Padel explosion: the racket sport that keeps on growing
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What makes padel one of the fastest growing sports in Ireland?
Paddle is one of the fastest growing sports in Ireland. Perhaps the first Irish Olympic paddle player has only just taken up the game. We'll have to wait and see. Brian O'Connell spent time at a new paddle facility in Dublin and heard how plans are well advanced to meet the growing demand amongst both amateur and budding professional players here. Brian, good morning to you. Morning. How are things? Good, thanks. What is paddle?
Paddle.
Yeah, well, paddle really, well, it's highly addictive, first off, from anybody I know who started playing it. It's a racket game. It's played in a smaller court than tennis. It's quite similar rules, but it's always played in doubles. So that's a big difference. The court can be indoor or outdoor. Many of them in Ireland, I think, are mostly indoor. It has a back wall, which is usually glass. And you're using a hard racket instead of a stringed one. So there's quite a distinctive sound from it. In theory, the ball then is in play for longer. So the game should be much more enjoyable.
What are the unique features of padel compared to tennis?
You don't really need the same skill level to begin to play. And then the growth here has been kind of incredible, really. It seems there's a paddle court opening almost every week somewhere in the country. Now, I was in the latest one, which is in St. Mary's RSC in Temple Oak. It's a large indoor structure here. It houses several paddle courts and it's going to host the Irish Paddle Championships, which are on in mid-July. I'll tell you more about that shortly. But first off, I met with Naomi Nicol, who's President and CEO of the Paddle Federation of Ireland. And we met in this brand new facility.
This is one of the newer facilities that's just opening now. It's in Temple Oak, three court, indoor, and it's going to be hosting the upcoming Paddle Irish Open taking place in July.
Any idea how many paddle courts we have now around the country, like in terms of our infrastructure? We've come from a low base very quickly, I'd imagine.
We have. Well, we've been around since 2012, but we currently are at 240 courts.
We were kind of a bit slow to catch on, weren't we? If you look at Spain, for example.
There's a recent paddle report done and Ireland was noted as one of the countries to watch because of our current growth trend. What's the attraction? It's such a social sport, so players can just take it up at any level. It's good for beginners.
Is it more forgiving?
It is a very forgiving sport so you can go onto a court, continue to play and the ball stays in play, you're not chasing it.
And a tennis player friend of mine is telling me paddle really is for people that wanted to be good at tennis but can't serve.
Well, there could be that as well. But actually what we're seeing, so we have four players over here and they're all from different sports. We're definitely seeing a fantastic uptake from athletes from GAA as well. So that's great.
So we're seeing the early... Okay, so they're not all former tennis players?
No, no, absolutely not. We have participated and we continue to participate in all the international tournaments. We're currently preparing to send a team to Argentina in September to participate at the Paddle World. senior championships and we have also... Are there professional paddle players? There are professional paddle players, not yet in Ireland.
Because you would think maybe in Ireland, given our hurling tradition, given our squash tradition, that we would produce some good paddle players.
And that's what we're hoping for and I think we will and we're already seeing it, like we've seen fantastic progress over the last number of years.
It's quite noisy. I'm not sure I'd be quite happy with one in the next door neighbour's back garden.
So the noise, well actually, as the sport develops, there's various different engineering that's coming into place. So in order to suppress sounds, it's something that's put onto quartz to absorb the sounds. Okay.
I suppose every sport likes to say it's growing fast, but this has to be one of the fastest growing sports in Europe, is it?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What makes padel one of the fastest growing sports in Ireland?
0:00–0:53
2
What are the unique features of padel compared to tennis?
0:53–4:25
3
How many padel courts are currently available in Ireland?
4:25–6:04
4
What attracts people to play padel as a sport?
6:04–8:20
5
Are there professional padel players in Ireland?
8:20–10:41