History of the Game
Padel began, as many good things do, with someone making the best of a bad situation. In 1969, a Mexican businessman named Enrique Corcuera wanted to play tennis at his holiday home in Acapulco. The problem was he didn't have enough space for a full court. So he built a smaller one, walled it in to stop the ball escaping onto his neighbour's land, and called it Paddle Corcuera. His wife Viviana — a former Miss Argentina, since you ask — wrote the first official rulebook and gave it to him as a birthday present. Which is either the most romantic gift in sporting history or a very efficient way of settling an argument about the rules. Possibly both.
Invented by accident
The sport was invented by accident, named after its creator, and spread by word of mouth among friends. It was social from the very beginning. A Spanish aristocrat named Alfonso of Hohenlohe visited Corcuera's home, played a few games, and immediately understood what he had. He took the idea back to his tennis club in Marbella, built two courts, and introduced it to a crowd who appreciated a sport that was fast, fun, and considerably easier to pick up than tennis. From Marbella it jumped to Argentina, where it became nothing short of a national obsession. Today Argentina has over ten thousand padel courts and more than two million licensed players. Spain went one further — padel is now the country's second most popular sport after football, with an estimated six million players and over twenty thousand courts. The rest of the world took a little longer. But it got there.
It started as one mans solution to a neighbourly dispute in Acapulco. It is now played by thirty million people in ninety countries. Enrique would have been delighted. His neighbour probably less so.
Come and find out what all the fuss is about. We will be on court — and at the bar after.