Inside the Sport Everyone Suddenly Seems to Be Playing

Three years ago, padel was a sport you might have encountered on holiday in Spain and thought about briefly on the plane home. Today there are over 300 padel courts in the UK, with more under construction, and a demographic that cuts across age, fitness level and sporting history in ways that most sports do not.

The reasons for its rapid adoption are not complicated. Padel is easier to play than tennis, more sociable than squash, and significantly less physically demanding than either at a beginner level. The enclosed court means the ball stays in play for longer, rallies are more frequent, and the experience of playing reasonably well arrives much sooner than in most racket sports. For adults who gave up competitive sport in their twenties, this matters.

You can be genuinely bad at padel and have a very good time. This is rarer in sport than it should be.

Pickleball, which arrived in the UK several years after its American explosion, is following a similar trajectory. The paddles are smaller, the court is smaller, the ball is slower and the whole enterprise is more accessible to people who have never played a racket sport at all. It is being adopted enthusiastically by retirement communities and twentysomethings simultaneously, which is an unusual distinction for any sport.

What both sports share is the social dimension. Unlike gym-based fitness, they require other people and a scheduled commitment. The community that builds around a regular court booking, the post-game drink, the WhatsApp group argument about who is improving fastest, is precisely the kind of social structure that most adults' lives are now missing. The sport is the format. The socialising is the actual product.

You can be genuinely bad at padel and have a very good time. This is rarer in sport than it should be.