Padel: what it is, how to play, and the UK shop for your kit

Padel is a racket sport played almost always as doubles on an enclosed court 20 metres long and 10 metres wide. Glass walls and wire mesh surround the court and they stay in play: once the ball has bounced on your side, it can rebound off the back glass or the side mesh and you can still return it. The racket is solid, stringless and drilled with holes. The ball looks like a tennis ball but holds less pressure, about 11 psi new against 14 for tennis according to the LTA, so it comes off the walls slowly enough to chase. You serve underarm, after a bounce, at or below waist height. You score exactly as in tennis: 15, 30, 40, game.

The one-line version, if someone asks at the bar: tennis scoring, squash-style walls, a smaller court and an underarm serve. The LTA calls it "a form of tennis that is easy to play, fun and extremely sociable", which is about right, though it undersells how long the walls take to master. Anyone with a tennis, squash or badminton background will rally within ten minutes. Reading a ball off the back glass takes a season.

You will see the sport written as padel, pádel, padel tennis and, from people who have never seen it, paddle. The Spanish word is pádel and English settled on padel; the LTA says Spain's Sports Council fixed the spelling in 1993. "Padel tennis" is common in the UK because the operators use it in their page titles, and it means the same thing. People who search for the padel sport, the padel game or padel tennis all mean the same thing. "Paddle tennis" and "platform tennis" are two different American games with their own courts and their own rules, which is where most of the confusion comes from. If you are searching for the padel meaning, that is it: one sport, one spelling, a lot of nicknames.

Padel was invented in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera at his house at Las Brisas in Acapulco, Mexico. He had a tennis-sized problem (not enough garden) and solved it by building a 20 by 10 metre court with 3 metre walls and a tennis net, and his wife Viviana, a former Miss Argentina, drafted the first rules as a birthday present. He called it Paddle Corcuera. Five years later Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe, a friend who had spent summers at the house, built Spain's first two courts at the Marbella Club Hotel, and from there it went to Argentina with Julio Menditeguy in 1975. Those two countries built the sport: Argentina founded the first national association in 1988, and the International Padel Federation was formed in Madrid on 12 July 1991 by the Argentine, Spanish and Uruguayan associations.

Britain was early and then very late. A British Paddle Association was formed by expats in 1992, the same year as the first World Championships, and then not much happened for a quarter of a century. The LTA took British Padel into its operations in May 2019, when the country had a few dozen courts, and became the recognised governing body in November 2020 with 82. What followed is the fastest growth any racket sport has seen here: 15,000 players in 2019, 129,000 in 2023, 400,000 by the end of 2024, 860,000 by the end of 2025, a million by May 2026 and 1,500,000 by October 2026. About two-thirds of them also play tennis, which tells you where the first wave came from.

Globally the FIP's 2026 World Padel Report counts about 40,000,000 players in 191 countries and territories, 91,234 courts and 28,497 clubs. Spain is still the centre of the padel world and Italy is second by spending, but the same report puts the UK fourth in the world by total padel spending, ahead of Argentina, which would have sounded absurd in 2019. Padel is not an Olympic sport. It has been a medal sport at the European Games and the 2026 Asian Games, and the FIP is campaigning for Brisbane 2032, but as of October 2026 it is not on any Olympic programme.

Four players, two a side, and you keep the same halves for a whole set. The right-hand player is the drive side, the left-hand player the revés (backhand) side, and most pairs settle into one or the other for life. The serve is underarm: you bounce the ball behind the service line, hit it at or below waist height, and send it diagonally into the opposite service box. You get two attempts. A serve that bounces in the box and then hits the glass is good. One that hits the mesh after bouncing is a fault. The receiver must let it bounce; you cannot volley a serve.

After that, the walls are the game. A shot must bounce on the opponents' floor before it touches their glass or mesh; hit their wall on the full and you lose the point. Once it has bounced, it can rebound off any of their walls and they can still return it before the second bounce. You may use your own back glass to get a ball back over the net (the Spanish call it the contrapared and it feels like cheating the first time it works), but your own mesh is out of bounds. Touch the net, hit the ball before it crosses, let it bounce twice, or hit your partner with it, and the point is gone.

Scoring is tennis: 15, 30, 40, game; six games by two for a set; best of three sets with a tie-break at six all. At 40-40 clubs play one of three endings, which you agree before the first serve. Traditional advantage. Golden point, a single deciding point with the receivers choosing who takes it. Or the Star Point, approved by the FIP in November 2025 and used across Premier Padel and the FIP tours from 2026: two advantages, and if the game reaches a third deuce one sudden-death point settles it. The 2026 LTA National Championships used the Star Point in every match. Social games mostly play golden point because it gets you to the bar on time.

Three rules that catch new players every week. The wrist cord on the racket is compulsory under FIP rules and dropping your racket or snapping the cord loses the point. A ball that bounces and then leaves the court through the door is a winner for the hitter on most UK courts, because chasing it outside is only allowed on courts built with a safety zone, which the LTA says most club venues do not need. And you change ends after the first game and then every two games, not every set, which is why you will see experienced players drifting to the other side when you are still looking for your water bottle.

A padel court is 20 metres long and 10 metres wide inside the walls, which makes it about three-quarters of the lined area of a tennis doubles court and about a third of the full tennis footprint once you include the run-off. The net is 0.88 metres high at the centre and 0.92 at the ends, lower than a tennis net. The service lines sit 6.95 metres from the net. The back walls are 4 metres high: 3 metres of toughened glass topped by a metre of welded mesh. The sides mix glass and mesh at 3 and 4 metres depending on the court design, and the openings at the net are the doors you walk in through and, on some courts, chase balls out through.

The floor in Britain is almost always artificial grass filled with silica sand, laid on porous asphalt so it drains. That surface explains two things new players notice. The first is why trainers are a bad idea: sand on carpet is slippery under a smooth sole and grips too hard under a running shoe, which is why padel shoes have herringbone or studded soles designed to shed sand; the adidas Crazyquick is one of them. The second is why the same court plays differently in week one and week ten: how much sand sits on top, how worn the pile is and whether it rained last night all change the bounce.

Covered courts matter more here than in Spain. The LTA notes that covered courts are used consistently all year while uncovered ones drop off in winter, and nearly three-quarters of the 2026 Premier Padel tour is played indoors for the same reason. If your club has both, the outdoor court in January is a different sport from the indoor one, wetter, slower and harder on the shoes. A panoramic court, the one the operators advertise, holds its glass with minimal framing so spectators can see the whole court; it plays the same.

Less than you think, and the club will lend you most of it for the first session. The LTA's own advice is that most venues have bats and balls to hire, and Powerleague, for one, hires rackets from £3. Once you know you are staying, the padel gear you need in order of importance is a racket, shoes with a court sole, balls, a bag, and then the consumables: overgrips, a frame protector and, if you play twice a week, a ball pressurizer that keeps an open tube lively.

The racket is the big decision and the one this shop exists for. Padel rackets are solid frames with a foam core between two fibre faces, and the shape (round, teardrop or diamond), the weight (340 to 390 g for adults) and the core and face materials decide how forgiving or how fast a racket feels. The LTA tells beginners to start with a round bat, which gives the most control, and we agree; the best padel racket for beginners page explains why, and the how to choose a padel racket guide goes deeper on shapes, weight and balance. Entry rackets from the padel brands run £60 to £130, the mid-range most club players settle on £120 to £220, and the pro flagships £220 to £350; junior rackets £40 to £90.

Shoes are the thing new players skip and regret. A padel shoe has a sole that sheds sand, a reinforced toe for the drag on low volleys, and a lateral cage so your foot does not roll in a lunge; running shoes have none of that. Balls go flat within a few sessions of opening the tube, so buy them by the dozen box rather than at the club reception. A bag keeps the racket out of a hot car boot, which kills foam cores faster than any smash. None of it is exotic, and all of it is on this site with honest advice about what not to buy.

Tennis players arrive with the scoring, the volley and the overhead and lose the first month to the walls. The court is smaller, the ball is softer, the serve is underarm and there are no strings, so power counts for less and placement for more. The racket is the biggest change: a 45.5 cm solid frame with a foam core behaves nothing like a strung head, and the shots that win padel points (the lob, the bandeja, the vibora) are controlled rather than hit. A tennis player who learns to let the ball come off the back glass instead of attacking it early becomes a good padel player quickly. One who refuses stays at the same level for years.

Squash players have the opposite problem and the opposite advantage. They read walls instinctively and they move well in a small space, but squash is singles and padel is doubles, and the partner, the net and the lob are all new. Pickleball is the sport padel gets confused with in Britain because both arrived in the same wave. Pickleball is played on a 13.4 by 6.1 metre open court with a solid paddle and a perforated plastic ball; there are no walls, the serve is underhand and scoring runs to 11 with only the serving side scoring. The equipment looks similar from a distance. On court they have almost nothing in common.

Platform tennis and paddle tennis are the two American games whose names muddy the water. Platform tennis is played on a raised deck in winter with wire screens that are in play; paddle tennis, rebranded POP Tennis, uses a depressurised tennis ball on a 50 by 20 foot court with no walls. Neither is padel, and neither is played much in Britain.

Two rating scales are in use in Britain and they do not mean the same thing. Playtomic, the booking app most clubs use, gives every player a level from 0 to 7, set by a questionnaire and then moved by competitive match results; the amateur ceiling is 5.6. The LTA's padel rating runs 1.0 to 7.0 and is self-assessed from descriptors: 1.0 is "still working on getting the ball in play", 3.0 is "pretty consistent and can use tactics like playing off the wall", 5.5 is nationally ranked. The catch is that an LTA 3.5 is aimed at tennis or squash players who are new to padel, while a Playtomic 3.5 is "Intermediate High". Same number, different player.

For buying a racket, which is the only reason a shop should care, we map them like this. Beginner is Playtomic 0 to 2.4 or LTA 1.0 to 3.0: getting the ball in play and starting to use the back glass. Intermediate is Playtomic 2.5 to 4.4 or LTA 3.5 to 4.5: rallying with control, lobbing and volleying on purpose, knowing where to stand. Advanced is Playtomic 4.5 to 5.6 or LTA 5.0 to 5.5: playing tournaments. The FIP sets no weight, balance or core rule for rackets, only size and the wrist cord, so the level bands are retail convention, not regulation, and plenty of good players stay on a round racket by choice.

There are 2,445 courts at 682 venues as of October 2026 and the number changes monthly, so the reliable way to find one is a booking app: Playtomic (used by Powerleague and PadelHaus among others), MATCHi (Game4Padel) or Padel Mates (Rocket Padel), or the venue's own site. David Lloyd and Virgin Active include padel in membership at the clubs that have courts. The big operators are Game4Padel, Powerleague, Rocket Padel, The Padel Club, Soul Padel, Padium and Padel Social Club, and hundreds of tennis clubs have added a court or two beside the grass.

Cost is the pleasant surprise. The LTA's published averages run from £17 an hour for an outdoor court in the north of England to £37 for an indoor court in London, and its research puts an average off-peak booking at £7 per person per hour. Introductory group sessions are listed on the apps from about £5. Compared with a round of golf or a gym membership it is cheap, and compared with tennis the court is booked for four people, so the maths splits better.

Where it is strongest: the cities, where more than half the courts are, and increasingly the north, which the Guardian reported in September 2026 is where the fastest growth has been. Where it is contested: planning committees, because the sound of a ball on glass carries, and councils in Bath, Weybridge and York have refused courts near houses on noise grounds. None of that has slowed the numbers. Padel UK, as a sport, has gone from a curiosity to the LTA's fastest-growing format in seven years.

Most places selling padel rackets in Britain are tennis shops that added a shelf, or sports superstores that added a search term. Padel Depot sells padel and nothing else, and the difference shows in the questions we answer. Which shape for a player who is still learning the walls. Why a 20 g difference in weight matters more than the carbon grade on the box. Why the 2026 edition of a flagship is the same racket as the 2027 one at a hundred pounds less. Every category page on this site is a buying guide first and a grid second, written by people who play on sand-dressed UK courts most weeks and have bought the wrong racket more than once.

The range covers the brands British players search for: Bullpadel, Nox, adidas, Babolat, Head, Wilson, Siux, Dunlop, Varlion, Tecnifibre (the attacking Wall Breaker 365 is the firm attacking one), Black Crown (the round Piton is its best-known racket), Raquex (try the diamond Elite), Volt and Oxdog (start with its firm Hyper Pro+ teardrop), from entry rackets at about £50 to the 2027 tour frames at £340, plus shoes from adidas, ASICS, Bullpadel, Nox, Wilson and Babolat, balls from Head, Bullpadel, Wilson, Dunlop and Babolat, and bags, grips and protectors to match. Prices are the prices UK shops are charging this season. Where last season's version of a racket is still on sale, it sits next to the new one with the saving stated.

Delivery is tracked, takes 3 to 4 working days and is free on orders over £40, which a racket on its own clears. Anything unused goes back within 30 days. If you searched for a padel shop near me and found this page, the honest answer is that we are online, UK-wide, and happy to tell you by email which racket to buy in one line if you send us your level, your sporting background and your budget.