The History
WHAT IS PADEL - THE HISTORY
Padel’s history is by no means a clear-cut story with many versions of how it all began. However, through our research, it seems that it went a little something like this…
Mr Enrique Corcuera, a wealthy businessman from Mexico, decided to build a tennis court in his hometown of Puerto de Acapulco, Mexico in the late ’60s. He had a small area to work with, so to stop the ball from bouncing out of play he built a wall around it. He decided to name it Padel Corcuera, while his wife Viviana, put together the first rule book for this new sport.
A few years later his good friend from Spain, Alfonso de Hohenlohe, was introduced to it. He instantly fell in love with padel (as most people do) and by the mid-’70s had taken it across the pond to Marbella, Spain. He installed two courts of his own at the Marbella Club Hotel and made a few modifications such as the wire fencing.
This is where padel began to gain momentum and grow in popularity due to all his high profile friends and associates, such as King Juan Carlos and ex-Wimbledon champion Manolo Santana.
The game continued to spread across the globe by getting taken back to South America, but this time to Argentina, by De Hohenlohe’s friend, Julio Menditengui. Padel exploded in Argentina and didn’t take long in becoming the country’s second most popular sport after football, as has now happened in Spain. These two countries were essential in the growth of padel and thanks to their massive tourism industry helped introduce the world to the sport.
Today, the still relatively unknown padel is played by around 12 million people on almost 30 000 courts in over 50 countries across the globe.
And, it’s just getting started…
