Padel (sport)

Padel

Padel players on outdoor padel courts
Highest governing body	International Padel Federation (IPF)
Nicknames	Paddle (US, Canada)
First played	1969, Acapulco, Mexico
Characteristics
Contact	No
Team members	Doubles
Mixed gender	Separate competitions (mixed sometimes in leagues)
Type	Racquet sport
Equipment	Padel racquet, Padel ball
Venue	Outdoor or indoor Padel court
Presence
Country or region	Worldwide
Olympic	No
Paralympic	No

Padel is a racquet sport. In the US and Canada the sport is known as Paddle.

Padel is not to be confused with Platform Tennis, a winter sport typically played at country clubs in the US and Canada, with courts heated from below to eliminate snow and water. The court, rules, and styles of play are very different.

Padel is typically played in doubles on an enclosed court a third the size of a tennis court. Scoring is the same as normal tennis and the balls used are similar but with a little less pressure, the main differences are that the court has walls and the balls can be played off them in a similar way as in the game of squash and that solid, stringless racquets are used. The height of the ball being served must be at or below the waist level.

The sport was invented in Acapulco, Mexico, by Enrique Corcuera in 1969. It is currently most popular in Hispanic American countries such as Argentina and Mexico as well as in Spain and Andorra, although it is now beginning to spread rapidly across Europe and other continents.

Padel Pro Tour (PPT) was the professional Padel Circuit which was created in 2005 as a result of the agreement between a group of organizers of matches of Padel and Association of Professional Players of Pádel (AJPP) and the Spanish Feminine Association of Pádel (AFEP). Nowadays, the most important padel circuit is World Padel Tour (WPT), which started in Spain though it has already reached international expansion. In 2014 WPT has traveled to Portugal, Argentina and Dubai.

The sport's popularity along the Costa del Sol in southern Spain and the Algarve in southern Portugal has exposed it to a large number of British visitors, leading to an increased popularity of the sport in the UK and a launch of the UK Padel Federation in 2011.

The US Paddle Association was founded in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1993 and opened two courts in the Chattanooga area. The American Paddle Association was formed in 1995 and built its first courts at a private club in Houston, Texas for exhibition games. The first public courts opened in Miami, Florida in 2009, and several clubs have opened nearby, as well as in Los Angeles, since then.