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Argentina 1990’… padel was a rage. Lasaigues, Gattiker, Bacigaluppo and Costagliola, were sweeping. Padel schools, clubs and courts everywhere. There were fully booked tournaments every week. In this scenario, entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to get into the padel business.
Courts and “padel clubs” were built, literally in every corner of the country. Without any planification, experience or business plan. Parking areas, sport areas or empty plots, suddenly became padel clubs. Some of them had deficient isolation, or were outdoors courts with the wrong orientation. Or perhaps their managers were not specialized in the sport business and did not succeed in keeping the padel facilities afloat, when difficult times necessarily arrived.
And as if it were a theatre play, suddenly, everything was over. The curtain felt and only the best clubs, managers, coaches and tournaments survived, everything else closed. Professional players started to moved to Spain, were padel was growing fiercely.
I landed in Barajas, a few years later, because of one of the many crisis that we are used to suffer in our country. Without knowing that I would met again with my former passion: padel.
It was 2002 and I started to live padel expansion in Spain, it first started in the most prestigious country clubs. Tennis tradition in Spain, made it quite easy the incorporation of the new sport to tennis clubs all over the country. Growth in the peninsula, was more sustained, less chaotic and more organized than in Argentina. Not perfect, but better. At the beginning padel was and elitist sport. Almost every time I said I was a padel player or coach, people named Aznar (a former Spanish president). But little by little, step by step, people started listening the sport, differentiating padel from tennis, and trying the newcomer.
Now, more than 20 years later, padel is a mature sport in Spain. I´ve seen the sport growing and growing through all this path from different points of view. THE PLAYER, THE RETAILER, THE COACH, THE PADEL SCHOOL MANAGER and from THE FEDERATION as a delegate. And we are in a good position now. Almost everyone knows the sport and many many people practice it. You can play a tournament every week and is not easy to booked an indoor court without anticipation… But everything is changing and perhaps, and because of an excessive number of padel facilities, some of them will have to close, or make a profound change if they want to survive. Good coaches are moving abroad to get better salaries, so clubs in Spain must do a good job to retain talent.
Starting a PADEL CLUB, running a club or PADEL SCHOOL, and making it a success is not easy. History has shown us that only THE STRONGEST, MOST FLEXIBLE and BEST PREPARED will survive. DO YOU WANT TO BE AMONG THIS SELECT GROUP?
PADEL HOOKS, does not disappoint and leaves no one indifferent. You have an opportunity now in PADEL BUSINESS, are you in? Then if the answer is yes, I’m sure you will like to be in the side of the one’s who WIN.
We are in life to PLAY, WORK HARD, PERSEVERE, ENJOY and why not… WIN. And if it happens that you have to lose, don’t let it be, because you haven´t tried hard enough and given it your all.
