I’ve played a fair amount of racquet sports in my life. When I was five years old my dad started playing tennis with me and I continued playing tennis actively for most of my youth. I also played a lot of badminton, especially in high school, and I’ve even had the opportunity to play squash every now and then.
One might think that a person with my background would welcome any new racquet sport with open arms. Unfortunately, that was not the case with me and padel. Despite the fact that padel came to Finland already in 2003, I never came around trying it until today. I always thought it looked a bit funny, almost childish, and I had a hard time regarding is at a “true racquet sport”, whatever that means.
Padel has become very popular in Finland and during the past five years, there’s been an explosion in the number of courts. Today there are some 250 courts in 70 locations and around 150 new courts are being planned.
So, how was my first ever game of padel? Surprisingly enjoyable, as a matter of fact. I’m definitely going to try it out again and with all the movement back and forth, it even felt as a real exercise (60 min).
For me, thanks to tennis, it was very easy to control the ball and move around on the court, but even people who haven’t played almost any racquet sports before seem to get the hang of it quickly. Here we definitely have a different kind of a learning curve compared to tennis. It also feels like a pretty social game, as it’s typically played in doubles and the court is much smaller than a tennis court.
The day before, I checked the rules online and to my delight I discovered that there are many similarities to tennis (scoring, serving, side changes etc.). The big difference is that you have glass walls that can be used in a similar way as in squash for getting the ball to the other side.
Of course, the big learning here – or rather, the big reminder – is that it’s completely irrational to have prejudice against something new, or against a derivative of something you think you understand, especially if you haven’t even tried it out yourself. Just makes me wonder what other irrational padel-like attitudes I might be harbouring.