Twelve padel facts that surprise almost everyone

Padel is a young sport with some genuinely odd rules and a strange history. Here are the facts that get the biggest reaction at the club bar.

The sport itself

1. It exists because someone lacked space. Padel was invented in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera in Acapulco, who could not fit a full tennis court at his home. The whole sport is a workaround. Full story in the history of padel.
2. A padel court is about a third the area of a tennis court. Which is why clubs can fit three padel courts where one tennis court used to be.
3. There is no singles padel in practice. Singles courts exist but are rare. The sport is designed around four players.
4. Rackets must have holes. They are solid, have no strings at all, and the perforations are part of the official specification.

The rules that catch people out

1. You can leave the court and play the ball back in. If there is a gap in the fencing and you are fast enough, running outside to return a ball is completely legal — and one of the great sights in sport.
2. Overhead serves are banned. Padel is one of the very few racket sports where you must serve underarm, below waist height, after bouncing the ball.
3. Your own back wall is a tool, not a hazard. Letting a ball pass you and taking it off the glass is basic technique, not desperation.
4. Hitting the fence on your own side is fine. After a legal bounce, the ball may hit anything on your side and the point continues. On the way over, it may not.

The professional game

1. The world number one ranking is shared by two people. Padel ranks pairs, not individuals, because it is played only as doubles.
2. Fernando Belasteguín was world number one for sixteen consecutive years. From 2002 to 2017 — a run with almost no equivalent in professional sport.
3. Top players change partners constantly. A padel season can open with half the top ten in new pairings, which is why the ranking reshuffles so dramatically.
4. Padel is not the same as pickleball or platform tennis. They are three different sports that keep getting confused with one another, and only padel has full glass walls in play.

For the rules behind all of this, start with padel rules for beginners.