premier Padel Italy Major in Rome.

And although June saw me traveling far less than I did in May to play padel, I’ll be heading to Spain for most all of July — in part to play some padel, in part to just get away from it all for a bit post finishing my padel book, and in part to go to my first-ever Premier Padel tournament in Málaga.

On a publication front, regular guest contributor, Scott Matulis, launched a new bi-monthly series that we’ll be publishing called, “How I Became Obsessed With Padel” and his first two installments featured Padel N9NE Founder Aaron Hasnain and new Los Angeles Beat owner David Eisen (both of whom are so obsessed with padel they have their own private courts).

And finally, in June, I had the pleasure and honor of welcoming two new Padel Nation sponsors: AMET International (who now officially powers our publication) and Playbypoint (who is joining us as an official preferred partner).

I’m extremely grateful for — and humbled by — their support and look forward to working with both of these great brands as they continue to help build padel across the U.S.

To close out, I’ve included a few of the other articles we published last month below in case you missed them.

As always, thanks for reading, have a great Fourth — and play up!

- ae

««« Five New U.S. Padel Clubs To Know About »»»

New padel clubs are soon set to open (or recently already have) everywhere from padel strongholds like Florida and Texas to new padel frontiers like Utah, Maryland, and Orange County, California. Here’s what you need to know.

««« The Biggest U.S. Metros Without Padel »»»

With new padel clubs opening all the time across the U.S., you might be surprised by some of the rather large metro areas that still don’t have padel (yet). Here are the five biggest.

««« Are the Padel Courts You Play on Legal? »»»

Eric Loftus (of Northeast Padel and the American Sports Builders Association) penned an important — and perhaps somewhat controversial — guest piece for us last month exploring the fact that many outdoor padel courts in the U.S. may not be compliant structures under the building codes of the jurisdictions where they stand.

So, are the courts you’re playing on “legal”? You might be surprised — and the consequences can be dire if not.

««« An Inside Look at the L.A. Padel Scene »»»

The L.A. padel scene is really starting to take off, so guest contributor Scott Matulis recently sat down with one of the L.A. padel scene’s true OGs, Jon Guerra, to learn more about where L.A. padel has been, where it’s at now, and where it’s going next.

««« Padel Set to Re-Establish Its TN Roots »»»

While it was somewhere between disappointing and devastating to learn that one of the first-ever padel courts in the U.S. was recently torn down after 30 years in Chattanooga, TN, the good news is that four new courts at two new clubs (one in Chattanooga and one in tiny Gray) will soon help U.S. padel to re-establish its roots in Eastern Tennessee.

… and that’s a wrap — until next month, at least!

If you enjoyed this article, please be sure to subscribe to Padel Nation (for free!) to get exciting updates and important insights on the rapidly emerging U.S. padel scene like this one delivered directly to your inbox 2X weekly — or share it with a padel-playing friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Finally, as always, a big thank you to the friends and preferred partners of Padel Nation who help make posts like this possible, including:

Interested in becoming a friend or preferred partner of Padel Nation? Drop us a line here and let’s talk!

Oh, and one other thing… I’ve actually got a full-blown padel book coming out in July. So, if you enjoy the work I’m doing in the U.S. padel space, you can support me by pre-ordering a copy (or two!) online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Many thanks in advance!