Excellent article Austin and you are the first to write about the potential conundrum of country clubs adopting padel but at the same time that adoption putting pressure on other clubs and operators out there. Fortunately there are models/sports (golf and tennis come to mind) where both broad based access and country club prevalence co-exist. Having said that, it took over half a century for tennis and golf to become as accessible and widespread as we take for granted today. I continue to believe we are still at the very beginning of the padel journey in the USA and it is not always clear how or how fast the sport will be adopted across our very large and diverse population. Adoption rates and accessibility are unlikely to be the same across every region or metro area.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment, Bill -- great to have someone of your stature in the U.S. padel world weigh in. And good points about golf and tennis. One positive I see is that many of these private padel courts are going up in places where I doubt anyone is planning on opening a pay-to-play club anytime soon (like Gozzer in Idaho, Yellowstone Club in Montana, and Fort Wayne Country Club in IN). So it should be good to just help spread the awareness and visibility of the sport to parts of the country that might otherwise not have any exposure to it.
Excellent article Austin and you are the first to write about the potential conundrum of country clubs adopting padel but at the same time that adoption putting pressure on other clubs and operators out there. Fortunately there are models/sports (golf and tennis come to mind) where both broad based access and country club prevalence co-exist. Having said that, it took over half a century for tennis and golf to become as accessible and widespread as we take for granted today. I continue to believe we are still at the very beginning of the padel journey in the USA and it is not always clear how or how fast the sport will be adopted across our very large and diverse population. Adoption rates and accessibility are unlikely to be the same across every region or metro area.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment, Bill -- great to have someone of your stature in the U.S. padel world weigh in. And good points about golf and tennis. One positive I see is that many of these private padel courts are going up in places where I doubt anyone is planning on opening a pay-to-play club anytime soon (like Gozzer in Idaho, Yellowstone Club in Montana, and Fort Wayne Country Club in IN). So it should be good to just help spread the awareness and visibility of the sport to parts of the country that might otherwise not have any exposure to it.