As we first covered back in April and frequent Padel Nation contributor Scott Matulis explored last month for the IAAPF’s Facility Magazine, when it comes to padel, Utah is most definitely having a moment.
In fact, the greater Salt Lake City area is now home to over 30 padel courts — both indoors and outdoors — at clubs including…
Padel Den, and…
… which, as we recently pointed out, is actually more courts than the states of Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Oregon, and Louisiana have combined.
(Oh, and — as you can see below — Park City is now also home to one of the most stunning private courts I’ve ever set foot on, as well.)
A Rising Tide…
With this much competition popping up almost overnight, you might assume that these six padel clubs would be battling hard against one another to attract players and fill their courts, but as I found on a trip there last month, it’s really quite the opposite.
In general, operators had nothing but the best things to say about one another and were actively thinking through ways they could collaborate and grow the padel ecosystem in the Beehive State together.
Case in point, starting tomorrow Utah’s original padel club, SLC Padel Club, and Lehi, UT-based Conquer Padel Club will combine forces to co-host the Utah Open — which will be the first-ever USA Padel tournament to be split across not just different venues under the same banner but entirely different padel clubs altogether.
Heading into the weekend, co-hosts Pedro Bautista (of SLC Padel) and Enrique Gracia (of Conquer) tell me they expect to have just shy of 90 players participating in this officially sanctioned 250-level event.
However, they’re also quick to point out that once you factor in the players’ friends and families, other spectators and fans from around the community, and the four to five vendors they’ve attracted for the event, the total number of people they could see coming through the doors of their respective clubs each day could balloon to well over 150.
1 + 1 = 3
Of the decision to co-host an event like this, Pedro tells me:
I’ve been talking with Enrique since before I opened [my] club. For more than a year now, [we’ve] been talking two to three times a week [on] the phone, sharing ideas. So, we have a pretty good relationship on that end.
My wife goes to play over there. His kids, himself, [they] come play over here. So, we have really, really [been] working on that relationship between the clubs and between ourselves. It’s been a pretty good experience, so it just made sense to do it between the two of us [at] clubs that already have established communities.Beyond the strong working relationship the two clubs have, Pedro also says there were two other main factors that made him and Enrique decide to co-host the event.
First off, the two clubs are located about a 45-minute drive apart, and their owners are both well aware that many of those who play at their clubs regularly actually live somewhere in between the two. Given this, they felt they could cast a much wider net — and thus attract a lot more players — by splitting the tournament across their clubs.
Furthermore, Pedro points out the fact that, because the Utah Open is a 250-level USA Padel event, all participants are required to be official members of USA Padel — which carries a $50 annual fee in addition to the Utah Open’s own $65 entry fee.
He further explains:
For somebody who has never played a tournament of this size, $115 could be a little challenging — and, you know, kind of hard to justify. So, we decided that we [could help] justify it by saying, ‘Hey, this is a bigger tournament and we're collaborating between two clubs.’ And on top of that, if we can each get our own community, we can ensure that we can pull more people — which worked. Both of the days are full.
A New Way Forward?
When I finally ask Pedro what he hopes will ultimately come out of this unique, co-hosted event, both for padel in the U.S. in general and Utah more specifically, he says:
Honestly, the main thing I hope is that more people play padel. There [are] people that [only] started playing a year ago and [because of] this tournament are now [USA Padel members] just so they can play in this tournament. So, I think it's gonna grow the database that we have for all the players.
The people that [don’t] get a chance to compete [this time] are probably going to see it next time and be like, ‘Okay, this time I will hop on.’ And it's just going to get bigger because now everybody has [already paid for] the $50 membership and they're not going to have that barrier, so they can just pay the entry for the tournament and that's it.
And then the collaboration in between clubs is what [will hopefully] keep players going to other clubs and trying them out. At the end of the day, I still want the people that come to my club often to go and play at other places and support padel in general.
I would hope the same for players that are playing at other clubs, and the best way to do that is to show that if the owners are collaborating, why can't we, right? So, I really hope [this tournament] will have a lot of positive benefits.
In what I’ve come to think of as signature Pedro Bautista fashion, he closes out our conversation by adding, “I hope that’s not too long [of an answer], but I’m really passionate about this one!”
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