With racquet sports having become a major leisurely activity, one sport that has garnered a massive following across the world is padel. Not just common people, but even football star David Beckham, one of tennis' most successful players Serena Williams and even French president Emmanuel Macron have admitted that they are fans of this sport. Padel is booming and has never been more popular than it has been in the last few years.
The growth is even more brilliant considering the sport was just invented in 1969 by a husband and wife duo on holiday as a way to avoid boredom. 55 years later, over 25 million active players exist in more than 110 nations across the world. Spain reportedly has the most padel players in the world, with around 5.
5 million participants earlier this year. Where & How Did Padel Begin? According to a report on BBC, in 1969, while enjoying their new holiday home in the Las Brisas suburb of Mexican Riviera Acapulco, model Viviana and her husband Enrique unknowingly created a sport that was to become a worldwide trend five decades later. To pass their time, Viviana and Enrique began throwing a ball at the wall and the former was impressed with the very basic format of the game.
"If you don't make a court in Acapulco, I'm going back home to Argentina. No padel court, no Viviana," she told Enrique. The husband agreed and in the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, a padel court was built.
A court measuring 20m long by 10m wide was built out of cement so that it was .
