Besides being beginner friendly (forgiving mistakes), easy to learn and see the progress quickly (instant gratification, quick catch-up with friends who started earlier) the fact that it's not as physically exhausting as squash or tennis makes it attractive for many people.
It’s doubles so you only need four people to play. The underarm serve gives it a very shallow learning curve so almost anybody can play.
However, there is enough nuance to the game that there’s lots of tactics and skill to learn as you get better.
Also the app (Playtomic) for organising games works great.
We have indoor courts here in the UK where’s there’s not much else to do in the winter. It’s a lot easier to get four people together to play padel for 90 minutes than trying to get 10/12 together for a 5/6-a-side football match.
Every time I'm playing pickleball on vacation with my younger children, I look over at Padel courts (if available) with envy. It seems both more fun and athletic, but still less challenging to pick up than tennis.
It takes much less time to learn it at a playable level than tennis. In my opinion, learning tennis and being able to hit a powerful drive is much more rewarding, but nowadays people don’t want to “waste” time in improving technique.
After reaching a playable level people start to compete in tournaments and in competitive games on Playtomic and then the technique starts to matter, maybe a bit less than in tennis. There are still plenty of basic padel shots you have to spend 10-100s of hours to master with a coach to be able to compete on a higher ranking.
Can anyone explain to me why this sport is so popular that it’s taking over prime locations in expensive cities?
Besides being beginner friendly (forgiving mistakes), easy to learn and see the progress quickly (instant gratification, quick catch-up with friends who started earlier) the fact that it's not as physically exhausting as squash or tennis makes it attractive for many people.
I see a lot of people transition from squash and tennis to padel nowadays and basically any racket sport experience helps it a lot.
Simply put: it’s a very fun sport.
It’s doubles so you only need four people to play. The underarm serve gives it a very shallow learning curve so almost anybody can play. However, there is enough nuance to the game that there’s lots of tactics and skill to learn as you get better.
Also the app (Playtomic) for organising games works great.
We have indoor courts here in the UK where’s there’s not much else to do in the winter. It’s a lot easier to get four people together to play padel for 90 minutes than trying to get 10/12 together for a 5/6-a-side football match.
Yeah, it's addictive. I saw stats that 9 out of 10 people who played for the first time plays twice and more.
Every time I'm playing pickleball on vacation with my younger children, I look over at Padel courts (if available) with envy. It seems both more fun and athletic, but still less challenging to pick up than tennis.
Agreed, I think padel found a great balance between being accessible and athletic at the same time.
It takes much less time to learn it at a playable level than tennis. In my opinion, learning tennis and being able to hit a powerful drive is much more rewarding, but nowadays people don’t want to “waste” time in improving technique.
After reaching a playable level people start to compete in tournaments and in competitive games on Playtomic and then the technique starts to matter, maybe a bit less than in tennis. There are still plenty of basic padel shots you have to spend 10-100s of hours to master with a coach to be able to compete on a higher ranking.
I ussed to play it with friends. The big advantage to tennis is that the ball never gets too far away :)
Yuppies/expats love it, that's pretty much the reason.
yeah, it is getting popular everywhere.