Players & legends
The legends who built padel
Padel's professional history is short enough to fit in one lifetime, which makes its legends unusually easy to name.
Padel has only had a serious professional circuit since the 1990s. That makes it one of the few sports where you can list the greatest players who ever lived and still have watched most of them play.
Fernando Belasteguín
Known universally as Bela. The Argentine held the world number one ranking for sixteen consecutive years, from 2002 to 2017 — a run of dominance with almost no parallel in any professional sport.
He was not the most spectacular player of his era. He was the most relentless. Bela built points, never gave away a free error, and out-thought opponents who hit the ball harder than he did. Half of modern padel tactics are things he demonstrated first.
Juan Martín Díaz
Bela's partner through most of that reign, and the other half of the greatest pair the sport has produced. Their partnership lasted roughly a decade at the top — an eternity in a sport where pairs usually last a season or two.
Alejandro Lasaigues
The dominant figure of the 1990s, before Bela. Lasaigues belongs to padel's first professional generation, the players who turned a leisure game invented in Mexico into a sport with a circuit and a ranking.
Carolina Navarro and Marta Marrero
Two of the defining figures of the women's game. Navarro spent years at the top of the women's rankings in the 2000s and remained competitive at the highest level for an extraordinarily long career.
Marrero arrived from professional tennis, where she had been a top-level player, and became a padel world number one — the most successful crossover in the sport's history, and proof of how much the two games share.
Alejandra Salazar and Gemma Triay
The pair that dominated the women's game in padel's global era, and the bridge between the sport's Spanish-Argentine roots and its current worldwide audience.
Juan Lebrón and Alejandro Galán
The pair that ruled men's padel around the turn of the 2020s, holding the number one ranking as the sport's international boom began. Lebrón's aggression and Galán's power set the template that today's top pairs still play against.
The thing they all have in common
None of them won by hitting harder. Every dominant padel player in history has been defined by patience, positioning and shot selection — the same qualities that decide club matches, described in padel positioning and strategy. For who is on top today, see the best padel players right now.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the greatest padel player of all time?
Fernando Belasteguín, by consensus. He held the world number one ranking for sixteen consecutive years, from 2002 to 2017.
How long has professional padel existed?
A structured professional circuit dates from the 1990s, which makes padel's competitive history short enough that most of its all-time greats are still alive and many are still involved in the sport.
Can tennis players succeed at padel?
Yes. Marta Marrero moved from professional tennis to become a padel world number one, and many top padel players came through tennis first.