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Padel in Andalucia a combination of tennis and squash

By in Andalusische Städte und Dörfer with 0 Comments

Maybe you’ve never heard of it and you’re not familiar with it but Padel in Spain is very popular. At many places you come across small courts, which are placed in a sort of glass cages. Here Padel is practiced. In Spain padel is after the football the most popular sport, even more than tennis and golf.

Padel is a kind of combination of the sports of tennis and squash. It is played with small thick rackets.

adidas fast court racket

The game can be played like tennis in singles or doubles. But the field is smaller, the scoring like tennis, and the ball can’t go out. Just as in tennis there is a net at the a middle of the field, 88 cm tall. The playing field is completely closed off all around by walls 3 meters high, these are usually transparent. Experts say Padel is more accessible to the general public than tennis. The reason is that less techniques are needed.

Padel court Bubion

Origin
The sport was brought to Spain by Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe who came into contact with it in 1974 when he was in Mexico. The godson of King Alfonso XIII and Queen Eugenia was visiting his friend Enrique Corcuera. Enrique played a sort of mini-tennis in a walled court. This small tennis court he had built himself because his garden was too small for a real tennis court. Von Hohenlohe appreciated the sport practiced by Enrique so much that he put two courts in the gardens of his Marbella Club Hotel, and adjusted the rules. Then he managed to inspire a lot of his friends and visitors to play the game.

Alfonso von Hohenlohe

Influence of Manolo Santana

Then at the end of the seventies, when the Spanish tennis legend Manolo Santana also got inspired by Padel by the sport became even more popular. Santana organized Padeltournaments and the sport became popular along the Costa del Sol. More and more clubs started their own courts. Padel spread from the south of Spain to the rest of the country. Now there are many courts across Andalusia, Murcia, Comunidad Valenciana and Catalonia where the sport has also become very popular in recent years.

Conquest of the world
The Argentine millionaire Menditengui saw at his friend Von Hohenlohe in Marbella how popular Padel was. He brought the sport to his homeland where Padel was also a success. The sport is today in extended over all South America, and on other continents. Worldwide currently about 6.5 million people practice this sport. More than four million of the sportsmen come from Spain.

Where to play
Houses with Padel courts nearby in Granada province:
Casa de la Luz in Bubión: in English.
Casa Milagro in Bubión: in English.
and all the houses in Orgiva.
In Bubión at this moment the court is to be used for free, in Orgiva you have to pay a fee.
Balls and raquets are sold in Orgiva: shop Sierra Nevada Outdoor

Source: Frans Mulder in Spanje Vandaag

 

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