Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

Holy cow, what a week. I had the pleasure of covering Premier Padel for the second time, this time in one of the sport’s global capitals: Buenos Aires 🇦🇷. With 99% certainty I was the only 🇺🇸 there, I watched an unruly fan section (drums, horns, the works) repeatedly drown out an increasingly irritated chair umpire. I also froze my ass off and am now writing this through a wall of sniffles. I have zero regrets.

Curious how it all looked live? My on-the-ground content (so far) is up on Instagram, check it out here. Plenty more to come soon…

Onward!

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Padel just set an all-time attendance record in Buenos Aires. The same week, a New York club announced it’ll be closing its doors after less than a year.

Meanwhile, Premier Padel wrapped with a 77-minute demolition of the No. 1s, and something seems “off” with one of them.

Also in this issue:
— The side stance vs. open stance debate
— Utah gets stronger, a proposal hits Miami, and will padel come to Reno?
— Youth development gets a massive boost
— A rebellious operator’s association

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

Now Open

Over in Orem, UT (40 minutes outside Salt Lake City), Padel Den officially opened its doors with five indoor courts, becoming the second dedicated padel club in the state. The club was founded by brothers Kyle and Parker Quinlan after a vacation discovery in Puerto Rico.

Additional Club Buzz 🐝

• Former University of Florida tennis player Trevor Taylor is trying to build Setra Padel, which would transform a Miami office park rooftop into a 7-court padel hub. However, Miami-Dade County says athletic facilities aren’t even allowed in the area, which is adjacent to Miami International Airport. Approval is currently pending…

• American padel isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. Sadly, NYC-based Padel&’s Greenpoint location is shutting down on May 31 after just a year. Its Syosset location will remain open.

• Tempe, AZ-based Conquer Padel just tapped veteran entrepreneur David Burnett to lead multi-unit expansion in Reno, Seattle, and Chicago.

📈 Up Your Game  

Hmmm… Which Should You Use?

You’ve probably heard your pro repeatedly yell “turn sideways!” And while the side position still matters, many amateur players overuse it and end up feeling late, rushed, and out of position. In this 10-minute video, Coach Dani explains how understanding when to use the classic side stance vs. the modern open stance can completely change your efficiency in padel.

The side position is the traditional “turn your body sideways” setup. It’s fantastic for generating power because you can transfer your body weight forward into the shot.

• Many players feel more natural hitting aggressive overheads, bandejas, víboras, bajadas, and smashes from this stance.

• The side position also gives a very clean feeling of directional control, whereby your body alignment naturally guides the ball crosscourt or down the line.

However, there’s a catch: the side position costs time and energy.

• Every shot requires more footwork, more repositioning, and more recovery back to ready position afterward. And in today’s padel (where balls fly faster and exchanges are more chaotic) you often don’t have enough time to fully set your body.

• Not to mention, your body positioning can telegraph your intentions. If you fully turn crosscourt, experienced opponents can often read where you’re about to play before you even hit the ball.

➡️ That’s where the open stance becomes so valuable.

• In an open stance, you stay much more square to the court. Instead of heavily repositioning your feet, you rely more on shoulder rotation and racket preparation.

• As a result, you react and recover faster. Plus you save energy and become less predictable.

However (again), the catch here is lack of coordination. Relative to the side position, timing and racket face control matter more. If your mechanics are sloppy, the shot quickly falls apart.

At the end of the day, neither stance is “correct.” The best players learn to read the room and adapt their stance each shot based on time available, ball speed, court position, and physical fitness. Éxitos!

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

New World Record, Tapia Concerns, + A Four-/Five-peat (🇦🇷)

First off, history was made at the Buenos Aires P1. The semifinals featured 16,920 fans packed into Parque Roca, which was a new all-time attendance record for professional padel. Funny enough, this new record eclipsed the previous mark at the same venue set just last year. No other venue outside 🇪🇸 and 🇦🇷 has cracked 13,000!

On the men’s side, Chingalán seem to be in the midst of a generational shift at the top. In the finals, they absolutely dominated World No. 1s Coello / Tapia 6-2, 6-1 in just 77 minutes. This is four straight final wins over them, and five titles in 2026 vs. two for “Tapiello.” Highlights here.

• To dive into this a bit further, something seems “off” with Tapia these days. What I’ve been hearing is an upper limb injury he’s been managing since at least 2024, which checks out given long stretches of diminished play, brief recoveries, then another dip.

• In Buenos Aires, on a slow court (given the cold climate, as this was a covered outdoor venue) that should have neutralized some of Chingalán’s physicality, Tapia barely attempted smashes. When he did, they were countered. His offensive contributions were described by many as “harmless” (i.e., weak viboras feeding Galán’s corner, zero offensive pressure, and body language that read as someone managing pain vs. competing to win). While no evident answers have emerged, only time will tell with two weeks off before the Italy Major.

On the women’s side, Josemaría / González claimed a fifth consecutive title (all five against Brea / Triay), which was a winning streak that has no precedent in women’s padel. While the No. 2s were able to take down the No. 1s in two straight sets, the game scores were definitely tighter than the men’s at 6-3, 7-5. Bea said it best in the press room: “Winning a tournament is so difficult that reaching five in a row is truly incredible.” Highlights here.

Meanwhile Off-Court…

• Women’s World No. 1 Delfi Brea joined Red Bull’s elite padel roster alongside Juan Lebrón, Ale Galán, and Bea González.

🎯 Quick Hits 

• WME Sports just signed four junior padel players, investing in the future of youth development within the sport (🇦🇷🇺🇸🇸🇪)

• British royalty Kate Middleton says she’s obsessed with padel, and even plays with her parents in their 70s (🇬🇧)

• France’s private padel clubs are no longer operating solo. Operators representing ~75% of the country’s facilities just formed the Association Nationale du Padel (ANP), creating what some insiders are calling a “counter-power” to the French Tennis Federation as the sport enters its next growth phase (🇫🇷)

• Padel’s UK gold rush is starting to look a little... frothy? The sport just crossed 1 million players in Britain, but operators are already warning that clueless “cowboy” investors are piling in chasing easy money (🇬🇧)

• UK real estate giant SEGRO just partnered with LTA to bankroll grassroots tennis and padel expansion across the UK. With British participation exploding from 15K players in 2019 to 860K+ in 2025, real estate for courts, programming, and ecosystem control is now more relevant than ever. (🇬🇧)

• Spicy player debates:

  • Should friends include you even if you’re the clear weak link (because “real friends help you improve”), or does competitive culture override social loyalty (because “court time is expensive”)?

  • If you’re experiencing wrist pain, do lightweight rackets save your arm, or are they the likely culprit?

  • Tennis vs. padel: friends or rivals? My opinion: friends.

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Kavála, 🇬🇷
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Pack Your Racket

• Is Nike about to enter padel?

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

  • I Went to a Premier Padel Tournament So You Don’t Have To (Jk, You Need to Go)

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! And if you have any feedback, news to share, or are interested in becoming a preferred partner of El Remate, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

The World No. 1s keep losing, and with the Buenos Aires P1 this week, the throne is officially in play. We’re heading courtside to cover it live.

And just in time for summer, padel tourism got a crucial infrastructure play. More on why it might be a billion-dollar vertical.

Also in this issue:
— The flip-flop shot that ends points
— Padel club meets dog park
— “We have to work for padel as a sport and not for money”
— Functional racket, or collector’s item?
— 30 illegal courts

…and plenty more. Nos vemos en La Ciudad de la Furia!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

Coming Soon

Acapulco Roots + Dog-Friendly

Punto Azul is bringing eight outdoor padel courts (3 of which will be covered) to the Oak Forest / Garden Oaks neighborhood of Houston, TX. Founded by Acapulco native (the birthplace of padel 🇲🇽) Jose Castrejon, the club is rooted in importing the sport’s rich culture, with a focus on community, hospitality, and youth development through a dedicated academy. Rounded out by a fully dog-friendly layout, on-site café, workspaces, bar, gym, and locker rooms, the club is slated to open at the end of September 2026.

Now Open

Flagship Makes It Official

Over in Metro LA, Culver City, CA’s Chamber of Commerce officially welcomed Padel Up’s flagship location with a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony last Thursday. The club features three indoor courts with 30-foot ceilings, plus a lounge space, showers, lockers, cold plunge, and sauna. The event included complimentary coaching sessions, open play, food truck bites, hydration stations, and a raffle for a one-month membership.

Additional Club Buzz 🐝

• Per our friends at Padel Nation, after nearly two years in the making, Padel Haus’ Denver location is finally soft-opening this week, featuring five indoor courts, 25-foot ceilings, a high-end gym, co-working space, and its signature “Juice Haus.” An official grand opening weekend is slated for June 26 (more to come soon).

• Down in Westlake, FL, Xcel Padel teamed up with Love Serving Autism to bring the sport to kids of all abilities.

• Our friends up north are getting busy too… Toronto’s District Padel & Pickleball Club just opened, featuring a 55,000-square-foot facility with eight indoor padel courts. 🇨🇦

📈 Up Your Game 

The Chancletazo: Niche, Fun, & Highly Effective

If you didn’t already know this shot, add it to your arsenal now! The chancletazo is one of the cleanest ways to finish points, especially at an intermediate+ level.

In Spanish, “chancleta” = flip-flop. So a chancletazo is essentially smacking someone with a sandal… i.e., quick, sharp, and a little(?) disrespectful.

In padel terms, it’s an aggressive, controlled volley (not smash!) usually taken slightly above net height and designed to jam your opponent at the feet and end the point without needing raw power.

Mind you, it’s very much a setup-dependent play that only works if you build the point correctly. And just like a dejada (aka drop shot), the best players already know it’s coming before they hit it.

After watching this incredibly helpful 14-minute video (in Spanish, but with English subtitles), here are my notes below:

• Step 1: In order to “unlock” the chancletazo, you need to build the point first

  • The entire setup hinges on a deep, controlled backhand ball into the middle… leaning toward your opponent’s backhand side.

    • This is because from the right side of the court, your opponent’s natural shot after the glass is crosscourt (aka, they’re uncomfortable going parallel, their options get predictable, and their partner might overreach and “steal” the ball)

• Step 2: Position is key

  • Instead of casually drifting forward:

    • Get set early with an open stance

    • Keep the racket up and wrist firm, letting the shoulder and body drive the shot

    • Load off the front of the foot (heel slightly raised)

    • Take a small, intentional step forward into the ball

• Step 3: Hit flat and parallel (i.e., not cross-court), while aiming at the feet. Control > power!

  • ❌ Crosscourt = more glass interaction = more time for your opponent

  • ✅ Parallel = cleaner path = faster, more direct pressure

  • This should be a 60% power shot, with a focus on precision. This way:

    • Your shot is still effective and you recover faster for the next ball

      • Worst-case scenario, if you don’t finish the point right away, it puts pressure on your opponent by forcing a weaker return shot

…and there you go. Happy flip-flopping! 🩴

🌍 International Happenings  

Padel Tourism Heats Up Heading into Summer

Three months ago, UK-based Padel Business Magazine dropped a killer insight report previewing the rise padel tourism, where more people are more designing their entire trips around padel. From coaching camps in Spain to wellness-heavy retreats in Bali and the Maldives, the model is evolving fast. Demand is clearly there, but now the big question mark (especially headed into summer—at least for our Northern Hemisphere readers) is supply and how well it’s packaged.

Enter Privé Padel, which just officialized a move to productize this trend. Its new “Privé Passport” is essentially a global matchmaking engine between padel players and premium travel experiences. We’re talking 40+ curated hotels across 15+ countries, bundled with perks (i.e., upgrades, late checkout, spa credits) and, more importantly, guaranteed access to padel… either on-site or via local club partnerships. And within this guaranteed access lies coaching, wellness, and destination immersion. To exemplify it even further, our friends at Padel Nation provided great coverage of Privé’s launch at Miami’s THesis Hotel.

Personally, I think padel is starting to follow the trajectory of golf as a global travel driver, but with a model that is (1) more accelerated and (2) better suited to modern behavior. Unlike tennis, which never quite translated into a true travel ecosystem despite its global footprint, padel—and to a lesser extent pickleball—naturally lends itself to group trips, repeat play, and social / community experiences. After all, padel provides:

• equipment that’s drastically easier to pack (vs. tennis & golf)

• a stronger international footprint (vs. pickleball)

• a better workout (vs. golf & pickleball).

As an American that’s played padel across 12 countries spanning 3 continents (more on that here), I’m extremely bullish on the sport’s tourism sector. If you’re heading somewhere this summer, pack your racket!

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Power Shift in Asunción (🇵🇾)

If you needed confirmation that the 2026 season is starting to tilt, the Premier Padel Asunción P2 just gave it to you loud and clear.

On the men’s side, No. 2 seeds Fede Chingotto / Ale Galán (“Chingalán”) took down Agustín Tapia and Arturo Coello again (6-3, 7-5), marking their third straight win over the world No. 1s. While Tapia and Coello are undoubtedly still elite, cracks are starting to form.

On the women’s side, Paula Josemaría / Bea González keep winning. They once again beat Delfi Brea / Gemma Triay (4-6, 6-3, 6-3), extending their streak to four Premier Padel titles (Miami, Newgiza, Brussels, and now Asunción). Josemaría notched her 50th career title, while González somehow remains undefeated in Asunción across three different partners. Unfortunately, it seems like Brea has physical issues starting to loom, which could obviously matter a lot in the coming weeks.

Overall, the P2 in Asunción carried a €262K prize pool, split equally across men and women. Each champion walked away with €12,750, while early-round players also earned a check.

Looking into this week with the Buenos Aires P1 (which I’ll be attending), the stakes feel higher with both draws flirting with a genuine power shift at the top.

• In anticipation for the tournament, Bullpadel installed a pop-up court right next to the iconic Obelisco. Running for three days, the court will host open public experiences, influencers, and pro athletes.

Meanwhile, Some Premier Padel Scheduling Updates

Officially a one-year adjustment, the 2026 Premier Padel calendar has been reshuffled due to geopolitical disruptions, with the Qatar Major canceled and:

• Kuwait (October 26 - 31; initially a P1 tournament) stepping up as a Major tournament 🇰🇼

• Pretoria (July 26 - August 2; initially a P2 tournament) stepping up as a P1 tournament 🇿🇦

Each upgrade means more ranking points, more prize money, and a stronger field.

🎯 Quick Hits 

• Audemars Piguet just joined Premier Padel as official timekeeper, doubling down with a bet on world No.1 Agustín Tapia (🇨🇭🇦🇷)

• Padel GOAT Fernando Belasteguín draws a line in the sand as padel’s boom turns into a business gold rush (🇦🇷🇪🇸🌎)

• Despite UK padel exploding, a structural tension is emerging between top-down ambition and the operators actually building the sport, per the LTA (🇬🇧)

• Just 13 weeks after releasing the BL.003 racket model, Lamborghini and Babolat have now dropped the BL.001 (🇮🇹🇫🇷)

• Sadly, open-air glass courts are killing thousands of birds each year (up to 135 per court). Fortunately, there might be a netting solution (🇪🇸)

• Interesting read on how European markets are now looking to adapt from Sweden’s 2020-24 padel boom and bust (🇸🇪🇪🇺)

• Padel expansion hits a political nerve in Malta, as 30 “illegal” courts get fast-tracked over archeological land, just days after promises of a public park (🇲🇹)

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Managua, 🇳🇮
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Is Nike about to enter padel?

• Serena’s New Mission. Ranking Shake-Ups. A Threepeat.

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

  • I Went to a Premier Padel Tournament So You Don’t Have To (Jk, You Need to Go)

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! And if you have any feedback, news to share, or are interested in becoming a preferred partner of El Remate, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

Subscribe

Leave a comment

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Leo Augsburger won a Premier Padel title in Belgium, then drove to a local club in Argentina to play a weekend tournament with his childhood friend.

Meanwhile, Tom Holland is hosting celebrity padel events in LA, Nike might be quietly circling the sport, and an Argentine soccer legend has apparently reinvented himself as a Miami padel sage.

Also in this issue:
— Get your serve up to speed
— Massive moves for women’s padel
— Draft day, feat. a franchise relocation
— The pro tour goes to South America
— A potential #2 US padel hub emerges, using “the Miami playbook”

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

Coming Soon

🏄‍♂️ West Coast Eye Candy

What started as a side hustle is now turning into a calculated bet on becoming 🇺🇸’s #2 padel hub (watch out, Houston!). Vortex Padel is bringing 4 outdoor courts (amid a scenic backdrop), a pro shop, lounge, and a community-first atmosphere to Orange County (California). The aim is to expand to 2-3 additional clubs across OC and “follow the Miami playbook,” keeping players consistently within the Vortex ecosystem. Target opening is late 2026.

📈 Up Your Game 

Purify Your Serve

Unlike tennis, your serve in padel is a setup. However, most rec players completely misunderstand that. And our friend Sandy from The Padel School does a fantastic job breaking it down in this oldie-but-goodie five-minute video.

The much-less-sexy (but necessary) fix is to simply prioritize control. How so, you ask?

• Spin: Please, no heavy spin. Instead, use just enough slice. Think brushing slightly down the back of the ball to keep it low after the bounce and off the glass. Overdo it, and you lose control and make the rebound easier to read.

• Speed: Your serve should only be as fast as you can control. If adding pace kills your accuracy, you’re being reckless rather than aggressive.

• Placement > Power: There are two high-percentage targets that actually matter:

  • Into the side glass (early) → forces awkward timing and low contact

  • Down the T with slice → stretches your opponent and jams their positioning

• First vs. Second Serve: Yes, you have two serves… but that’s not a license to swing out of your shoes on the first and “just get it in” on the second. Your goal should be to build a serve where both deliveries are reliable and intentional.

At the end of the day, your serve is about forcing an uncomfortable first shot so you and your partner can control the point from the start. Suerte!

🌍 International Happenings  

The Pro Scene is Reshaping Itself

The Pro Padel League had a busy week heading into its third full season. The North American association held its first-ever auction-style player draft in midtown Manhattan, with all ten ownership groups in attendance alongside league CEO Mike Dorfman. The draft wasn’t streamed live (and instead relied on social media coverage), but Dorfman hinted that a live broadcast product is the direction they’re heading.

• Meanwhile, the Matrix franchise is relocating from Arkansas to Washington, D.C. ahead of this 2026 season. The women-led ownership group cited D.C.’s international makeup as a key draw, with franchise founder Barbara Hudson pointing to the city’s global profile as a natural fit for a global sport. The PPL’s 2026 season opens in New York in July.

And finally, the pro game seems to be getting serious about female players (more on this here, per my firsthand experience at the Miami P1 in March):

1. World No. 1 Delfi Brea signed with LA-based WME Sports, one of the world’s most powerful sports agencies, which already has an established padel division and leverages its tennis infrastructure through IMG. The 26-year-old Argentine has accumulated 25 professional titles, including Premier Padel Major wins in Paris, Italy, and Qatar, and is currently running a 19-4 record with partner Gemma Triay in 2026.

2. Also, the Reserve Cup (known for its exclusivity, spectacle, and massive prize pool) is finally opening the door to women’s padel, with the Marbella edition in June set to include female matches for the first time. Confirmed participants include Bea González, Delfi Brea, Alejandra Salazar, and Marta Ortega.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Pregamin’ the Asunción P2 (🇵🇾)

Fresh off Brussels, the Premier Padel Tour is hopping continents for a back-to-back run, starting this week with the Asunción P2 and ending with the Buenos Aires P1 next week.

Ojo! Landmines are now everywhere in the men’s draw. “Loose cannons” Juan Lebrón / Leo Augsburger are freshly coming off their first title together from Brussels, so it’s up to the rest of the draw to keep their egos in check… Keep an eye on 17-year-old Paraguayan wildcard Facundo Dehnike, who could run straight into Franco Stupaczuk / Mike Yanguas. Meanwhile, “golden boys” Coello / Tapia are lurking for a bounce-back post-Brussels.

In the women’s draw, Paula Josemaría and Bea González are coming off a three-tournament heater. While the top 8 get a bye, they shouldn’t get comfortable. Josemaría / González could open against tricky duos like Castelló / Rufo, so watch for that.

You can tune into the tournament live here.

Meanwhile Off-Court…

Fresh off winning the Brussels P2, Leo Augsburger answered a call from a childhood friend and spent his week off playing in a local tournament in Posadas, Argentina… which they won, of course (lmao).

🎯 Quick Hits 

• A-List actor Tom Holland hosted a celebrity padel tournament in Los Angeles for his non-alcoholic beer brand, BERO (🇺🇸)

• Is Nike finally getting into padel? Leo Augsburger won the Brussels P2 wearing hard-court Nike tennis shoes, despite inking a landmark racket contract with Siux two weeks ago. This’ll be worth watching... (🇺🇸)

• Following his retirement, Argentine soccer star Gonzalo Higuaín has quietly become a padel regular and “mental coach” in Miami (🇦🇷🇺🇸)

• Pro padel celebrity lookalikes 😂

• Community musings:

  • Seems like it’s a clear consensus that you unconsciously adapt your level to your opponents…

  • How can you stay mentally strong when you feel like the weakest player?

  • Contrarily, when your partner melts down and your opponents smell blood, what should you do?

🤩 Cool Club of the Week 

📍 Punta del Este, 🇺🇾
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Serena’s New Mission. Ranking Shake-Ups. A Threepeat.

• “We’ve Forgotten How to Play Padel”

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

  • I Went to a Premier Padel Tournament So You Don’t Have To (Jk, You Need to Go)

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

Subscribe

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Share

Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Staged or not, who cares? Serena Williams made a surprise cameo at a Miami area padel match… in a partnership to unofficially tackle one of the biggest issues plaguing US padel.

Meanwhile, a chaotic Brussels P2 shakes up the pecking order, and the global push toward Olympic legitimacy keeps gaining steam.

Also in this issue:
— Why your slice is unconsciously costing you
— A new top men’s duo emerges
— Which college is dominating the padel scene
— Should you be using different rackets for different seasons?

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

No announcements this week, but last week, we were graced with a whopping 25+ courts coming to seven locations across five states… when it rains, it pours! ☔

📈 Up Your Game 

Why Slice Is Losing You Points

More slice = more control = more wins… yeah? Ehhh, not exactly.

Ultimately, slice is a tool that helps keep the ball low. And after all, low ball = opponent hitting up = you controlling the point.

But cuidado! When it comes to slicing, there’s only a specific time and place for it.

From the back of the court, slice is mostly useless because your opponent is at the net, so they’re volleying. Therefore, it’s unlikely your slice shot will bounce → no low skid → no advantage.

Even worse, your margin for success is minuscule. Plus, with a slightly open racket face, your ball floats and you get punished.

Diving deeper, here are my three takeaways from this helpful 10-min video:

1. Most players think slice = wrist. Nope!

   1. Slice comes from preparing above the ball and driving forward. Not chopping down, nor flicking your wrist (looking at y’all, pickleballers 🤨)

      1. When you rely on wrist, you lose control, depth, and consistency

2. Slice backfires with:

   1. Low balls at the net → You physically can’t slice well here, plus you’ll lift the ball, making it easy for your opponents to attack

   2. Fast exchanges → No time to prepare makes your slice break down. ‘Nuff said

   3. Opponents adding slice (don’t fight fire with fire!) → Trying to slice back = fighting spin physics. It’s much easier to go flat and push through

3. Fortunately, slice does win you points in these situations:

   1. At the net, when you’re above the ball → In other words, you’re attacking and slice keeps pressure on

   2. From the back, ONLY when the ball is above waist height → Now you can get over the ball and generate real backspin

TLDR: If you’re slicing everything, you’re playing lazy. Ideally, the goal is to hit the right shot, at the right time, for the right reason.

🌍 International Happenings  

Serena Shapes US Padel

American tennis GOAT Serena Williams just made her official padel debut, crashing a match at Reserve Padel as a last-minute fill-in. Tbh, it’s unclear how “organic” the whole thing was (the photos and video suggest it may have been somewhat staged), but either way, it marks yet another major name and brand stepping into padel… particularly in the still-emerging US market.

The stunt launched Heineken 0.0’s “Unexpected Doubles” campaign (with Premier Padel and Playtomic), promoting padel’s social fabric in a subtle effort to combat 🇺🇸’s rising “play-then-leave” culture.

Serena, for her part, is no stranger to the beverage world. This Heineken partnership aligns well with prior collaborations with Michelob ULTRA and Rémy Martin, as well as her ownership stake in Cincoro Tequila.

And as she’s begun to immerse herself more seriously in padel (after playing casually since ~2019), she’s already floated Coco Gauff as her ideal partner.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

New Contenders, a Threepeat, & Touch of Class

Well That Was Unexpected… (🇧🇪)

The Brussels P2 was nothing short of phenomenal. It gave us a shake-up, (maybe?) a new contender, and a threepeat.

On the men’s side, “loose cannons” Juan Lebrón and Leo Augsburger captured their first title together, taking down both Chingotto / Galán in the Semifinal and Coello / Tapia in the Final. After dropping the first set in the Final, they flipped the switch and closed it out 2-6, 6-3, 6-3, finally breaking their losing pattern against the world’s most dominant duo. Highlights here.

Weirdly, the turning point might’ve come earlier than the Final. After their Semifinal win, “LeBurger” pointed to a seemingly small moment: a Galán double fault.

“That double fault helped us… it gave us much more confidence,” Augsburger said.

From there, you could see the shift: LeBurger started playing looser, more aggressive padel, while Chingalán were suddenly on the back foot.

Post-tournament, Lebrón acknowledged that sustaining this level is the real challenge. After all, the duo has only been together four months, with their time together being nothing short of a drama-filled roller coaster (more on that here and here).

Some fans saw LeBurger’s performance as a legit title shake-up if their egos stay in check. Others pointed out their inconsistency. There’s also a growing sentiment of relief at seeing someone (literally anyone) disrupt Coello / Tapia. There was also noise around Augsburger’s on-court demeanor, which came off as confidence to some, arrogance to others.

Meanwhile on the women’s side, dominance continues. Paula Josemaría and Bea González made it three titles in a row, taking down the World No. 1 pair of Gemma Triay (who was playing her 100th career final) and Delfi Brea in the Final 7-5, 6-2. Unlike Miami and Newgiza, this Final against Brea / Triay only lasted two sets and was much more controlled. Highlights here.

Off-Court Updates

• Just before the Brussels P2, the Laureus World Sports Awards took place in Madrid 🇪🇸, where Delfi Brea, Arturo Coello, and padel GOAT Fernando Belasteguín made appearances alongside the likes of Carlos Alcaraz and Simone Biles.

• And just like that, Paquito Navarro and Martín Di Nenno are officially back together. Their previous run nearly took them to World No. 1, and stylistically, they complement each other far better than their recent partnerships. The pair will debut at the Italy Major (starting June 1).

🎯 Quick Hits 

• The Pro Padel League locked in Padeltek as its official racket partner in an effort to double down on commercialization and infrastructure (🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽)

• Skechers is partnering with Madrid-based El Estudiante (the world’s largest club feat. 40 padel courts) to embed its brand directly into daily player experience and grassroots competition (🇪🇸)

• Padel took center stage at the European Parliament, further pushing toward Olympic legitimacy and institutional backing (🇪🇺)

• Hook ‘em! UT Austin swept both men’s and women’s titles at the first-ever USPA US Collegiate Padel Championships (🇺🇸)

• Community musings:

  • How does temperature affect your racket? And should you be using different rackets for different seasons?

  • Screaming during a match: justified or disrespect?

  • To prevent slow starts, what do top players do beforehand to “switch on” fast?

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Belgrade, 🇷🇸
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• “We’ve Forgotten How to Play Padel”

• Great Problems. Search Data. Regretful Decisions.

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

  • I Went to a Premier Padel Tournament So You Don’t Have To (Jk, You Need to Go)

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

US padel just crossed one million players. Whether that number holds up to scrutiny is a different conversation. We have it below.

The Brussels P2 is live this week with Coello/Tapia returning to defend. And the PPL released an open letter, hoping to forever change the trajectory of pro padel in North America.

Also in this issue:
— Hella new court openings, from the waterfront to the cornfields to the desert
— The bandeja mistake costing you net position
— Top seeds get hit with an embarrassing upset
— Wait… who should we be warming up with?

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Court Openings

Now Open

• This Saturday, St. Pete Athletic is officially opening its new 18,000 sq ft expansion, introducing five padel courts alongside its existing racquet sports ecosystem. Based in St. Petersburg, FL, the club is rolling out a full launch week: preview nights, open play, clinics, and a grand opening tournament. 🌴

  

• Mesa Padel Club has officially opened in downtown Mesa, AZ (30-minute drive from downtown Phoenix), featuring four outdoor courts. Positioned as a more accessible entry point to a sport often labeled “exclusive,” the club offers clinics, rentals, a pro shop, and a lounge designed for players and spectators. 🌵

  

• Alas, Philadelphia-based Ballers just opened in Boston’s Seaport district. The 30,000-square-foot waterfront social complex features three outdoor padel courts (first outdoor in the city), five pickleball courts, a chef-driven food truck, and curated social spaces. The franchise is backed by names like Andre Agassi and Kim Clijsters. 🦞

  

Coming Soon

• PURE Pickleball & Padel has secured final building permits for a ~196,000 sq ft indoor pickleball and padel complex in Scottsdale, AZ, clearing the way for construction to begin. The facility will feature 40 pickleball courts, eight padel courts, and a 1,200-seat championship arena. If that’s not enough, it’s expected to become the largest indoor pickleball and padel venue in the world upon its 2027 opening. 🌵

  

• A former dine-in theater in Virginia Beach, VA is getting a second life as Padel Foundry, a purpose-built indoor padel and wellness hub slated to open in early 2027. The project is backed by a $6.3M acquisition. 🏖️

  

• Quail Creek Country Club in Naples, FL is bringing padel into the fold with a new three-court complex set to open in summer 2026. The facility will integrate leagues, clinics, and youth programming alongside its existing racquet offerings. 🐊

  

• Padel is coming to Fort Wayne Country Club, which is unveiling the first outdoor court in the state of Indiana, built by Off The Glass, the only fully vertically integrated US padel court manufacturing and installation company. 🌽

📈 Up Your Game 

Clean Up Your Bandeja

So the bandeja is one of the first overhead shots most players learn in padel, which is exactly why so many players think they already have it. In reality, it’s one of the most misunderstood shots in the game. To quickly refresh, its job is to keep control, apply pressure, and hold the net position.

This 12.5-minute video does an excellent deep-dive. My notes below:

Mistake #1: Dropping the elbow and hitting too low. That might feel natural if you’re coming from volley-heavy habits, but the bandeja usually comes off a lob, which means you need a higher contact point and more margin. If your elbow drops, the shot becomes riskier and suddenly a defensive overhead turns into a panic shot.

• The cure: Keep your elbow in line with your shoulder, or even a little higher. Make the movement obvious in practice, and record yourself if you have to (because what feels high enough often isn’t). The goal is to take the ball at the highest point you can comfortably reach so you buy yourself margin and control.

Mistake #2: Hitting too far in front. A lot of players rush the ball because they know the lob is coming, but they end up running faster than the shot and getting underneath nothing. That takes away body rotation, forces wristy contact, and makes the bandeja much harder to control.

• The cure: Run with the ball, not ahead of it. Stay active with your feet, make small adjustments, and line up the contact point as you go. It may feel awkward at first, but that’s usually what progress looks like in padel.

Mistake #3: Preparing too late and hitting too close to your body. If you wait until the ball is already on top of you, you lose time, space, and the ability to use rotation and momentum.

• The cure: Get the racket prepared as soon as the lob leaves your opponent’s racket, then move into position with your body already set.

Overall strategy, once the technique is cleaner: Aim for the corners and side glass, not the back wall, because the back wall gives your opponents an easier read and often lets them move forward. A good bandeja is deep, controlled, and… idk… annoying? Point is, it keeps them back and gives you time to stay at the net.

🌍 International Happenings  

Growing Pains Hit the USA

So two announcements landed in the same week, and together they tell an interesting story about where U.S. padel is and where it’s trying to go.

First, the Pro Padel League (which spans 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽) published an open letter from CEO Michael Dorfman that’s worth reading in full. In a nutshell, the league is proposing guaranteed multi-year contracts, covered tournament expenses, equal prize money for men and women, and a franchise model designed to build actual fan bases. In other words, they want to avoid the financial structure that’s plagued professional tennis for decades: in 2025 for example, roughly half of total ATP/WTA prize money went to just 20 players. PPL is explicitly trying to build something that doesn’t replicate that pyramid.

Second, the USPA announced that padel has crossed one million players in the United States, per the 2026 SFIA Topline Participation Report (the first time the survey has tracked the sport). Mind you, the SFIA report doesn't disclose its counting methodology… a gap worth noting, since “someone who picked up a racket once” and “someone who books courts monthly” are not the same market signal. Prominent figures in the space caught on by sharing constructive pushback (here and here).

That milestone is genuinely exciting. It’s also worth pausing on.

This isn’t a knock on the USPA, which has done tremendous work building infrastructure and competitive programming. It’s rather a question about methodology… one the industry should be asking openly, precisely because the stakes are getting higher. Look, we’re all on the same team here, and the instinct to celebrate is right. But the discipline to interrogate the numbers is what keeps the celebration honest to benefit current and future players, operators, and investors alike.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

3-Hour Match, Toxic Upset, & Untimely Reset (🇪🇬🇧🇪)

Men’s: High Drama, Yet (Kinda) Predictable… Women’s: Low Drama, Yet Hella Unpredictable

The Newgiza P2 was an absolute fever dream, and my head is still spinning. On the men’s side, Fede Chingotto / Ale Galán once again showed why they’re the most reliable force on tour, dispatching Stupaczuk / Yanguas 6-4, 6-1 in the final. Highlights here. Galán said they’re “playing at a very high level,” a clear warning shot to world No. 1s Tapia / Coello, who sat this one out.

Meanwhile, “loose cannons” Juan Lebrón / Leo Augsburger made the news… again. Knocked out by a qualifying pair, they dropped the final set 6-🥯 in a match where momentum completely abandoned them. At one point, Lebrón openly admitted, “it seems like we’ve forgotten how to play padel,” Fans couldn’t stop saying how when things go wrong for this pair, they absolutely unravel.

• My theory: On paper, this partnership should work. Lebrón brings intensity, emotion, and experience; Augsburger brings raw power, youth, and upside. But I feel like they’re still searching for a shared identity. Lebrón tends to feed off energy and rhythm, while Augsburger’s more composed (sometimes borderline detached) demeanor doesn’t always provide that spark. Hence, a team that can look dangerous one set and completely lost the next.

• The timing makes it even more interesting. Augsburger just signed a massive 14-year deal with Siux, locking him in as a long-term face of the sport, which only raises the stakes around his on-court development. So now you’ve got a player being positioned as a future cornerstone… paired with one of the most volatile personalities on tour… producing wildly inconsistent results. That tension does not resolve easily.

The women’s final, meanwhile, was absolutely wild. Paula Josemaría / Bea González edged Delfi Brea / Gemma Triay in a 3-hour, 3-set war (6-4, 5-7, 6-4) that felt like it could swing every five minutes. There were 13 breaks of serve (seven in the third set alone 😧) and the rhythm of the match was basically nonexistent. Highlights here. Josemaría now quietly sits at 19 Premier Padel titles, and at this point, it’s less dominance and more sustained control over the entire field.

Overall, the real story out of Newgiza might’ve been the conditions. The outdoor court neutralized smashes almost entirely, forcing even the biggest hitters into more conservative patterns. The “super high lob” became the meta, with players realizing quickly that anything too flat or aggressive was getting punished.

Pregamin’ the Brussels P2

There’s barely time to process any of that, because this week, the tour has already moved to Brussels, with the storyline of top seeds Coello / Tapia returning to defend their title. On the women’s side, Josemaría / González and Brea / Triay continue to look inseparable, as the top of their draw has evolved into matchups decided by a handful of points.

🎯 Quick Hits 

• Beyond the Newgiza P2, Egypt is locking in its status as Africa’s padel hub, with its squash-heavy sporting culture steadily fueling the talent pipeline. That momentum is now formalized: the FIP just confirmed both the 2026 Junior Africa Cup and 2027 Africa Cup. (🇪🇬)

• Buenos Aires will host the FIP Senior World Cup for the first time, marking its South American debut as the tournament expands to 32 national teams set across five age groups: 40+, 45+, 50+, 55+, and 60+. (🇦🇷)

• British tennis and padel’s grassroots took center stage at the 2026 LTA Awards, where volunteers, coaches, and clubs were honored for driving the sport’s growth across the UK. (🇬🇧)

• Community debates:

  • Do you warm up with your partner or opponents? Some players insist warming up with opponents is standard to scout weaknesses, while others argue it’s overrated and even misleading before match intensity kicks in.

    • My take: partners all day.

  • Hmm, seems like most players are stuck in a “matches-only” ecosystem where structured drilling is rare, expensive, or socially awkward to organize… is squeezing in 10–15 minute pre-match reps an acceptable solution?

🤩 Cool Court of the Week

📍 Cape Town, 🇿🇦
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Great Problems. Search Data. Regretful Decisions.

• The Partnership Tennis Hates. 1,000 Courts. Coachella.

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

  • I Went to a Premier Padel Tournament So You Don’t Have To (Jk, You Need to Go)

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

Subscribe

Leave a comment

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

If you’re new here, you can join our community of padel-addicted subscribers receiving my weekly newsletter on what’s hot in 🇺🇸 & 🌎 padel + occasional editorials (like this one) by adding your email below.

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This one’s a bit different from the usual Tuesday rundown.

Miami Beach, no windows, neon lights, house music at 10am. Coello sitting in the bleachers like a regular person, Carlos Alcaraz two rows in front of me. And let’s not forget OnlyFans sponsorships. I watched every match from qualifiers to the final. In no specific order, here’s what I saw:

1) The pros are still just people.

Monday and Tuesday were the qualifier days. The big names hadn’t started playing yet, but there they were, chilling among the rest of us. On separate occasions, I saw Tino Libaak and Arturo Coello watching early-round matches in the bleachers with their respective girlfriends, completely mixed in with everyone else.

I remember when a match ended, people started leaving the stands and crowding around Coello for autographs and photos. He kindly obliged.

As much as I loved this, I sadly don’t know how much longer stuff like this will last. As padel grows (especially Stateside), the machinery of professional sports fame will start building the walls it always builds. Enjoy this era while it lasts.

2) Carlos Alcaraz showed up for the Round of 32.

He was in a VIP box for the Round of 32. I somehow — before he arrived — ended up in that same box (thank you, media pass privileges 🫡), and found myself sitting two rows directly behind him. A random yokel from Missouri, sitting behind one of the best tennis players alive, watching the best padel players alive. Yeesh… what am I doing here?

I feel that Alcaraz simply being there matters beyond the celebrity angle. Tennis and padel are in a complicated relationship: parallel cultures, overlapping fanbases, competing court time. Take it for what it is.

3) Lefty-righty pairs are everywhere.

As an upper-intermediate rec player (or 4.22 on Playtomic after playing for 5 weeks in Spain), I don’t often face lefty-righty pairs. At this tournament, they were everywhere, and I didn’t think that was a coincidence.

Here’s my theory / the tactical reality: hitting down the middle (aka, the lowest-error shot in padel) is taken for granted when both your opponents are righties. Against a lefty-righty pair, that same shot goes right into both forehands. Your safety valve now becomes their weapon.

Beyond that (and from my experience), your muscle memory is built around righty-righty patterns… i.e., where to lob, where to chiquita, which side has the weaker volley. A lefty flips the whole map. So at the professional level, this edge is deliberately cultivated. Watch for it… or “ojo,” as they say.

4) Angle shots are a first language.

At my level, I avoid steep angles. The margin for error drastically shrinks, and I can usually depend on consistency to win points while my opponent makes mistakes. At the P1 level, angles are the vernacular.

Watching literally everyone — from the Qualifiers to the Final — hit cross-court at angles that seem geometrically impossible from that position, and make it repeatedly, is a good reminder of how many shots you’re leaving off the table by playing safe. The pro game is purely a different game.

5) Women’s padel deserved a bigger crowd.

As a rough observational estimate, 2-2.5x more people were in the stands for men’s matches than women’s. Witnessing that gap was uncomfortable to watch.

Before anyone tries to stop me and tell me I’m “virtue signaling,” here’s my blunt take: women’s padel is a different style of padel, and in some ways a more instructive one. The points are longer. The rallies are more constructed. The defense-to-attack transitions are more deliberate. (Here’s the info to back it up.) If you’re trying to improve your own game, you will learn more per minute watching women’s padel than men’s padel, because the men’s game operates at a pace and power level that’s simply not replicable for most of us. Also, isn’t it just cool to see what each gender of the human body is capable of doing on a padel court?

I grew up ball-boying for World Team Tennis, which ran men’s and women’s in the same ticket, same crowd. The women got real love. Padel in the U.S. isn’t there yet. Ojalá it gets there.

6) Miami didn’t know this was happening.

I (very) naively went into the week expecting some ambient awareness of the tournament throughout the Miami area. Hotels with padel fans. Restaurants / bars mentioning the event. The general “Miami-is-excited-about-this” energy. My mental benchmark was Dallas during Texas-Oklahoma weekend, something I experienced firsthand every October in college. When both teams come to town for the Cotton Bowl, you feel it everywhere. With Miami being the unquestionable padel capital of the US, I assumed that meant the P1 would land similarly.

None of that existed. Outside the convention center in Miami Beach, this tournament might as well have been invisible. The city did not seem to know or care. Expos for other industries were going on at other halls adjacent to the tournament. Visitors were at their hotels, pools, or restaurants for entirely unrelated reasons. Heck, even at the men’s final (objectively the highest-attended match), there was still a handful of open seats.

Admittedly, I’m probably in the 0.0001% of Americans who follows pro padel closely enough for this to register as a surprise. Most of the people in those stands were Spanish speakers (and from my POV, most of those accents seemed to have come from Argentina, Spain, Mexico, and Colombia). After all, much of our country’s still-nascent padel culture runs through the Latin community, not through our broader sports mainstream. That’s fine, and honestly pretty cool. That’s the early-adopter phase of a sport’s growth in a new market. The question is whether the next five years look like exponential growth or plateau. I think exponential. But the proof is in the attendance numbers, and the attendance numbers in 2026 still have room to grow.

7) The box seats were a networking event with padel as the backdrop.

Not sure how I feel about this one, as someone who sat in both. In the main grandstands, people were locked in. In the VIP boxes, people were busy showing face — leaving mid-set, moving to different boxes, reappearing, disappearing. Even at the semi-finals, with the top-four seeded teams in the world on court, some boxes had half their occupants gone by the second set. Those tickets are expensive. The players on court are the best in the world. And people seem to be coming for completely ulterior motives.

I’m not judging anyone’s reason for being there. After all, I haven’t walked a mile in their shoes. Industry events are industry events. But it did produce a surreal visual: an electric match between top-ten players, watched by a fluctuating, half-engaged population of “very important” people. Worth keeping an eye on as the sport scales.

8) OnlyFans is sponsoring players, and I had many questions.

Two initial observations:

1. Over the course of the tournament, I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrow when seeing a handful of male and female players competing with the OnlyFans logo on the back of their shirt. I mean I get it, sponsorship money is sponsorship money, and padel players outside the top-20 are not earning life-changing prize purses.

2. Like no offense to the company, but what are they even trying to accomplish in padel, especially among brands like Babolat, Heineken, On, Rolex, Red Bull, Bullpadel, and Prada? What’s the conversion funnel? Just feels like a really expensive opportunity cost.

But after educating myself (while going down a 2-min rabbit hole), it started making a bit more sense… I guess. TLDR, the brand entered padel in 2024 to diversify its image beyond adult content, promote the “OnlyFans sports” sector, and provide athletes with direct funding and content monetization opportunities.

Regardless, I still think it’s kinda funny. No further comments…

9) The wiping-hands-on-glass habit is 🤢

I’ll admit this is very much a personal opinion, but I’ll let it rip anyway: every single player, at some point, wiped their sweaty-ass palms on the glass. I see this occasionally at club level, but at the pro level it’s constant and almost ritualistic.

Here’s my issue. I don’t care how often José comes onto the court, the glass is never clean. There’s always ball residue on it. Other players’ sweaty hands have been on it. If you wipe your hand on the glass and then regrip, you’re weakening your grip and adding foreign debris to your handle. Doesn’t a wristband solve this problem entirely? Maybe the pros know something I don’t, but until someone explains it to me, this one stays on the weird list.

10) It’s 2026 at the pro circuit. Why aren’t we using AI to call shots?

Each team gets two “challenges” per set. In the instance of a challenge, the match awkwardly pauses while the chair umpire reviews the replay as “The Pink Panther Theme” hums in the background. Genuinely funny. Also genuinely absurd.

I’m just kinda surprised at this still, given there have been dozens of press releases around AI line-call technology and how it’s “already transforming” racquet sports. None of that was in this building. The umpire’s word + two challenges per set is where we are. I assume this changes, I just don’t know when. For now, I guess 2018’s calling?

11) Some technical difficulties, and that’s okay.

The programming had some rough edges, and they weren’t hard to spot. At one point, Bad Bunny’s NUEVAYoL cut in over the PA while Coello was mid-serve (the point continued anyway). I remember something similar happening in one of the women’s quarterfinals. The scoreboard graphics glitched out a couple of times and occasionally failed to update the game score. And if you watched online, you’ve probably already heard complaints about streaming quality.

None of it killed the vibe. The energy inside the building never wavered. But this is not yet a precision operation, and it shows in the small stuff.

At the end of the day, this is purely an observation. They’re building six top-quality courts in five days inside a convention center hall that was doing something entirely different last week. Some friction is just baked in.

12) The better team won. Every time (almost).

The lone exception was the No. 1 seeds (both men’s and women’s) falling to the No. 2s in the final. Everything else tracked essentially perfectly to seeding throughout every round.

While the sport is beautiful to watch point-to-point, it’s highly predictable in aggregate. The same pairs keep winning, no matter how ugly. Each partner stabilizes one another. The bad patches get absorbed, so upsets are rare.

But if you’re watching padel for the craft, it’s extraordinary. Even in a lopsided match. Which leads me to…

13) Padel is objectively more fun to watch than tennis.

I’ve played and watched tennis my whole life. I will never stop playing and watching tennis.

But point-for-point, rally-for-rally, padel is a more engaging spectator sport. The walls create longer points with more reversals. Offense and defense flip back and forth constantly, with a lob resetting everything. You never fully know who’s winning a point until it ends. There’s no dead time between players shagging balls, because the enclosed court keeps things moving. And the atmosphere is uniquely intimate and buzzing.

In my humble opinion, tennis has padel beat on unpredictability of outcomes. Its sheer scale (i.e., five-set matches, four Grand Slams, 128-player draws, etc.) creates a kind of dramatic volatility padel simply hasn’t built (yet). Plus, singles produces more drama and more upsets. And the individual storyline of a player alone against another, with no partner being able to save you, carries a narrative weight that padel simply can’t replicate.

14) Miami P1 ≠ Premier Padel Tour

Last thing worth noting, which I had to remind myself: this (at least for now…) is the only Premier Padel tournament event on US soil. Everything I’ve described (i.e., crowd composition, atmosphere, awareness gap in the broader city, etc.) is specific to Miami, and Miami only. A P1 in Madrid, Buenos Aires, or Dubai is likely very different. To which degree I don’t know, but I sure as hell intend to find out. When I do, I’ll be reporting back. If you want to make a trip out of one of them, let me know. That idea is very much on the table.

TLDR: Go to one of these events. If you play, watching this level of padel in-person is one of the fastest ways to level up your game (it's pure osmosis). And even beyond that, it broadens your horizons. It's fun as hell either way. I'm already counting down to the next one.

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Great Problems. Search Data. Regretful Decisions.

• The Partnership Tennis Hates. 1,000 Courts. Coachella.

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

Hasta pronto & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

Subscribe

Leave a comment

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Padel just crossed 1,000% global search growth. We’ve never been here before. If you’re reading this, you’re still early. Buckle up.

Also, one club is coming soon, while another is having issues meeting demand. Meanwhile on the pro circuit, things get especially interesting on the men’s side given a team’s strategic decision… which in hindsight has not aged well.

Also in this issue:
— Why your grip is costing you matches
— Intel on monthly padel spending + earning sponsorships
— Big-timers bet big across two continents
— Venue announced for London P1 this summer
— A three-generation family of padel champs

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings / Expansions

Two Coming Soon

🏔️ Franchise Expands Footprint to Denver

US padel club franchise Studio Arenna (which announced plans to open in suburban DFW two months ago) is now expanding to urban Denver. Located in the city’s Sun Valley neighborhood (just 2 miles from downtown), the club will feature six indoor courts, 32-foot ceilings, locker rooms with showers, and a mix of fitness classes. Here’s a quick preview of how it’s coming along so far…

🦞 Suffering from Success

Padel Boston is announcing an expansion that will double its footprint to nearly 25,000 square feet and bring its total to six courts. Fueled by overwhelming demand since its 2024 launch, the upgraded facility will add new courts, a second lounge, and expanded event space.

📈 Up Your Game 

Fix Your Grip Before It Fixes You

You’ve been playing padel for a while. You feel decent from the back, okay at net… but under pressure, things get weird.

So you start tinkering with different grips for different shots. Adjusting mid-rally. Trying to “find something that works.” But now, you’ve just overcomplicated it to where your game is hella inconsistent.

Fortunately, Sandy at The Padel School wonderfully provides a detailed solution in this 7-min video.

Reality is, you’re probably overthinking everything except the most vital part, aka your grip.

Instead of it being some “bEgInNeR rEcOmMeNdAtIoN,” the continental grip is the foundation of the entire sport because it provides mobility.

Unlike tennis, you don’t have time to adjust your grip every shot. So you need one grip that lets you do everything. And the continental grip is your answer.

It allows full wrist mobility (i.e., opening the racket face, closing it, adjusting angles on the fly). If you’re in the wrong grip, that flexibility disappears. And suddenly, you’re late, stiff, and guessing.

But what most players (myself included, until watching this video) still get wrong is that they think “continental” just means where you hold the racket.

Rather, it’s also:

• The angle of your hand (slightly off-center, not rigidly straight)

• The index finger acting like a trigger for control

• The freedom in your wrist, not locking it up

And most importantly… how hard you’re squeezing (cc: anyone struggling with elbow pain or wrist tightness). The right way, with 1 being loosest, 10 being tightest:

• 3 / 10 in ready-position

• 3-4 / 10 during preparation

• 7-8 / 10 at contact only → then immediately relax again

So take this advice and run win more matches with it!

🌍 International Happenings  

We Just Got a Ton of Fresh Data (🇺🇸🌎)

So, the 2026 Padel Global Search Report dropped this week, and boy did I have a field day combing through these numbers. Global search interest in padel grew over 1,000% between 2004 and 2025, with nearly all of that concentrated in the last five years. Worldwide interest is up 49% YoY, and early 2026 is tracking even higher (March hit 96/100 on Google Trends’ index). We’re still in acceleration mode, and far from peaking. Point is, if you’re reading this in April 2026, you are an early adopter. Period. Buckle up!

The 🌎 vs. 🇺🇸 story is where it gets interesting, especially for my fellow Americans of our El Remate fam. In the context of padel search interest, padel beat pickleball every week of the past year globally. But flip to the US, and pickleball still dominates padel search interest by 10x. However, get this: in November 2025, US interest climbed ~65% over five consecutive weeks and held there through March 2026.

Surprise surprise, the mature markets (i.e., Spain, Portugal, Italy) are basically flatlined on growth in terms of internet search interest. The real action is in emerging anglophone and Asian markets: UK (+121%), Australia (+102%), Indonesia (+887%). Meanwhile, six countries (Cyprus, Indonesia, Switzerland, the UK, Tunisia, and Croatia) entered the global top 20 for the first time. The sport’s center of gravity is moving… worth paying attention to where courts get built next. 👀

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Pregamin’ Newgiza (🇪🇬)

This week, the pro circuit heads under the pyramids in Egypt for the Newgiza P2. The tour has already touched Asia, Europe, and the Americas this 2026 season, and now lands in Africa.

On the men’s side, all eyes are on Chingotto / Galán, who return as defending champions and top seeds, especially with Tapia / Coello sitting out (which, after losing in the Miami final, may likely come back to bite them). Chingalán should handle the early rounds comfortably, but things could heat up quickly with a projected quarterfinal clash against González / Di Nenno, a matchup that feels closer to a coin flip than the seeding suggests. On the opposite side of the draw, Stupa / Yanguas (the 2024 champions) are setting up the possibility of a blockbuster late-stage showdown. Meanwhile, Lebrón / Augsburger continue to embody “loose cannon” energy. I swear, you never know with these two…

Over in the women’s draw, Brea / Triay come in as the favorites after back-to-back titles in Gijón and Cancún, but they’ve got a tight pack chasing them, including Josemaría / González (who they most recently fell to in Miami) and Sánchez / Ustero, making the top tier feel pretty rocky. With all seeded pairs entering directly in the Round of 16, expect fewer early-round surprises but a sharp jump in match quality almost immediately.

Beyond the draw itself, this event carries real weight: 600 FIP points are on the line, meaning early-season separation is up for grabs. Can’t wait for this one!

🐝 Off-Court Buzz

• Looking ahead, Olympia was just announced to host the London P1 this August. For context, the venue daties back to the 19th century, and has just undergone a massive £1.3 billion transformation into a modern, multi-use destination for entertainment, business, and culture.

🎯 Quick Hits 

• The US National Padel Team heads to high-altitude Quito for the America Padel Cup, taking on Ecuador in a multi-division showdown that blends elite men’s and women’s matchups with a rising U18 squad. (🇺🇸🇪🇨)

• Community musings

  • Pulse check: how much is everyone spending on padel per month?

  • How do players actually get sponsored? The consensus from players and coaches is it comes down to one of three lanes: strong tournament results, consistent social media presence, or deep club-level networking where brands can repeatedly see and “feel” your influence in action.

• Around the world

  • After discovering padel during Covid, former US Open champion Dominic Thiem is launching Smash Padel Club — a new franchise aiming to scale community-driven padel across Austria and Europe, with more than 200 courts planned. The first flagship location opens May 20. (🇦🇹🇪🇺)

  • Another step closer to Brisbane 2032! Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games is adding padel as an official medal sport, with its debut set for December 2026 in Riyadh. The initiative is backed by the Olympic Council of Asia and aligned with the FIP. (🇸🇦🌏)

  • ‘90s / ‘00s soccer legend Ronaldo Nazário is backing padel development group Galácticos Rackets with plans to build 100 padel courts across Brazil. The project blends premium clubs and tech-enabled arenas. (🇧🇷)

  • Padel made a high-voltage crossover into motorsport as the Hexagon World Series set up a court inside Madrid’s Jarama Formula E weekend. The event featured 30,000+ spectators, F1-linked drivers, and Real Madrid’s Raúl Asensio picking up a racquet. (🇪🇸)

  • This is what it’s like to be a three-generation family of padel champions! (🇬🇧)

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Phnom Penh, 🇰🇭
More info here!

A review from the El Remate fam... 😎

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• The Partnership Tennis Hates. 1,000 Courts. Coachella.

• Trouble in Paradise

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

A whopping five club openings in one week, including America’s 1,000th court. Padel reaching 250,000+ Coachella attendees. And the story of how Premier Padel ended up partnering with a product tennis literally banned.

Also, Playtomic is making player ratings more… visible, the pro tour hits pause in Doha, and agent drama brews heading into Egypt. Oh, and “skin to win” — yay or nay?

Also in this issue:
— Why your slice volley needs help
— Boujee viboras on a parking garage
— Fired for playing padel
— Bounciest balls debate

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

Now Open

🌳 Upstate Uprising

40Forty Padel is opening on April 11 in Mauldin, SC (19min drive from downtown Greenville), bringing two outdoor panoramic courts plus a full café/bar setup, lessons, and community events to the Southeast.

🗽 Long (Island) Padel

This week, Padel& is opening a Syosset, NY location. The 17,000 sq ft facility will feature four indoor courts with 25ft ceilings, a lounge space, pro shop, sauna, locker rooms, and cold plunges.

🌴 The 305 Empire Expands with #1,000

Adjacent to the University of Miami campus, the 1,000th padel court in the U.S. has opened at the THesis Hotel in Coral Gables, FL, marking the city’s first-ever padel venue in partnership with Privé Padel.

Coming Soon

🚙 Parking Garage Padel, But Make It Boujee

ICON Padel Club is bringing seven covered rooftop courts to Aventura, FL (just north of Miami). The club will feature pilates, yoga, sauna, cold plunge, gym space, organic food, and a bar.

🏙️ Trading Floor Takeover

Philadelphia-based Ballers just announced plans to open in downtown Chicago. The private members club (built on the old Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading floor) will feature padel, pickleball, golf simulators, a full gym, recovery amenities, and a restaurant + bar.

📈 Up Your Game 

Stop Butchering Your Slice Volley

POV: You’re up at the net, ready to make your opponent cry “uncle!” once they encounter your venomous volleys. Yet somehow your ball floats long, dies into the glass, or sits up like a gift for said opponent.

According to this 13min video, that’s because most players aren’t paying attention to these four truths. My notes below:

Truth #1: Too many players hit the ball too early and too far in front of their body.

• It might feel aggressive, but it actually kills control. When you make contact out in front, you end up doing too much with the wrist, which makes the ball float or lose precision.

  • Instead, wait a beat longer and contact the ball more in the back, between your turned shoulders. That’s where you get more stability, more control, and a cleaner slice.

Truth #2: Players forget to use their non-hitting arm.

• If your non-hitting arm is dead weight, you’re robbing yourself of rotation, balance, and power. Keep it engaged, and suddenly your torso helps do the work instead of forcing your arm to carry everything alone.

Truth #3: Using the wrist to create the slice is a scam.

• A good slice volley comes from a controlled arm movement with a blocked wrist. The effect should come from the motion itself.

Truth #4: (to tie it all together): Your preparation needs to be short.

• If your backswing gets too big, you lose control the moment the ball speeds up. Instead, keep the prep compact, rotate the shoulders, and stay ready to punch or slice with intent.

And then one quick reminder: Slice is for balls you have time to shape. Fast balls call for survival (i.e. flat shots), while slower balls give you the chance to work the angle and the spin.

🌍 International Happenings  

Market Leader Gets Cheeky

Since launching in 2017, Madrid-based Playtomic has become the default platform for matchmaking and player ratings across much of Western and Central Europe, and is now pushing into still-fragmented growth markets globally (including a major expansion push into 🇺🇸). That matters because in many of its core markets (e.g. 🇪🇸, 🇬🇧, 🇵🇹, 🇩🇪, 🇮🇹, 🇫🇷, 🇳🇱, etc.), it effectively functions as the infrastructure layer for recreational padel, shaping everything from how games are formed to how player levels are assigned and interpreted.

Against that backdrop, Playtomic is now quietly A/B testing a peer-rating visibility feature in select regions. Instead of keeping feedback fully anonymous, players can now see whether others generally rate them as “accurate,” “higher,” or “lower” relative to their assigned level when browsing open matches.

Early reactions from players have been quite mixed, tbh. Some see it as a useful layer of transparency for matchmaking, while others are already uncomfortable with the added visibility. One recurring theme in early discussions is that people don’t mind the rating system itself, but dislike the moment it becomes socially legible (i.e., seeing that a real person has actively marked them as “lower” or “overrated”). As one user put it, it’s the kind of feature you’re not sure you actually want to look at, even if it’s technically useful. Others are already debating edge cases, such as like delays in rating data, or whether recent losses unfairly distort perception over time.

My personal take (having played nearly 40 matches on Playtomic across Europe):

• Knowing whether other players consistently see someone as “higher” or “lower” than their assigned level helps cut through the noise of self-rated profiles and recent streak effects. It becomes a kind of trust signal for match quality, similar to how seller ratings work on platforms like eBay, where the goal is simply to reduce mismatch risk before you commit time and money.

• At its best, this improves matchmaking honesty. At its worst, it adds another layer of over-analysis to something that used to be more intuitive and social. But from a player perspective, it does help answer: “Am I actually getting the level of game I’m paying for?” (hence why I’m cautiously optimistic)

Regardless, I’m eager to see how this potential add-on pans out, and how other players in the global market react…

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Men’s Drama Hits the Bye-Week (🇺🇸🇶🇦🇪🇬)

Doha

Welp, this week was meant to be all eyes on Doha for the Qatar Major, but instead the calendar took an unexpected detour when Premier Padel and the FIP announced the event’s postponement, citing “unprecedented circumstances in the wider region.”

In response, a steering committee has now been formed to reassess what this means for the structure of the 2026 season moving forward. Updates are expected soon.

Looking Ahead, Things Get Weird

So now with Qatar gone, attention immediately shifts to Newgiza P2 in Egypt (April 13-18), where Tapia / Coello have once again opted out of the tourney, opening a major door for Galán / Chingotto.

The stakes are massive. With the race rankings tightening post-Miami, Galán / Chingotto have a real chance to close (or even overtake) ground if they convert in Egypt.

Behind them, the field suddenly looks wide open. Stupaczuk / Yanguas remain dangerous contenders, Lebrón / Augsburger bring volatility and upside in equal measure, and Nieto / Sanz quietly sit as one of the most opportunistic teams in the draw. On top of that, Newgiza also brings a wave of new partnerships debuting to add another layer of unpredictability.

Miami Aftershocks: Players, Agents, + a Very Loud Internet

Off-court, the Miami P1 sparked a wave of drama involving Lebrón, Augsburger, Augsburger’s agent, and even players openly reacting to fan obsession over legacy pairings.

Augsburger’s agent, Lisandro Borges, repeatedly criticized Lebrón across social media, making claims about player protection and mental wellbeing while escalating tensions publicly. Augsburger himself quickly distanced from those comments, reaffirming his support for Lebrón and attempting to cool the situation.

At the same time, Franco Stupaczuk added fuel of his own via YouTube, openly expressing frustration with constant fan obsession over a Lebrón-Galán reunion narrative, essentially shutting down what has become one of padel’s longest-running “what if” storylines.

🎯 Quick Hits 

• Last week, Boston-based WHOOP signed a three-year global partnership with Premier Padel. This week, a great piece came out exploring how the brand evolved from being banned in tennis to becoming a strategic partner in padel. (🇺🇸)

• LA-based padel club franchise Padel Up is bringing courts to Coachella, turning 250,000+ music festival-goers into potential first-time players. Playbypoint and SIUX are backing this bold initiative. (🇺🇸)

• Since last week’s update, the National Padel League is now pushing past 40+ cities (up from ~35), with Texas (especially Austin) emerging as a true epicenter of grassroots growth. Early signals from local organizers also point to deeper community engagement (300+ player turnouts) and more structured competitive pathways, suggesting the “City to Nationals” pipeline is starting to actually take shape... (🇺🇸)

• A woman was fired for playing padel while on sick leave… and won the lawsuit! (🇮🇹)

• Spicy community debates:

  • Skin to win, baby! A spicy etiquette-based debate breaks out over body shots at the net… and seems the consensus leans heavily toward “fair game” as long as you’re not headhunting.

  • Players are trying every brand of ball (Wilson, Head, Siux, list goes on…), even going as far to use pressurizers. Seems that the “bounciest” options are Adidas RX Speed and Tretorn Serie+

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Budapest, 🇭🇺
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Trouble in Paradise

• Can Anyone Beat Them?

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

Wow… what. a. week.

Just got home after spending seven days religiously following the Premier Padel Miami P1 from start to finish. I learned a ton, met some really cool people, and most importantly, my obsession with the game got even stronger (which I, quite literally, did not think was possible).

The layout was well-designed, the courts were pristine (shoutout to my guy Jaime - the way he and his team at PadelGalis orchestrate the rapid build-up & takedown of six courts in five days is mesmerizing), and the atmosphere was electric.

I was initially planning to write a quick blurb here with my observations and takeaways from the tournament, but over the course of the week, that list kept growing to the point where not writing a full piece would feel like a disservice.

So… stay tuned. Full breakdown coming soon. Anyway, let’s get to it!

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Miami still wears the crown as America’s padel capital, but the race for No. 2 is heating up fast.

Meanwhile, the underdogs pull through on both sides to prove the virtue of patience. And the Pro Padel League just locked in another $15M, while Carlos Alcaraz thinks he could take down the world No.1s.

Also in this issue:
— The “boring” shot that secretly wins points at every level
— Pro partner prank
— Breakthroughs for intermediate players
— American company enters Premier Padel

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

The Case for America’s “Second [Padel] City” Gets Stronger

I think it’s fair to say that Miami is undeniably is the “padel capital” of the US. But what about the runner-up? Back in January, my guy Austin wrote a deep-dive on this exact topic. I may be biased given my Texas background (hook ‘em 🤘), but I strongly think greater Houston comes in at #2 given the climate, relatively lower cost of living, thriving Latino community, and vast cultural diversity in general. This week, seems like my case just got stronger.

Anyway, Racket Social Club’s newest flagship just opened in suburban Katy, TX, bringing an 18,000-square-foot, purpose-built padel facility with five indoor courts and the tallest ceilings in the area at 30 feet. The club is backed by a strategic Adidas padel partnership and is positioned as a premium social-sport destination.

📈 Up Your Game 

The Most Boring Shot Is the One Killing You

You’re playing a solid point. Yet midway, you feel like you just need to, idk, do something. Add pace, hit a winner, or prove some sort of point.

Instead, you dump a volley into the net, or float one that gets punished.

Meanwhile, the pros are doing the exact opposite. In this 17min video analyzing Juan Lebrón and Leo Augsburger, the biggest takeaway was restraint.

Many times, the chiquita ended up doing much of the damage. These soft, low balls to the feet:

• force awkward contact

• pull opponents out of position

• create space for the next shot

• allow you to quietly take the net

In reality, most players treat tough balls like emergencies. Pros, however, treat tough balls like setups by asking, “how do I neutralize this… and make the next ball easier?”

So when they’re stretched, they go slower, lower, and safer… which ironically creates pressure.

That all said, here’s a great, easy pattern to get in the habit of:

1. Chiquita to the feet → force a weak reply

2. Move forward immediately (don’t admire your shot)

3. Close space + cut angles

4. Win the point with positioning (not power)

In reality, you’re not losing points by not being aggressive enough. Rather, you’re choosing the wrong moments to be aggressive… as a good mental note, those “right moments” usually come after 2-3 smart, “boring” decisions.

🌍 International Happenings  

Money Talks (🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽)

So the Pro Padel League just raised $15M in fresh funding, bringing its 12-month haul to $25M as investors double down on padel becoming a legit North American sports asset class.

The round was led by Charlotte Hornets owner / private equity magnate Rick Schnall (who, naturally, got hooked while playing), alongside Left Lane Capital and other investors. The league now boasts 10 franchises across the US, Canada, and Mexico, with some already reportedly valued north of $10M… an insane jump from the ~$200K buy-in back in ‘23.

This new capital is being funneled into league infrastructure, player development, and building out a full-blown media product, as PPL looks to become something far more mainstream. They’re also doubling down on PPL 2, their developmental circuit, while continuing to stack commercial partnerships with brands like Frederique Constant and Franklin Sports.

One underrated nugget: PPL is already experimenting with media rights deals globally (mix of rights fees + rev share) and even staged exhibition matches at the Miami Open (imo, a smart move to hijack attention from an already padel-curious audience).

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Underdogs Ate (🇺🇸)

Remember how last week, we wondered whether anyone would ever beat the No. 1s? Well, well, well, how the tables have turned. 😈 With nearly five hours of total play time and two third-set battles, the No. 2 seeds stole the spotlight (again).

On the women’s side, Paula Josemaría and Bea González finally broke through, but not without a full-on rollercoaster which lasted just under three hours. After taking the first set, dropping the second, and falling behind 5-3 in the decider against defending champs Delfi Brea and Gemma Triay, it looked like another near-miss. Instead, they rattled off four straight games to steal the match and secure their first title together. Highlights here.

On the men’s side, Fede Chingotto and Ale Galán edged out Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia in a razor-thin 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 battle that came down to the finest of margins. The stats were basically identical across the board, so this one might as well have been a coin toss. But when it mattered most, “Chingalán” found another gear, particularly in that third set where Chingotto seemed to be absolutely everywhere. Fans noticed too, with many calling out just how dominant he was throughout key stretches. The win marks back-to-back Miami titles for the duo and their second trophy of the season. Highlights here.

Also in the pro-sphere:

• During the Miami P1, Ale Galán pulled a prank on partner Chingotto, telling him Adidas had arranged a surprise hit with Lionel Messi. Oof 😂

• Tennis bigshot Carlos Alcaraz (who sat two rows in front of me during the P1 men’s semifinals lol) casually thinks he and Jannik Sinner would beat Tapia and Coello. Sinner thinks Carlos would have to “run for both of them” while he contributes.

• Arturo Coello, who recently decided to reside full-time in Miami, gave a full behind-the-scenes look at life in the 305: training, recovery, outdoor living, and even downtime with his girlfriend.

• England-based fruit breeder BerryWorld just signed women’s world No.1 Delfi Brea as its 2026 ambassador.

🎯 Quick Hits 

• According to intermediate players, turns out the biggest breakthrough isn’t a new “magic” shot. Rather, it’s learning when not to play fast, and instead winning through positioning, footwork, and smarter rhythm control (especially chiquita vs. lob decision-making).

• Around the globe:

  • Boston-based WHOOP just locked in a three-year global partnership with Premier Padel to become the tour’s official health and performance wearable partner. (🇺🇸)

  • Argentine soccer-legend-turned-padel-evangelist Carlos Tevez officially launched Apache 32 Pádel in Buenos Aires as he doubles down on his country’s fastest-growing racket sport trend. (🇦🇷)

  • The National Padel League is doubling down on momentum from a breakout 2025 season, launching a 2026 campaign with a new Spring/Fall dual-season format, expanded women’s divisions, and a strengthened national “City to Nationals” pipeline. Backed by continued endorsement from the United States Padel Association, the league is scaling into six major U.S. regions after already drawing 1,900+ players across 35+ cities last year. (🇺🇸)

  • A charity padel tournament in Miami hosted by Young Musicians Unite just raised over $23K to help bring instruments and teaching artists into >75 local schools. (🇺🇸)

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Nairobi, 🇰🇪
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Can Anyone Beat Them?

• GOAT Recognizes Goat

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

Subscribe

Leave a comment

Share

Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

What’s up El Remate fam! Checking in this week from Miami to make the pilgrimage to this week’s Premier Padel P1 tournament. Stay tuned, lots more to come!

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

From indoor builds to outdoor courts popping up, America’s urban land grab is officially on.

Meanwhile, Coello / Tapia and Triay / Brea remind everyone they’re not to be messed with, while we inch even closer to Brisbane 2032.

Also in this issue:
— Why your footwork is quietly costing you games
— Ex-rivals squash the beef
— Taking more risks = better now?
— Where to watch the top Americans play next month
— Dad goals

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

Urban Padel FTW

🏙️ Padel Gets Windy, Despite the Indoor Setup

I’ve been waiting for this one! Proximo Padel just cut the tape, bringing padel to Chicago’s Northwest Side with a 27,000-square-foot indoor facility featuring four courts (+ pickleball on the way). Founded by two Colombian brothers (wonderful guys btw) with a corporate background, the club is betting on community-driven matchmaking and a multi-location expansion strategy to anchor the sport’s growth across the Chicagoland area.

🦞 Beantown Goes Outdoors

Philadelphia-based Ballers is set to open this spring in Boston’s Seaport district, introducing the city’s first outdoor padel courts, with three courts anchoring a 30,000-square-foot open-air complex. Backed by names like Andre Agassi and Kim Clijsters, the venue blends padel and pickleball with food, events, leagues, and social programming. Amenities span dining and lounge areas to seasonal activations, including winter ice rinks.

🐝 Additional Club Buzz

— Tempe, AZ-based Conquer Padel is rolling out dedicated retail spaces to bring lululemon into its clubs nationwide.
— Austin Padel Center, which we covered a few weeks ago, has officially opened its three indoor courts in the city’s north side. The 22,000 square-foot facility is slated to open six more courts by fall.

📈 Up Your Game 

Why You’re Always Late to the Ball

More and more pros like Paquito Navarro are saying the same thing: padel is getting faster these days, and if your movement doesn’t keep up, your game won’t either.

The problem is that most amateur players barely train it. But if you do, you’ll instantly separate yourself.

I came across this 7.5-min video, which does a great job of breaking down where you’re leaking points. My notes below:

Mistake #1: Your “Ready Position” Isn’t Ready

• Most rec players stand upright, weight on their heels, waiting for the ball like spectators.

  • Instead, stand like a goalkeeper about to prepare for a penalty kick. Slightly bend your knees, put your weight forward, and have your body lean in. You should feel like you could explode in any direction instantly.

Mistake #2: You’re Standing Still at the Net

• Instead of being flat-footed, stay active through small adjustment steps. Look for chances to move forward and apply pressure.

• Sure, you might get lobbed. But the reality is that passive players lose slowly, while aggressive players win (and lose) on their terms.

• Train your movement so you can attack and recover.

Mistake #3: Using the Wrong Footwork at the Wrong Time

• Crossover steps feel fast, but they’re not always right. Use them in defense, and you’ll feel off-balance and jammed, with limited options.

  • Instead, to avoid late contact every time, think:

    • Crossover = distance (chasing lobs, covering ground)

    • Lateral steps = control (defense, quick reactions)

Mistake #4: You Admire Your Shot

• You hit, then pause to watch your shot, despite the point still being alive.

  • In reality, you need to recover immediately. Assume every ball is coming back, even after a great shot (admittedly I’m quite guilty of this).

🌍 International Happenings  

Inching Closer… (🇪🇺)

Just two weeks after padel’s inclusion in this summer’s Asian Games was announced, the sport has now secured its spot as a medal event at the European Games 2027 in Istanbul… yet another major step toward Olympic inclusion.

Following a breakout debut at the European Games 2023 in Kraków, where thousands packed into a city-center court, the sport proved it can deliver the atmosphere and audience. Backed by the European Olympic Committees and key figures like Luigi Carraro and Spyros Capralos, the sport continues to check every box required for Olympic inclusion, ideally targeting the 2032 Summer Olympics in Brisbane.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Business as Usual (🇲🇽)

World No. 1 pairs Arturo Coello / Agustín Tapia and Gemma Triay / Delfi Brea swept the Cancún Premier Padel P2, showing that the throne is still very much occupied.

On the men’s side, Coello/Tapia edged out Juan Lebrón and Leo Augsburger in a gritty three-set battle (7-5 in the decider) to extend their absurd run to 18 straight finals. Mexico, meanwhile, remains Coello’s personal playground (he’s still undefeated there on the Premier Padel circuit), while Tapia quietly added another milestone, surpassing Ale Galán as the most decorated active player. Highlights here.

Over on the women’s side, Triay/Brea dispatched Bea González / Paula Josemaría in straight sets, closing with a borderline bagel (6-1) after a tight opener. Since bringing in coach Seba Nerone, they haven’t lost… now sitting on two titles this season and 11 overall as a pair. Tune into the highlights here.

Overall, the tourney’s outdoor setup brought hella wind, which had fans joking about lobs flying sideways, but even then, the same elite names rose to the top. Fans online displayed equal parts awe and fatigue, like: “can they lose for once?”

🎯 Quick Hits 

• Want to witness 🇺🇸’s best padelistas compete? The P1 Las Vegas Open returns for year three in late April with a $25K prize pool and equal pay across men’s and women’s draws.

• Former rivals Mike Yanguas and Juan Lebrón have officially buried the hatchet, turning one of padel’s most heated on-court clashes into an unlikely friendship.

• Players debate:

  • Is a weeklong padel camp in Spain actually worth it, or just a glorified (and expensive) vacation?

  • Maybe taking more risks is better after all?

• Dad goals 👨‍🍼

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Kuwait City, 🇰🇼
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• GOAT Recognizes Goat

• Revenge ‘n’ Trash Talk

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

Buenas, dear readers! Writing this from Fort Lauderdale, FL, where we just closed out this year’s RacquetX. Even in my humble opinion, padel really stole the show compared to the other racquet sports represented. There’s so much innovation happening across the sport, both in the U.S. and globally. Here’s a quick peep of the event from my POV:

Anyway, let’s get into what’s hot this week:

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Padel’s pricing spectrum continues to widen across the States. Meanwhile, investors are hurling money at the sport.

And if your fourth flakes, Sandy from The Padel School has a 3.5-minute “living room racket skills” session that might be the most valuable practice you do all week.

Also in this issue:
— Pro padel crashes pro tennis
— Playtomic shakes hands with pickleball
— Will AI harm padel?
— Another big American brand joins the padel party
— Wedding shenanigans

Game on. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

A Tale of Two Price Points

🌲 Not Something You See Everyday: Coastal and Accessible

Over in Portland, OR’s Cathedral Park neighborhood, Foundry Padel is set to open in June. The new 13,800 sq ft indoor club will feature four courts with 40-foot ceilings, plus a two-story social lounge serving local beer and wine. Hoping to keep the sport accessible, the founders are aiming to charge $15 per player, per hour. The club will use Playtomic to help players match up and mix in.

🌴 Meanwhile on the Other End of the Spectrum…

Down in Palm Beach, FL just south of Trump International Golf Club, Court Club is opening a private club that will feature six padel courts, six tennis courts, and multiple pickleball courts alongside a full-service clubhouse with dining, spa, pool, and fitness facilities. Built on a five-acre former church site, the club will pair top-tier food and beverage with family-friendly amenities like kids’ camps, clinics, and daycare. The price of entry reflects that, with a $45,000 initiation fee and $9,500 in annual dues.

🤫 On the Down-Low

— Interesting things brewing in Los Angeles…
— Right before Christmas, we covered a suburban Houston padel expansion underway in The Woodlands, TX. As a quick update, the club (now targeting a late May opening) will be called Lobb’s Padel and will debut with five courts.

📈 Up Your Game 

Next Time Your Fourth Flakes…

This week, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and resurfaced with an oldie but a goodie.

In this 3.5 minute video, our boy Sandy from The Padel School walks through a short “racket skills” session you can do at home. The best part is you don’t need a court, nor much space. And it’s fantastic for muscle memory.​ Here are my notes:

• Start with hit‑ups from weird positions

  • Juggle the ball on your racket from your knees, from seated, even cross‑legged on the floor. It sounds silly, but what you’re really doing is learning to feel the racket head in different body positions so your hand and the racket start acting independently of the rest of your body.

• Add hit‑downs around a cone

  • Set a cone (or phone, soda can, etc.) in front of you and tap the ball down off your racquet as you move around it, changing direction from clockwise to counter‑clockwise. This forces you to control the ball while your feet and body are constantly shifting.

• Do some mini wall rallies in tight spaces

  • With as little as 7-10 feet (or 2-3 meters), you can rally forehands and backhands against a wall, gradually moving back and even setting a little target mark to hit. Alternate forehand/backhand, go softer or harder, and force yourself to keep the volley going for control training.​

• Mix in lunges and “ugly” positions

  • Padel rarely lets you hit from a perfect, textbook stance, so Sandy builds that into the drills: lunges, split positions, little squat holds while you control the ball.​

• Level up with balance challenges

  • Work on hitting off a wall while standing on one leg, adding in uneven surfaces like standing on a cushion. If you’re feeling particularly cheeky, feel free to incorporate a bounce off your racquet before hitting back at the wall. This exercise will pay off when you’re stretching for volleys off the glass.

What I love about this video / concept is how low‑friction it is. It’s short, light on the body, and you can do it almost anywhere. And it directly translates to softer hands, better control off the glass, and more confidence in awkward positions.

Do it & tell me what you think! 🏡

🌍 International Happenings  

Investors Have a Field Day

For all the “pAdEl iSn’T iTs oWn aSsEt cLaSs” folks, peep what’s going on this week, with not one, not two, but three headlines you need to know.

First, Fitura Brands just launched with a $20M pre-money valuation to build a franchise platform spanning racquet sports, athletic pilates and recovery, with “Padel//SWT” positioned as its next-gen indoor padel club concept. The company is centralizing franchise development, vendor partnerships, marketing, site selection and training so each brand can scale quickly while sharing backend infrastructure. Within 🇺🇸 padel, this is a bet that premium, league-driven indoor clubs can anchor a modern sport-and-social ecosystem inside the $1 trillion American wellness economy.

Next, Miami-based Racquet 360 closed a $9 million round and has already deployed the capital across four units: National Padel League, RacquetX (hey I just went here!), Racket Central (digital/retail for padel and pickleball) and Racket Social Club locations. With revenue projected to grow more than 300% this year, the raise is explicitly framed as an “inflection point” play on U.S. padel demand, anchored by nearly 2,000 amateur players across 160+ teams in the National Padel League’s first season.

Finally, AO Ventures (the investment arm of the Australian Open), just increased its stake in Mindspring Padel, doubling down on what it sees as a key global platform for padel-court monetization. Mindspring’s model is to finance padel courts so clubs and venues can build without heavy upfront capex, directly attacking the biggest bottleneck in the sport’s growth, aka access to capital for infrastructure.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Cancún Awaits, PPL Gets Hot (🇲🇽🇺🇸)

With no major tournament to recap from this past weekend, this week’s pro circuit update shifts gears to what’s ahead between the Cancún P2 and Pro Padel League.

The Premier Padel circuit heads to Mexico this week as the Cancún P2 takes over the Rafa Nadal Tennis Center from March 17-22, with €264,534 in prize money and draws of 28 men’s teams and 24 women’s teams.

Meanwhile, some things kicking around in the Pro Padel League:

• Argentine polo legend Nacho Figueras just joined the ownership group of the Florida Goats, one of the Pro Padel League’s fastest-rising franchises. The team relocated to Palm Beach from Orlando after winning the inaugural City’s Cup in 2024 and finishing first in the 2025 regular-season standings, and their 2026 roster already features top names like Gemma Triay, Paula Josemaría Martín, Leandro Augsburger, and Jon Sanz.

• This year’s Miami Open is adding padel to the program, hosting the inaugural PPL II tournament and daily activations with the Pro Padel League from March 15-29. Two courts will anchor the new Publix Padel Park, with pro matches, clinics, open play sessions, and court bookings available via Playtomic.

🎯 Quick Hits

• European padel-tech behemoth Playtomic is using pickleball to deepen its US moat by plugging DUPR’s established rating system into its app

• Is padel AI-proof? My buddy Dario wrote a really good take worth thinking about…

• Players hotly debate: if your coach only sees 5% of your padel, how do you actually know what’s killing you in matches?​

• Another major American sports brand gets into padel… and no, it’s (still) not Nike

• Two weeks ago, we mentioned that Jakarta’s governor threatened padel growth in 🇮🇩’s capital. Turns out, he wasn’t fooling around… 😬

• This is what it’s all about :) — a 🇬🇧 club is staying open 24 hours on weekends during Ramadan, so Muslim players can break fast, pray, then hit the courts in the middle of the night

• Doing this at my wedding 💍

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Tepoztlán, 🇲🇽
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Revenge ‘n’ Trash Talk

• Bet On It

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Padel’s 🇺🇸 footprint just got a lot bigger (and wetter). And on the global front, padel took yet another massive step toward the Olympics, while the pro tour may have delivered its most drama-ridden weekend yet.

Also in this issue:
— Fellow addict/disciple tells you how to master the dejada (& it actually works!)
— Hollywood’s unexpected padel cameo
— Padel’s golf invasion
— What Tapia & Coello do with their racquets is none of now your business

Time to grab your mate (👯 or 🧉 depending on where you’re reading this from), your racquet, and a fresh can of balls. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

Northeast 🤝 Northwest

🗽 Island Expands to Padel

Sportime Randall’s Island (long known as one of the biggest racket-sports hubs in New York City, sitting just east of Manhattan between Harlem, Queens, and the Bronx) has officially added padel to the mix. The sprawling sports complex already hosts dozens of tennis courts and the famed John McEnroe Tennis Academy, and now the club has opened three indoor padel courts inside its flagship facility. Expect leagues, clinics, tournaments, and plenty of open play to come.

🌲 Wet Region Breaks Dry Spell

Alas, after years of false starts, two ownership groups have signed deals to open the Seattle area’s first padel facilities: one in the city’s Ballard neighborhood, and another in suburban Kirkland. Public details are still pretty sparse, but thankfully my buddy Austin shedded a bit more light on this here. Big shoutout Pacific Padel.

📈 Up Your Game 

POV: Your buddy gives you killer dropshot wisdom from his private lesson

A few issues back, we talked about the padel drop shot, or “dejada,” sharing tips from a Spanish Top-100 pro on how to turn it from a gamble into a weapon.

Those notes were great.

But this week I stumbled across a YouTube video that might be even more relatable, which I think deserves a Part II. Think of this as one amateur passing along what finally clicked. If he can figure it out, so can the rest of us ;)

My notes below:

1. Think “stop the ball,” not “cut the ball”

   1. The biggest breakthrough came from a simple double volley:

      1. First volley → as vertical as possible

      2. Second volley → normal volley

   2. Put your weight forward

      1. Once you lean into the shot instead of flicking at it, the racket face softens the contact and the ball naturally starts dying off the bounce

2. In this context, keep the racket closer to your body

   1. The closer it is, the more control you have

3. Train the feel with “no-bounce” rallies

   1. One drill looked almost like a beach-ball game. The student & pro rallied without letting the ball bounce, trying to keep the ball soft and low

   2. This forced the student to get to the ball quickly, stay close and compact, and control the racket face

   3. Great warm-up drill before matches too, btw

4. Put it together with a simple pattern that simulates match play: split step → volley → split step → drop shot, over and over

   1. Clear mechanical cues will naturally emerge from this, like putting your weight forward, staying close to the ball, having a compact swing, and keeping a stable racket at contact

I tried this myself and it worked extremely well. Give it a go too. Happy dropshotting!

🌍 International Happenings  

🏅 One Step Closer to the Olympics…

Padel has officially been confirmed as a medal sport at the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games, marking another key milestone as the sport continues its rapid expansion across Asia and the globe.

A formal agreement was signed between the Games’ organizing committee, the Olympic Council of Asia, and the International Padel Federation (FIP), which will oversee the sporting delivery of the tournament in coordination with the host organizers. The 2026 Games, running from September 19 - October 4 in 🇯🇵, will give padel one of the biggest multi-sport stages it has appeared on to date.

Because the Asian Games function as Asia’s equivalent of the Olympics, the inclusion is another quiet but meaningful step in padel’s push toward eventual Olympic inclusion, with many in the sport now eyeing a potential debut at the 2032 Summer Olympics in Brisbane.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Gijón, the City of Revenge (🇪🇸)

Two teams who fell short at the Riyadh P1 came roaring back in northern Spain, as Gemma Triay / Delfi Brea and Ale Galán / Fede Chingotto captured titles at the Premier Padel Gijón P2, delivering a weekend full of marathon rallies with a lil’ side of locker-room drama.

The women’s final was an absolute war, with Triay / Brea edging out Riyadh victors Ariana Sánchez / Andrea Ustero 6-4, 6-7, 6-3 in a 3-hour, 3-minute thriller. Even crazier to me was the stat sheet: 59 winning points vs. 57, but also 61 unforced errors from the eventual champs. Peep the highlights here, and pay attention to Ustero - her defensive gets are mind-blowing.

The men’s final delivered the sport’s emerging clásico. Galán and Chingotto took down world No. 1s Arturo Coello (on his 24th bday 😬) and Agustín Tapia 7-5, 7-6, snapping their four-match win streak… guess they’re human after all. Highlights here.

Fans online were eating it up. One viewer summed up the collective mood: “I seriously need to stop watching these finals - I’m way too emotionally invested.”

And just to add a lil’ 🌶️, Argentine power-smash machine Leandro Augsburger stirred the pot during the week, casually saying he’s “not a fan” of Galán and doesn’t find him “a big deal.”

Galán’s response was calm, measured, and very veteran-esque… essentially “great player, tough environment, wish him the best.”

Next stop for the tour is the Cancún P2, followed by a much-anticipated Miami P1. Grab popcorn if you haven’t already.

🎯 Quick Hits

• Padel has finally hit Hollywood! Paramount’s Preschool (March 17) puts padel front and center with Josh Duhamel facing off in a match, making it arguably the first major studio film to showcase the sport in action. Fast forward to 1:09 in the movie trailer to see for yourself

• Why does Tapia swap rackets mid-tournament? Players debate whether it comes down to carbon type, rubber feel, indoor vs. outdoor conditions, or even marketing strategy

• Padel, pickleball, and wellness tech took center stage at this year’s PGA Show, signaling how private clubs are adapting to changing preferences among golf consumers 🏌️‍♀️

• Secret’s out! Here’s how world No. 1 Coello configures his HEAD Pro 2026 racquet

• How to target the weakest player 😂

🤩 Cool Club of the Week

📍 Vilnius, 🇱🇹
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Bet On It

• Padel Finally Checks In

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

Subscribe

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

LA’s first dual pickleball-padel facility just dropped three public padel courts, christening them with none other than the all-time padel GOAT. Meanwhile, Playtomic quietly flipped the switch on its APIs, Rafa’s academy is landing in the U.S., and you can now legally play your friends for $$$ from a mobile app.

Oh, and if you’re still blasting smashes instead of targeting the “Black Hole” down the middle… we need to talk.

Also in this issue:
— The Southeast’s suburban padel bet
— Gijón P2 preview + pro shakeups
— Padel alienating women? :(
— College padel hits the accelerator

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

Sun Belt Spotlight

🌆 Downtown Pickleball Expands to Padel

Santa Monica, CA is getting its first-ever public padel courts as Santa Monica Pickleball & Padel (LA’s first dual Pickleball & Padel facility) unveils three courts in its downtown district. The launch is anchored by a grand opening appearance this Thursday from Fernando “Bela” Belasteguín, widely regarded as the padel GOAT after 16 consecutive years at world No. 1.

🍑 Suburban Superbastion

Just 19 miles from downtown Atlanta, Padel Highway is bringing four panoramic courts to Tucker, GA. The club is founded by a Mexico-rooted racket sports family betting on the Southeast’s appetite for social alternatives to pickleball. Positioned in an isolated zone (lower noises / smart zoning play), Padel Highway is leaning into tournaments, community programming, and multi-generational accessibility. The club has announced an April opening.

Additional Club Buzz

• Initially announced last August, Rhode Island finally opened its first-ever indoor padel court. Two more outdoor courts are coming to the same facility (Newport Pickleball Club) later this year.

• Down in Boynton Beach, FL, Replay Club is sharpening its luxury positioning under new management, expanding staffing and programming around its ten indoor padel courts. The club will now feature seven on-site padel professionals and a growing slate of group fitness classes.

• While we only cover US club openings 🤷‍♂️, there’s something cool brewing for our friends right across the border in Vancouver 🇨🇦

📈 Up Your Game 

Find the “Black Hole” 🕳️

So there’s actually a spot on the court where you’ll win the point almost every time, and it has nothing to do with hitting harder.

It’s what The Padel Analyst calls the “Black Hole,” which he breaks down super well in this ~2 minute video.

Imagine drawing a straight line between your two opponents. Somewhere along that line, there’s always a section that’s unprotected.

That gap is the Black Hole.

• If they’re tight together → small gap

• If they drift apart → gap widens

• If they’re deep near the back wall → less dangerous (the glass bails them out)

• If they’re close to the net → lethal. No reaction time. No wall help. Rally over.

Your job is to find it. But here’s where it gets tactical.

⚠️ The danger zone gets bigger when defenders are lined up perpendicular to your shot.

Example: You’re hitting a bajada from the back. Your partner stayed high at the net. You go parallel down the line. While it looks aggressive and feels powerful, what you’ve actually done is open a runway straight into the Black Hole on the counter. One clean redirect and you’re cooked.

The smarter play:

• Avoid creating clean perpendicular angles

• Shift their alignment before you attack

• Look for separation at the net

• Punish it through the middle

Aim for that Black Hole, baby!

🌍 International Happenings  

Padel Tech Stack Loading…

First, Playtomic has officially opened its APIs to the broader padel, tennis, and pickleball ecosystem, allowing third-party developers to build directly on top of its infrastructure. That effectively turns Playtomic from a marketplace into a foundational layer for racquet sports tech. First to plug in is BreakpointCRM, giving clubs a more integrated way to manage and communicate with players inside the Playtomic universe. Sounds to me like deeper software tooling for clubs is coming…

At the same time, Rafa Nadal Academy is bringing its amateur Padel Tour stateside, with four U.S. stops across Miami, Austin, and Manhattan… all powered by Playtomic. The tour, already established in Spain and Italy, kicks off March 13 in Miami. Between infrastructure expansion and premium event partnerships, it’s been a statement week for Playtomic.

Finally, brace yourselves: padel itself is addictive enough, and one this ain’t gonna help make it any better. Lucra, a real-money competition platform, has partnered with Epic Padel and their club management app Zero.40 to let players compete for cash directly from their phones. The collab launches this spring across Epic’s US locations, with every operator that white-labels Zero.40 getting the feature automatically. Look, you were already playing your buddy for beers… now there's an app for that, a leaderboard, and apparently a compliance layer. Gotta love it.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Pregamin’ the Gijón P2 (🇪🇸)

The Gijón Premier Padel P2 2026 (March 2-8) marks the European return of the Premier Padel season, with the world’s top pairs battling for €252,250 at the Palacio de Deportes in northern Spain.

You can tune in via Red Bull TV here.

Quick refresher for newer fans: Premier Padel runs three tiers: P2, P1, and Major. P2 tournaments are the third highest-ranked in terms of ranking points and prize money. However, the level of talent remains the same, with the top dogs still competing.

Top women’s seeds Delfi Brea / Gemma Triay return to the city where their partnership first exploded, chasing a title that’s slipped through their fingers since Rotterdam. Meanwhile, No. 3 seeds Ari Sánchez / Andrea Ustero look to build on their Riyadh title.

On the men’s side, reigning Riyadh champs Arturo Coello / Agustin Tapia headline a 28-pair field.

Finally, some additional buzz around the pro sphere:

• Franco Stupaczuk confirmed he split again from longtime partner Martín Di Nenno because rivals had “found many weaknesses” in their game. Stupa cited tactical predictability and stagnation.

  • Meanwhile, Stupa renewed with Siux through 2029 (cementing a relationship that began in 2022) and unveiled the new Electra 2026 racket model

• Reigning Riyadh queen Ari Sánchez just became the face of Adidas’ 2026 Arrow_hit racket collection, which introduces a system for adjustable racket weighting. Her signed edition drops in June.

🎯 Quick Hits

• Hot Discussions

  • Can you be overweight and still be good at padel?

  • Your overhead still feel like a coin flip? Players talk about throwing baseballs to groove the kinetic chain, staying loose until the last millisecond, bending the knees, not trying to murder every smash, and plenty more...

• Around the World

  • Sadly, 🇬🇧’s padel surge may be quietly alienating women… hopefully there’s a solution?

  • Jakarta governor Pramono Anung is pumping the breaks on padel in 🇮🇩’s capital, threatening demolition

  • Qué chimba, parce! The new Colombian Padel Federation is officially live, with 233 clubs and 687 courts nationwide (171 of them built in the last year alone) 🇨🇴

• Premier Padel and Bullpadel just dropped their 2026 collab

• My buddy Austin documented a massive week in US college padel. Cheering on my fellow Longhorns - hook ‘em! 🤘

• Remember the Palm Beach billionaire who got fined $250 daily for having a padel court in his backyard? Well, here’s a juicy update…

• Also down in Florida, Reserve Padel hosted 600+ guests and raised $150K+ for a charity event benefitting the Brady Hunter Foundation to protect vulnerable animals and empower children.

• Weird new trickshot unlocked 😵‍💫

🤩 Cool Court of the Week

📍 Shanghai, 🇨🇳
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Padel Finally Checks In

• New Sheriffs in Town

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

Subscribe

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Hotels are finally putting their money where their mouth is on padel. Meanwhile, Cincinnati gets showered with more courts, while the rest of watch with FOMO.

We also do a detailed breakdown on one of the most essential shots in the game, plus an intense (albeit temporary) Coello-Tapia breakup out East.

Also in this issue:
— How padel helped KC woo World Cup talent
— Weaker partner & grip debates
— Players are multiplying like rabbits in the UK
— A near-tragic aftermath
— Updates from the 305, with love
— CourtReserve & USPA make moves

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

🛏️ “Put it on the Room!”

Back in September, Condé Nast Traveler declared padel the new “It-Girl Amenity” at hotels. While I honestly thought this take was a bit aspirational at the time, seems like it’s now becoming a real phenomenon here in the States, with *three* headlines this week alone!

Popping Up across Mid-Market…

Hotel Dena in Pasadena, CA is set to add a public-access padel court alongside eight pickleball courts, transforming underutilized tennis space into a high-traffic racquet hub steps from the Pasadena Convention Center. I like the play: mid-market, urban hospitality integrating padel as recurring, community-facing operating income.

…and High-End!

European luxury brand Kempinski Hotels is launching its first U.S. branded residences project in Miami’s Design District, with padel making the cut on the amenity list. The two-tower development, scheduled to be completed in Q4 2029, will include a dedicated padel court alongside spa, pools, and high-end residential perks.

Also: Celebrity + Hospitality = Padel?

While this one isn’t technically on US soil, it’s deeply tied to a prominent American actor and hospitality brand. Anyway, Robert De Niro and Nobu Hospitality are teaming up to open Nobu Beach Inn, a 36-bedroom property as part of a 400-acre resort and residential development set across two miles of beachfront in Barbuda. 🇦🇬 Construction is expected to be completed in late 2026, and the property will feature two padel courts.

🐄 The Midwest Is Getting Spoiled

Last week, we saw four panoramic-glass outdoor courts make their way to Greater Cincinnati. Now, the metro area is getting even more, at two separate venues:

1. Opening March 16 in Mason, OH (25 miles from downtown), the revamped $260M Cincinnati Open Sporting Club will feature two padel courts, 31 outdoor tennis courts, six indoor courts, and six pickleball courts.

   

2. Cincinnati Sports Club is dropping seven figures on a 2026 capital upgrade, which includes new covered padel courts. Already a staple on the city’s East Side, the club is doubling down on racquet sports after recent investments in indoor pickleball, upgraded equipment, and an adults-only outdoor pool.

   

🌴 Updates from the 305

• Two weeks ago, we flagged Eko Padel & Pickle opening three padel courts inside a major Miami mall. I was particularly interested in the zero initiation fees, a huge step for public accessibility. While I’m bullish given this model’s success in Europe and LatAm, it will be fascinating to see how it does in the US, where funding sources differ. Anyway, here’s what we’ve learned since the initial announcement:

  • Ceiling height is ~24 feet

  • Features locker rooms, showers, lounge seating, retail shop, and a coffee shop serving empanadas, sandwiches, ice cream, and eventually beer and wine

  • Pro athletes Trey Boston, Lucas Faggiano, and Ariel Eslava are investors

  • Opening timeline now targets late March (slightly later than initially stated)

📈 Up Your Game 

Bandejas… More To It Than You Think

Per former Spanish No. 1 Adrián Torres, most players aren’t properly learning the bandeja. He shares several key points in this video. Here are my three big takeaways:

1. The bandeja is a throw (stop thinking spin - it’s the byproduct, not the goal!)

   1. The key is the kinetic chain, not the wrist flick. Think a baseball pitch, a tennis serve, or a javelin release.

   2. Your sequence should be: Hip rotation → Core engagement → Shoulder control (keep your scapula stable) → Elbow drives from 90° to 180° → Racket travels down on a diagonal → Light supination at the end

2. Separate acceleration vs. weight

   1. If you want more speed, move your elbow faster (aka 90° to 180° quickly)

   2. If you want more weight through the ball, use your hips more.

   3. Stay relaxed to play fast. Tension kills acceleration.

3. Swing down, not sideways

   1. Use a slight diagonal path, and finish naturally.

   2. Keep it simple, and add optional variations later.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Middle East Tour Continues with Blockbuster Exhibition (🇦🇪)

Just a week after coming off their first Premier Padel title of 2026 in Riyadh, World No. 1s Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia split up for one night in Abu Dhabi for a thriller exhibition.

Coello teamed up with Jorge “Coki” Nieto (FIP No. 7, 2024 Premier Padel Finals champ), while Tapia partnered with Federico Chingotto (FIP No. 3, and arguably the best defensive engine in the game). Tapia & Chingo took it 7-6, 2-6, 6-3.

Off court, Coello toured the Zayed National Museum and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.

No full highlights yet, but here’s a 32-second clip documenting the night.

🎯 Quick Hits

• The tea has finally been spilled on how Kansas City became the 2026 World Cup’s base camp capital… and of course, padel played a part. 😏

• Tournated and World Padel Rating have launched a white-label platform for the United States Padel Association, replacing spreadsheets with a unified system for tournaments, rankings, and memberships.

• Last week, we shared a horrific story involving an Aussie narrowly escaping death when a 3-meter glass wall exploded above him while playing in Bali. 🫣 Here’s the aftermath, which raises uncomfortable questions about safety standards and glass specifications.

• Turns out, UK padel participation more than doubled in 2025! 🇬🇧

• Florida-based CourtReserve just introduced “Public Booking,” a feature that lets clubs share a link for paid court or event reservations without requiring account creation or an app download. If adoption scales, this could become a meaningful lever for clubs looking to monetize casual demand without adding operational complexity…

• Currently in discussion:

  • Players weigh in on how to deal with a weaker partner in league play 😬

  • Wait, why are the pros using these weird grips?

• Finally… this meme

  

🤩 Cool Court of the Week

📍 Cape Town, 🇿🇦
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• New Sheriffs in Town

• One Small Step for US Padel, One Giant Leap for Accessibility

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Padel’s U.S. expansion shines more light on our landlocked cities. Greater Cincy is about to get its first dedicated padel facility, while the DFW metroplex keeps stacking serious square footage.

We also tell you about a cheeky shot that makes your opponents spiral, plus a major upset that happened within the women’s pro padel circuit. 🫨 And seems like these new rules aren’t being held up…?

Also in this issue:
— Premier Padel tries to close the pro-am gap
— Atlanta padel entrepreneurs share their intel
— Players debate the proper volley
— Glow-in-the-dark padel

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

The Non-Coastal Boom Continues

🌳 Outdoor-only? Padel-only? In the Midwest? Respect.

Club Padel Newtown is set to open in Spring 2026 in Newtown, Ohio (just 13 miles outside downtown Cincinnati), becoming the metro area’s first dedicated outdoor padel facility (unlike most clubs in the region, which are mainly indoor and padel-pickleball hybrid). The club will feature four panoramic-glass outdoor courts with premium turf and LED lighting, plus a full clubhouse with locker rooms, lounge space, and a pro shop. The club plans to have leagues, clinics, lessons, junior programs, tournaments, and open play, with bookings handled through a mobile app.

🤠 More for the Metroplex

Studio Arenna just locked in an 18,000 sq ft build-to-suit indoor padel facility in North Richland Hills, TX (10 miles from downtown Ft. Worth). This will be the brand’s flagship North Texas location, designed as a premium “wellness + social hub” that blends padel, lifestyle amenities, and community. Construction is expected to kick off alongside the broader mixed-use development timeline.

📈 Up Your Game 

The Rulo: When, Why & How to Use It

Sorry, what is this shot? It’s a ball that hits the ground and then rolls into the cage, producing a nasty, irregular rebound. Sometimes it kicks up high. Sometimes it dies. Sometimes it shoots sideways. It just never rebounds “normally,” so defenders naturally hate it. This 9.5-min video breaks the shot down really well.

My eight takeaways:

1. It’s NOT a kill-shot. Rather, think of it as a problem-creation shot. The idea is to force an uncomfortable glass/fence recovery, get a weak reply, then finish the next ball. Here, spin > speed.

2. Play it anywhere from the second post to third post.

3. Keep your elbow high and racket face closed. If your elbow drops low, you’ll generate a flatter smash.

4. Keep a loose wrist & loose grip. Let the racket “rest on your thumb” to force looseness and prevent you from muscling the shot.

5. Contact slightly behind the head to brush up the back of the ball.

6. The racket should travel up and away, not wrap around your body.

7. Use the continental grip. If you’re too far into forehand grip, you won’t be able to close the racket face properly or generate that wrist roll.

8. As a reference point, show your back to the player down the line to ensure you’re turned sideways enough to generate the right shoulder / elbow shape.

🌍 International Happenings  

The Pro-Am Divide Is Shrinking

So last week, Premier Padel, the international padel circuit organized by the International Padel Federation (FIP), launched the Premier Padel Academy, a global platform that brings pro-level coaching, camps, and immersive experiences to amateur players worldwide.

As part of this process, the Academy will leverage official FIP methodology to deliver clinics, camps, and immersive programs for juniors and adults, all coordinated around Premier Padel tournaments. Programs will be led by FIP-certified coaches, and former pros. Beyond training, attendees will gain networking opportunities, panel discussions, and immersive experiences.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Riyadh Recap: A Torch Gets Passed, A Dynasty Lasts (🇸🇦)

On the men’s side, Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia reminded everyone why they’re still the team to beat. The final saw the duo dismantle Fede Chingotto and Ale Galan 6-4, 6-2 in just over an hour, marking their 32nd Premier Padel title together. Tapia was candid afterward: “We’ll be battling Chingotto and Galan all year long - today, we were the better team.” Catch the highlights here.

Meanwhile, the women’s draw delivered a massive surprise. Andrea Ustero, just 18 and already tipped as the next Spanish superstar, paired with Ari Sanchez in a remarkable debut. After dropping the first set 3-6 to world No. 1s Delfi Brea and Gemma Triay, Ustero and Sanchez flipped the script, rattling off 6-1 and 6-4 to take their first title together. Despite the duo’s 67-to-44 winners tally, Ustero was humble but confident: “We didn’t expect to beat the world No. 1s, but we worked incredibly hard.” Highlights are here.

Finally, on a more random note:

• It seems the new padel rules are not upheld in pro tournaments yet? 😬

• Big-time soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo, David Villa, and David Silva were in the stands

🎯 Quick Hits

• Two Atlanta padel entrepreneurs share their insights on the sport’s growth in their city and nationwide

• I wrote a guest article for my buddy Austin at Padel Nation regarding what Americans may find shocking when playing padel overseas. Check it out here!

• Behind every pro player is a community of coaches, physios, family, agents… you name it. Red Bull does an intriguing deep dive here

• Players debate: is slicing every volley really necessary?

• An Aussie narrowly escaped death when a 3-meter glass wall exploded above him while playing in Bali. 😦 Thank heavens he’s alright

• This 47-year-old opens up on how he quit his six-figure job to teach padel

• UK jewelry brand PRYA launches the “Padel Collection”

🤩 Cool Court of the Week

📍 Weer, 🇦🇹
More info here (+ check out this glow-in-the-dark party they recently had)!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• One Small Step for US Padel, One Giant Leap for Accessibility

• Luxury Watches 🤝 Budget Racquets

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

Super busy week last week! I had the immense pleasure of road-tripping the Midwest to witness the rise of US padel, and got to meet some of the coolest people positively impacting the sport in their own unique facets: Austin of Padel Nation, Andrew of Blanca Padel, Chris of IAPPF, Tito of AMET International, and Bruce of Connecticut-shopping-mall padel court fame.

During this expedition, we got to check out:

• Alma Padel in Glenview, IL → founder Abigail has cracked the code on off-peak court occupancy and community-building since opening last year. The place is super warm and welcoming, and naturally transports you into a padel oasis. She even has multiple 85+ year old padel-playing members. LFG!

• Proximo Padel in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood → this place soft-opened literally the week before we visited. Founder Alex let us swing by right before flying to Colombia for his wedding (que vivan los novios!). It’s a gorgeous place, and my brother got to play there for the first time this last weekend with his work colleague, an ex-college tennis player who’d never tried padel. They booked a court for an hour and ended up staying for three 😂

• Off the Glass in small-town Goshen, IN → Co-founders Brevin and Len + their impressive team are building what could become the first truly end-to-end, vertically integrated US padel court manufacturer and installer. Big things ahead for [much-needed] increased accessibility nationwide.

Austin has already documented part of this eventful week. Check out his recent piece here.

Finally, this week’s issue is a hair longer than most given the insane amount of new US club openings (great problem to have 🇺🇸💪), so you may need to click “view entire message” at the bottom to see the full issue.

Anyway, let’s get into it:

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Ace Padel is building an empire, Miami is putting padel in a shopping mall, and the Premier Padel circus is officially back.

This week felt like a mini-inflection point for US growth: we’ve got major club openings across the Sunbelt, a legit push toward inclusivity & accessibility, and even college padel starting to look… weirdly serious.

Also, if you’ve ever panicked at the net deciding between a smash or vibora, you’re not alone. We break it down in Up Your Game so you stop donating free points to your opponents.

Also in this issue:
— Babolat x Lamborghini drops a pala nueva
— Indonesia makes moves to professionalize padel
— ✨ NEW: Poll of the Week

…and plenty more. Vamos!

🇺🇸 Club Openings

Huge Things Happening Across the Sunbelt

🛍️ Padel Goes Shopping

Eko Padel & Pickle is opening March 15 inside Miami’s Dolphin Mall, bringing a 20,000 sq ft indoor padel + pickle setup to one of the area’s busiest retail hubs. The club will feature 3 padel courts, 3 pickleball courts, and a café hangout area. In my opinion, the most intriguing part: no initiation fees, just like nearly every club in Europe & LatAm. The low ceilings might be a slight buzzkill for lobs, but overall I think this is a *massive* step toward making padel more accessible and expanding the US player base. Chalk this off as a big W for American padel.

🎓 College Padel Levels Up

After a soft tease covered in El Remate #10 just before Christmas, we got more context on Ace Padel’s Coconut Grove opening, which is shaping up to be a strategic expansion project. Essentially, Ace Padel’s Coconut Grove club is a joint venture between Ace and three UMiami alumni who bought the land to build a permanent padel facility near campus (padel-crazy students often complained about the lack of nearby courts). The venue is targeting a late spring opening and will feature five outdoor courts, including four under a canopy with 32 feet of clearance at the lowest point and up to 42 feet at the peak.

🥷 Ace’s Empire-Building Saga Continues

Ace’s momentum continues, with Dallas’ Oak Lawn neighborhood committee giving them the green light to transform the former Resource Center health campus into a high-end, climate-controlled padel facility. The project will feature six indoor courts, a clubhouse with locker rooms + juice bar, and a mezzanine viewing deck.

🤠 Another in Austin

Over in Austin, $2.5M has been raised to launch Padel Society, an indoor luxury padel club featuring six courts, high ceilings, as well as co-working rooms + fitness, recovery, and social spaces. The facility is opening this summer and will be located in the city’s southeast side near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

📈 Up Your Game 

Decisions, Decisions… Smash or Vibora?

So you’re at the net, and a lob comes sailing over. Do you go for a flashy overhead smash to end the point? Or do you hit a vibora, that sneaky low-spin shot that keeps pressure on your opponents? If you hit the wrong one, you’re suddenly gifting points and momentum.

Coach Bryant breaks this down super well in this video. Here are my five takeaways:

1. Know your shot

   • Flat smash: Go for it when you’re close to the net, the ball is sitting up, and you can finish the point clean.

   • Vibora: Offensive control shot. Keeps pressure on opponents without risking a rebound off the wall. Ideal when you’re moving backward from a deep lob.

2. Body position matters

   • Flat smash: Legs loaded, weight forward, elbow high. Contact at the peak, and don’t swing blindly.

   • Vibora: Plant your feet, transfer weight forward, keep your hitting arm controlled, and slice the outside of the ball at about eye level.

3. Target smart

   • ~60% crosscourt, ~25% middle, <10% up the line for both left- and right-side players

4. Power ain’t everything

   • Flat smash: Go for it 90–100%

   • Vibora: 70% is plenty. Control > raw speed

5. Early prep wins points

   • Non-hitting arm up, chin up, elbow high, legs loaded. These micro-details are still key!

🌍 International Happenings  

Underrepresented Groups Make Moves in the Anglosphere (🇺🇸,🇬🇧)

This week featured three smile-inducing stories that are accelerating accessibility for everyone. Padel is unlike any other sport I’ve ever played, and seeing more demographics get hooked brings me so much joy.

Down in Miami, Dhanielly Quevedo formally launched Elite Sports Management, the first female-owned US padel agency after spotting a gap in representation for padel players and clubs. The agency now supports athletes with sponsorships and partnerships, helps clubs bring in new players, and connects the broader padel community.

Meanwhile across the pond, Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) is pushing for ethnic diversity in tennis & padel. The organization’s Connecting Communities plan aims to make the sport genuinely reflective of Britain’s diverse population. Efforts include amplifying Black and Asian coaches, collaborating with Brown Girl Sport to celebrate South Asian women in sports, and creating inclusive spaces across all levels.

Also in the UK, amputee player Andrew Simister opened up on how a catastrophic accident turned into a global padel journey. Competing in the Inclusive Padel Tour, he pairs with non-disabled players in tournaments worldwide and has since earned a nomination for the British Padel Awards. Absolute stud.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup 

Alas, the 2026 Premier Padel Season Kicks Off in Riyadh (🇸🇦)

The 2026 Premier Padel tour is finally back in action! A quick preview:

• Men’s draw: 48 pairs, top 16 start in round two. Favorites Coello/Tapia (13 titles in 2025) kick things off against qualifiers; main rivals include Fede Chingotto & Ale Galan (8 titles). Franco Stupaczuk & Mike Yanguas could be dark horses.

• Women’s draw: Delfi Brea & Gemma Triay are #1 seeds, but Paula Josemaria & Bea Gonzalez (#2) and Ari Sanchez & Andrea Ustero (#3) could rewrite the script. Also keep an eye out for rising stars Marta Ortega & Martina Calvo.

Where to watch: Red Bull TV streams from the quarterfinals onward. Early qualifiers can be caught via FIP’s YouTube channel.

🎯 Quick Hits

• Babolat and Lamborghini just launched the BL003, the newest racket in their ongoing collaboration. Built with 3K Carbon and a frame reinforced with KORIDION foam (a material used in Lamborghini vehicles), the BL003 is designed for lighter handling, added stability, and sharper responsiveness. It’s hand-crafted in Spain and drops in limited quantities.

• Málaga is set to host the first-ever FISU World University Padel Championships this July, welcoming student-athletes from 32 countries in men’s, women’s, and mixed divisions. And with the American Collegiate Padel League launching this month, the race to build a true NCAA-style pipeline is officially on.

• Indonesia 🇮🇩 just announced that will produce its first batch of internationally-licensed padel coaches and referees, certified by the sport’s global governing body.

• Poll of the Week (results to be posted next week 😈 … here’s what others had to say here):

• How the hell are you supposed to confidently drop $200+ on a racquet you’ve hardly (if ever) swung? The consensus: demo if you can, buy used if you can’t, and accept that the “perfect racket” is usually just the next one you haven’t bought yet.

• Is Juan “El Lobo” Lebrón the most hated and loved player at the same time?

• Padel parkour 😮

🤩 Cool Padel Court of the Week

📍 Philipsburg, 🇸🇽
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• Luxury Watches 🤝 Budget Racquets

• US Padel Growth Gets Threatened

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

Subscribe

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

Subscribe now

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Ohio gets its dead-of-winter padel lifeline, and facility M&A finally becomes a public matter. Partnerships are flooding in across the premium-to-everyday spectrum, while a particular player’s smashes in Madrid are borderline criminal.

Also in this issue:
— The volley fix you’ve been missing
— Right-side players get 💩 on
— An F1 driver makes a padel investment & cameo
— Tennis vs. squash converts square up
— How much time to warm up?

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

🇺🇸 Club Buzz 

The Spotlight Continues on Non-Coastal America

🌳 Ohio’s First

After a soft tease covered in El Remate #10 just before Christmas, Padel Square officially opened its doors yesterday. Located in Garfield Heights (10 miles outside downtown Cleveland), the club was built by four partners who couldn’t find a place to play and decided to build their own. The facility features six padel courts, two pickleball courts, locker rooms, and a lounge-forward setup.

🤠 Padel M&A Hits Texas

Not a brand-new opening, but definitely some club buzz worth flagging: Austin-based Padel39 just acquired Dallas Padel Club in Carrollton, TX. This is one of the first public U.S. padel facility acquisitions to date. The 4.5-acre site (3 indoor + 7 outdoor courts) is mid-renovation and set to rebrand as “Padel39 (North Dallas)” by early summer, with upgraded courts, expanded amenities, and premium programming similar to their Austin flagship.

As U.S. padel economics sober up, buying existing facilities is faster, cheaper, and less risky than greenfield builds. As a big believer of consolidation coming before mass adoption, I continue to bet we’ll see more quiet roll-ups like this.

📈 Up Your Game 

Rethink Your Volley

I wished I had watched this video sooner… it nicely fine-tuned my volley. In addition to the detailed visual aid, here are my three takeaways:

1. If your volley isn’t flat and in front of your opponent’s feet, you’re essentially inviting them to smash or lob.

2. Your natural instinct is to push the ball deep to keep your opponent back, but if it floats or lands too far, they get to dictate the pace. Instead, hit short, compact volleys that force them to react under pressure.

3. Avoid arm-only swings at all costs. Your arm alone doesn’t generate enough control or speed. Instead, use your shoulders and body rotation to power volleys. You stay more compact, more consistent, and you can shift to offense the moment the opportunity appears.

🌍 International Happenings  

Big Week for Partnerships. All Over the Spectrum.

On the luxury side, Swiss watchmaker Frederique Constant just became the Official Timekeeper of North America’s Pro Padel League, with a limited-edition PPL-branded watch dropping soon.

On the other side of the sponsorship spectrum, top-10 world player Coki Nieto just signed as the face of France-based Decathlon’s in-house padel brand Kuikma, co-creating high-performance racquets designed to dominate tournaments while still being affordable for regular players.

And last but not least, HEAD just launched the Arturo Coello 2026 collection: five racquets + four premium bags, all co-designed with the the man himself. Imo, seems that HEAD wants to leverage Coello as a marketing play for how athlete-driven branding can scale across skill levels.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup

Hexagon Cup Sets Stage for a Killer 2026 Season (🇪🇸)

For those who didn’t already know (admittedly, myself included), this past weekend’s Generali Hexagon Cup is a team-based, preseason event in Madrid where top men and women are shuffled into squads. With drafted teams and golden-point games, the tournament is a playground for pros to test pairings before the official season starts.

This year, Advantage Team ran the table. On the women’s side, Delfi Brea and Martina Calvo handled Sofía Araújo and Claudia Jensen 7-5, 6-3. On the men’s, Juan Tello and Martín Di Nenno finished the job 7-6, 6-2. Meanwhile, fans were losing it over (1) Chingotto and Momo’s chemistry and (2) Chingo’s insane smashes. See what I mean here.

🎯 Quick Hits

• French F1 driver Pierre Gasly is investing in padel and spent last Saturday at the Hexagon Cup.

• Up for debate:

  • Do right-side players deserve less respect?

  • Do tennis or squash players master padel faster? After reading this, I still think tennis… but not by much.

  • Those 90 minutes of court time are sacred. How much of it should be devoted to warming up?

• POV: you’re Premier Padel’s camera gimbal 😮

🤩 Cool Padel Court of the Week

📍 Helsinki, 🇫🇮
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? Todo tranca che ;) we got you covered:

• US Padel Growth Gets Threatened

• Premier Padel Just Got One-Upped

• 📌 Hot take editorials:

  • Part I: US Padel is Ass-Backward (& How We’re Missing the Point Entirely)

  • Part II: I Said US Padel Is Ass-Backward. Here’s What Ensued

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Bienvenidos a El Remate! If you’re new here, you can join our community of padel-addicted subscribers receiving my weekly newsletter on what’s hot in 🇺🇸 & 🌎 padel + occasional essays (like this one) by adding your email below.

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As soon as I hit publish on “US Padel is Ass-Backward,” I thought, “Welp, this is either going to hit or I’m about to get 💩 flung at me.”

Turns out, both happened.

The responses spanned 150+ messages (private & public) across Reddit, LinkedIn, and Substack. Players, operators, investors, and everyone in between. Some people loved it. Others clapped back hard. Most fell somewhere in between.

And I’m so grateful for all this pushback because I learned a ton: operators with spreadsheets, players with receipts, and even some outside-the-box observations from outsiders.

So I wanted to write this follow-up to be transparent about what I got wrong, what I’m even more convinced of, and new ideas I developed after marinating in all this feedback over the last month or so.

(Just taking my own “mental liquidity” advice seriously.)

What I Got Wrong

1) I Completely Underestimated the Economics (they’re a quilombo total as my 🇦🇷 friends say)

I knew operating a padel facility in the US was more expensive than in Europe/LatAm, but I didn’t realize the gap was this wide.

Michael, an operator in Los Angeles, sent me numbers that made me wince:

“The overhead costs in big cities like Los Angeles and New York... rent (biggest cost), insurance, labor costs, facility operation costs. It is running somewhere between $140,000 to close to $750,000 per year in expenses on those alone.”

Mind you, this overhead is just to keep the lights on and doors open. It does not include court construction, programming, quality staff, etc.

One NYC-based racquet sports entrepreneur also called me out:

“The cost analysis dramatically underestimates reality. Citing the price of a court alone ignores the actual cost of launching a business in the United States: buildings, lease rates, zoning, permitting, foundations, architectural work, HVAC, fire suppression, staffing, insurance.”

He’s right, as these differences fundamentally change what’s economically viable.

One Reddit user had another great point: “Real estate and extreme weather (90+ degrees and snow/cold below 40) make the sport expensive. Not wellness/high-end luxury experience.”

Also, if you’re operating in places like Manhattan where space is sparce and costs are astronomical, you might genuinely have to add premium amenities and positioning just to make the economics work. When you can only fit 3 courts in your space and your rent is ~$40-50K/month, you have to target the demographic that can and will pay for that exclusive experience.

Thus, my revised take: The premium pricing isn’t solely about luxury positioning. Some of it (or maybe even most of it?) is operators simply trying to survive with cost structures that would make a Spanish facility owner shudder.

Meanwhile, another key dimension nobody talks about: Who’s actually building these courts varies dramatically by geography.

In Europe, padel development is often supported by government sports infrastructure funding. For example, Ireland recently allocated €230M in community sports grants, with multiple tennis clubs receiving €60-120k each to add padel courts. Germany also offers federal, state, and municipal sports facility funding. Italy has significant municipal investment in community sports.

In the US, it’s almost entirely private developers and real estate investors funding these projects. While some federal grants exist (Land & Water Conservation Fund, Urban Parks Recovery Program), they’re rare, competitive, and—most importantly— not specifically designed for padel. There’s minimal public subsidy compared to Europe.

This completely changes the economics. European operators can build more affordably with public support and focus on community access. US operators need to generate returns for private investors, which often means premium positioning and higher prices just to make the numbers work.

So how do we bridge this gap? A few preliminary ideas:

• Start lean and scale → Begin with 2-3 outdoor courts with open-air, pavilion-style metal roofing (lower capex) to keep rain out, prove demand, then expand

• Focus on programming over amenities → Drive revenue through leagues, lessons, tournaments, and corporate events

• Push for municipal partnerships → Even without European-style grants, US cities have parks & rec budgets. Pickleball, though cheaper to build, is still a great case study

The Space Optimization Dilemma

Alex, an operator opening three facilities in Chicago, described a challenge that crystallized this for me:

“I’m super concerned about space optimization. Every square foot of that building is prime real estate and has to generate revenue. Let’s say I only have room for 3 courts, but there’s still awkward space where I can’t fit a court. Whatever I put there has to generate profit.”

It’s a double-edged sword.

He could add a cold plunge, yoga studio, sauna - things that generate additional revenue. But those amenities drive up court prices, make the sport less accessible, shrink the potential market, and likely decrease occupancy rates by pushing the facility toward that “country club” positioning.

He could put in something like a juice bar, but is that really the best use of prime urban real estate? Is it profitable enough? It’s also capital intensive.

This is the bind many operators face: the space economics may almost force them toward premium positioning, even if they’d prefer to build something more accessible.

2) Affordable Isn’t Always Better

Another nuance that became clear is that accessible pricing alone doesn’t solve anything if the execution is bad.

Michael in LA (mentioned above) shared a concrete example:

“I know a facility in Los Angeles that has lower court rental costs and great capital to cover operation costs, but has high staff turnover, no programming, and no customer service. Therefore, no one to build a community - they can’t even hit 50% occupancy.”

Furthermore, a Miami player on Reddit mentioned a facility that actually closed and converted to sand courts after only a year, despite lowering rates to $20/player. The court structure is still there. Just... repurposed. That’s pretty grim.

And as padel demand surges in the US, we’re seeing the same quality and safety concerns hitting the UK market. Their Sports and Play Construction Association raised alarms about declining standards - courts with wobbling glass panels, structural issues, facilities built with impervious concrete that fill with water. One operator wasted £50,000 on a court they had to dig up and rebuild.

When operators rush to meet demand and cut corners on costs, they’re risking both customer experience and player safety.

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What I Doubled Down on

Granted, I got some things wrong and oversimplified others. But here’s where I’m doubling down on my original thesis:

1) Player Frustration Is Widespread

Unsurprisingly, tons of players are experiencing exactly what I described.

Per one Reddit commenter: “Wiser words haven’t been spoken. Most padel clubs here in Miami are akin to wannabe country clubs.”

Per another: “It’s been annoying having to search high and low just to get access to WhatsApp groups. Having to follow every Instagram account and catch a story post... mostly bougie posts that doesn’t interest me.”

...And another: “There’s a place literally a block from me. I emailed them and asked if there was some sort of entry class or games for first time or lessons and they blew me off. This was months ago. Never used my padel or shoes. It felt so fucking elitist and I went to private school, race road bikes and play a lot of golf. So elitist by those standards is bad.”

I can’t help but chuckle when comparing these exasperations to comments from players in Europe:

• 🇪🇸: “My local where I play 4 times a week is €2 per person for 90 minutes. There’s no spa (why would it have one?), there are no famous people (who cares?). I just go to play.”

• 🇵🇹: “Off-peak price is €3 per person for 1.5 hours. The ceiling is high, there’s space between courts, surface is good, there’s a bar, 15 minutes from city center. No player needs more than this!”

• 🇮🇪: “Our family membership for the tennis club, which includes court times and padel, is €500 a year because the club is community run.”

Which leads me to:

2) High-Quality Matches > Exclusivity

Upon watching a vlog titled “Exclusive vs. Inclusive in Padel – Which direction is the U.S. market heading?,” one comment stood out:

“I prefer to be categorized by level of play, not my wallet. That kind of membership is for flaunting and segregation by status. That’s a thing in the USA. Here in Europe, most of us just like to play padel with and against anyone.”

While I certainly can’t speak for every player, my strong belief is that the vast majority (easily 90%) optimize for match quality over exclusivity. If the goal is to improve while being time- and cost-efficient, players will reliably choose better competition over better optics. In practice, that means playing with the best available partner or opponent. Point being, a more accessible club creates a larger, more active player pool, which raises the average level of play. That, in turn, leads to consistently higher-quality matches and dramatically stronger retention. It’s a self-reinforcing flywheel.

3) I Still Don’t Buy into the “Trickle Down” Theory

Not everyone is building exclusive padel clubs. One Substack reader, for example, runs a facility in Denver offering free play from 10am-4pm every weekday. That’s the kind of thinking we need more of, where both players and operators can win. Accessibility → adoption → community → sustainable revenue.

While I still have difficulty finding other 🇺🇸 clubs that function like this, I see reasons to be hopeful.

However, a handful of folks argued: “Maybe padel needs to start as luxury and ‘trickle down’ over time. That’s how American consumer behaviors work.”

Here’s why I don’t buy it: Hyper-globalization today has allowed countless Americans to instantly become familiar with padel, yet many (rightfully so) still can’t afford to play regularly, if at all. And they don’t want to wait 5 years; they want to play now! I cannot overstate how many folks I’ve spoken to who say they’d drop pickleball overnight and go all-in on padel if the sport were simply more accessible / affordable.

Furthermore, operators need to understand that people have shown this sport is addictive as f*ck. According to Playtomic’s 2025 Global Padel Report, 92% of first-time players return after their first game. NINETY-TWO PERCENT… that’s insane retention.

Put bluntly, I really don’t think [at least 90% of] players have a deep need for all this hoity-toity developer-driven (pardon my Greek) skatá. I am starting to see this unfold in real time in the US. Clubs aren’t closing down because people don’t want to play padel, it’s because, generally speaking, there’s a huge disconnect between what operators think players want and what players actually want.

So if the blueprint already exists in Spain, Argentina, Italy, etc., why not just copy it while accounting for higher overhead in the US? I don’t see a compelling reason to start with a low-volume, high-margin model and wait several years to scale when (1) demand is already proven, and (2) it’s already accessible yet profitable in so many other parts of our world.

Look at places like Costa Rica and Araoz in Buenos Aires, or Suma and Sportcity in Valencia - just four examples of many I’ve regularly played at. Courts turn over nonstop: 90 minutes, you’re out, the next four are in - rinse, repeat. These clubs prioritize accessibility and community over exclusivity and amenities, and their courts are always full because of it.

Plus, now isn’t the time to fancify padel. The ~2021 ZIRP era of when a golden retriever could outperform a hedge fund manager is long gone. Inflation is real, salaries aren't keeping up, and consumers are penny-pinching. If I were in the 90% of operators, I’d optimize relentlessly for accessibility. Lower barriers expand the player base, strengthen community density, and create flywheel effects that compound over time.

It's not rocket science. This concept exists all over Europe and LatAm where, other than a small bar area for post-game drinks, these facilities just do padel. That's it. Nothing fancy. And they're occupied 24/7 because the same people keep coming back and bringing their friends (who bring their friends, and so forth), which yields a strong, vetted community.

4) Operators’ “Awareness” Problem Is Legit, But They’re Thinking About It Wrong

To further complicate matters, countless operators cite a fundamental challenge: most Americans still don’t know what padel is.

Many told me versions of: “Pricing isn’t the main problem - awareness is. If Agustín Tapia walked into a local American grocery store, nobody would recognize him. How do you fill courts when most people don’t even know the sport exists?”

But here’s where I push back. The “awareness problem” and the “pricing problem” aren’t separate issues. They’re directly connected, and high prices actively make the awareness problem worse.

High prices suppress awareness growth because:

• Fewer people try it → Fewer word-of-mouth referrals → Slower awareness spread

• It signals exclusivity → People assume it’s “not for them,” or “it’s too expensive,” or “I’ll just stick to pickleball instead”

• Lower occupancy → Fewer people see courts being used → Less organic visibility

The operators complaining about awareness while charging premium prices have it backwards. You don’t build awareness through premium prices and exclusivity, especially when your courts consistently hover below ~50-60% occupancy. You build awareness through accessibility.

As my buddy Austin from Padel Nation said, “If you create a product that 1% or less of the market can afford, at best you’ll attract 1% or less of the market. Precisely why squash has floundered for so long in the US.”

Some New Ideas I Had

1) Potential Hot Take 🔥: If You’re Going Exclusive, Compete with the Big Boys

If you want to be an exclusive facility with tons of luxury amenities, you need to compete more directly with places like Life Time and Equinox.

Think about it from an operator POV: most (if not all) of your ideal prospective members are affluent, health- & wellness-conscious folks who likely aren’t yet familiar with padel. Or they already know about it, but you’re the first facility that’s opening nearby. They likely either already belong to an exclusive local gym or country club, where they’re surrounded by amenities like cold plunges, infrared saunas, yoga classes, etc.

Respectfully, why would anyone spend their limited time and money across TWO premium memberships with tons of overlapping amenities? That’s objectively redundant and frivolous, even for folks with high disposable income.

To add some interesting intel to the mix, I’ve spoken with two separate people in different parts of the US who independently heckled Life Time’s corporate team to add padel courts in their new locations. Corporate said they have no intention of doing so and are instead going full pickleball (huge mistake imo).

Given what I’ve mentioned so far, I feel like it’s a no-brainer. If you want to win in the exclusive space, be a better version of Life Time / Equinox by offering padel and charging a slight premium for it. Why have separate memberships to higher-end gym + padel clubs when you can save time by accessing both at once, for less?

Ballers in Philadelphia does this well - it’s a complete fitness/wellness destination (full gym, sauna, cold plunge, yoga, etc.), where padel is a key additional feature.

In Spain, Suma is like a slightly-less-bougee Life Time with integrated padel courts. Sportcity is another great example with more padel emphasis.

Point is, if you don’t intend on becoming a padel-providing Life Time or Equinox, don’t bother with the premium positioning. Just build an accessible, community-focused facility with padel (+ maybe a small snack & drink bar), nothing else. Your prices go down, accessibility increases, people get addicted much quicker, and operators can just focus on keeping courts occupied without extra operational complications.

Anything in between is awkward positioning that’s too expensive to be accessible, but not comprehensive enough to replace someone’s gym membership.

2) Size Culture Matters

There’s a final dimension to this that goes beyond economics and accessibility: the culture and community aspect of US padel feels substantially inferior to everywhere else I’ve played.

From what I’ve seen and experienced in the US, there’s just not much... culture. Individual members show up, play their match, and leave. There’s not much hanging around, grabbing a beer together, or getting to know one another. No real community. No real uniqueness or distinct vibe.

In Europe (particularly in the Mediterranean) / LatAm, most people stick around post-match. They have an asado together. They grab drinks. Their families are there. Kids are running around while parents are socializing. It’s a communal experience, not some 90-minute exercise block.

To see what I mean, peep the video (below) from my friend Allison. This is 9:45pm on a Tuesday night in Brazil. 🇧🇷 There’s an asado corner where meat is being grilled for the community post-match. There are kids playing and watching soccer together. There are families integrating, eating, drinking, and actually spending time together beyond just the match itself. It’s a vibe. It’s communal. To me, this is what padel culture should feel like.

Look, I get it. Americans are hyper-busy. There’s more of a “grind” culture... it’s the price you pay for living in “the land of opportunity.” A padel match is their 90-minute workout for the day, and then it’s back to work, picking up the kids, etc.

It also doesn’t help that many US facilities (especially outside places like Florida and California) are built in windowless warehouses due to climate constraints. Not exactly an environment that makes you want to hang around afterward…

But I still think US operators can tear a page or two from this book, while still operating within the constraints of American lifestyles. At the end of the day, culture is a critical component that many operators neglect to monitor because it’s non-numeric. Ironically, it’s one of the strongest drivers of retention and word-of-mouth referrals.

3) Were We Lied to the Entire Time?

As I’ve dug deeper into the economics and operator realities, I’ve candidly become much less bullish on the “explosive growth” narrative of US padel than I was just a few months ago. And I hope I’m wrong.

Industry “experts” keep throwing around this projection of 30,000 courts in the US by 2030.

But let’s do some basic math. As of late January 2026, the US currently has ~900 courts. To hit 30,000 by 2030, we’d need to build ~29,100 courts in five years. That’s ~5,800 courts per year, or ~16 new courts opening every single day for five straight years.

For context, Spain has ~16,000 courts built over decades of organic growth. The US population is ~7x larger, which would suggest a proportional target of ~112,000 courts if demand matched Spain’s per-capita penetration. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about 30,000 courts, which would still require >33x growth in five years, while Spain took decades to reach 16,000 with ideal conditions: favorable climate, lower costs, government support, and deeply embedded sports culture.

Hmmm… are these projections based on genuine analysis, or are they just aspirational marketing designed to attract investors and operators into the space?

Because after talking to operators, crunching numbers, and seeing facilities struggle to hit even 40-50% occupancy at current price points, I’m starting to think we’re in one of two possible scenarios:

Scenario 1: The “experts” are right
Here, demand for padel is so overwhelming that market forces will naturally correct toward accessibility. Operators will lower prices to achieve >75% occupancy. More people get hooked. Construction costs scale down as the industry matures. Municipalities get involved to more closely mimic Europe. We develop a robust grassroots player base, build legitimate competitive depth, and padel becomes as accessible as tennis.

30,000 courts becomes achievable because we’ve cracked the code on accessible yet profitable operations.

Scenario 2: The “experts” are pump-and-dumpers
Growth projections are inflated to attract capital, sell services, move equipment, or juice early valuations… while falsely optimistic investors & operators absorb all the downside risk. When the numbers don’t pencil, these same voices quietly move on, leaving others to clean up the mess.

In reality, pricing reveals exactly where we stand. There’s just no way you can have explosive growth and exclusive pricing. One has to give.

***

Thus, to all the “experts” pumping 30,000 courts by 2030: Either explain (clearly and quantitatively) how the economics support that outcome, or admit the narrative is doing more marketing than math. Right now, the numbers don’t add up, and well-intentioned people are going to get financially hurt chasing this mirage.

Wrapping It All Up

Looking further into 2026 and beyond, I think there’s a fundamental question we need to wrestle with:

Can you operate a US facility that:

• Charges accessible rates (<$25/hour, ideally $10-20 per person for 90 minutes if we’re realistic about what would drive mass adoption)

• Invests heavily in quality staff, programming, and community building

• Achieves high (enough) occupancy (75% minimum) through volume, retention, and vibrant community culture

• Actually makes the economics work well enough that operators want to keep building?

If the answer is no, we should stop pretending “explosive growth” is inevitable and start being honest about the constraints.

The thing is, padel doesn’t fail in 🇺🇸 because people don’t love it. It fails when pricing, positioning, and facility economics drift too far from how the sport is actually consumed everywhere else in the world.

Also, will the long-term winners & losers match these takes? I’m eager to see how the market ultimately corrects itself: which incumbents endure, which flame out, and how new entrants adapt.

Only time will tell, as this is only the beginning… much more to come!

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What’s your take after reading Part II? Am I more off-track or onto something? Drop your thoughts below or reach out directly.

If you’re following along on this knowledge journey, hit subscribe and follow @padelyanqui on Instagram. Plenty more where that came from!

Bienvenidos a El Remate! I’m Aris, a padel-obsessed Missourian who spent the last two years living in Argentina and Spain to deeply understand the sport’s strategy, culture, and business. I’ve played and competed across 3 continents and 12 countries, and recently started documenting my journey on Instagram.

Each week, I curate what matters in padel: new US club openings, technique tips, my takes on international headlines and pro drama, plus insider knowledge from the global circuit. Subscribe for weekly updates! 📧

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Hope everyone’s week has been off to a great start! Quick update, we’re back on Substack after much deliberation and subscriber feedback. I’m excited to continue growing our community from here. Now let’s dive in!

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

You can now play padel at 3am in the US without breaking into a facility. Meanwhile, the future of padel’s US growth is in jeopardy, thanks to Drew Brees and a celebrity-loaded cap table. And down in Miami, Arturo Coello reminded everyone that when he steps on court, formats nor pairings matter.

Also in this issue:
— The dropshot cheat code
— Coello’s invisible dominance explained, and is Tapia leaving money on the table?
— Are standard rackets wrecking amateur elbows?
— A new racket brand launches

…and plenty more. Seguimos!

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🇺🇸 Club Openings 

🌝 3am Padel, Anyone?

Over in Westfield, Indiana (20 miles / 30 minutes outside Indianapolis; strategically placed, as Westfield has become a local sports destination hub), a converted warehouse just turned into the state’s first-ever padel facility. And it’s running 24/7 like a ghost kitchen. The spot is called NorthPoint Padel. Much like some of the facilities I played at in Spain (Padel Galaxy is one that comes to mind), NorthPoint features two indoor glass courts that you unlock with a PIN after booking via Playtomic.

The founder, Jon Omer, caught the padel bug in Spain a few years back (naturally), connected the dots with friends who had extra warehouse space lying around, and made it happen. No country club fluff, no massive real estate gamble. Just courts, automation, and price points that make it easy for curious first-timers to say yes. I think this is a brilliant win-win that makes regular participation affordable & frictionless for players, while minimal overhead + high volume drive quick profitability for operators.

And if this thing fills up at $20–25 a head and Omer adds more courts like he’s hinted, don’t be surprised if the Midwest quietly becomes padel’s most underrated expansion lane.

Curious where else you can play padel in the US? Check out my buddy Austin’s live map here.

📈 Up Your Game 

How to Master Your Drop Shot

You’re at the net, feeling in control, when suddenly you see the perfect opportunity for a sneaky dropshot. You’ve seen it in highlight reels, and you think, “Why not now?” One tiny mis-hit later, and your perfect point turns into a scramble… maybe even a lost game.

This Spanish top 100 padel pro shows how to actually make the dropshot a weapon rather than a gamble:

• Hide your intent by keeping your body shape exactly the same as a normal shot. If your opponent can read it, your dropshot is doomed.

• A tight, controlled stroke beats relaxed floppiness every time.

• Top spin is your friend for a dropshot. If your opponent hits a slice, forget it - it rarely works.

• Low balls while attacking are prime dropshot territory. When matches are tight, stick to safer, consistent play.

• As a visualization trick, imagine touching the ball with your hand to get the right height and touch.

• While internal spin is possible, external spin is usually easier to control.

• Forehand dropshots can feel easier, but personal preference wins here.

➡️ Nail these, and your opponents will start second-guessing every ball you touch.

🌍 International Happenings  

US Padel Growth Gets Threatened (🇺🇸)

So Drew Brees + the founder of Tennis Channel just launched a new sport called Typti (think: tennis-meets-pickleball). Played on pickleball courts, with foam balls and smaller tennis-like rackets, it’s designed to feel “mini tennis-y,” but faster and crazier than pickleball. And tons of celebrities like Nick Kyrgios, Tony Robbins, Chris Pine, Tiffany Haddish, and JJ Abrams are backing it.

In my opinion, U.S. padel should be paying close attention, as Typti is targeting the exact crowd padel wants in America. Courts for padel are still scarce and expensive stateside, while pickleball courts continue to pop up everywhere (🙄). Typti can ride this wave, attracting athletic, nimble players who find pickleball lame but can’t justify dropping $40+ a match for padel. It’s a low-cost, high-energy alternative that’s accessible right now, and if it continues catching on, it could disrupt US padel entirely.

The game itself is hella chaotic: points swap, net saves with your hands or feet, only three points to win a game. Brees claims he’s top-10 nationwide already, and there’s already a plan for pro tournaments with serious prize money.

Watch it in action - it’s bonkers, but I kinda get why it could stick.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup 

Coello = Padel Jesus (🇺🇸)

Rain delay in Miami, but no one really cared. Derek Jeter hosting, Mark Wahlberg and DJ Khaled floating around, and 50 Cent ripping through his Y2K bangers. That was the scene at the Reserve Cup this past weekend.

The real takeaway we’re here for: whoever plays with Arturo Coello wins. Doesn’t matter if it’s Tapia, a one-off pairing, or an exhibition format… Coello controls matches without needing to dominate every rally. I saw moments where he barely touched the ball and still walked away with the result, while guys like Stupa were grinding every point just to stay alive.

While I don’t think Coello is the prettiest to watch, he’s easily the most decisive player on our planet. Catch the highlights here.

🎯 Quick Hits

• Up for debate:

  • Is the “standard” 360-375g padel racket actually doing more harm than good? One spicy conversation goes full physics lab, arguing lighter rackets (<340g) might save elbows for most amateurs, while commenters fire back that balance, stiffness, and technique matter way more than raw weight.

  • Should U.S. Padel Clubs Have Pickleball Courts (and Vice-Versa)? I was asked to provide my 2c here.

  • Agustín Tapia is co-world No. 1 with Arturo Coello, sells a ton of rackets for NOX, and still runs one of the quietest commercial profiles in elite padel. Is he leaving easy money on the table? Or is this a deliberate, Messi-esque bet on legacy over hype?

• Pros are tired of slapping their names on rackets, so they’re building their own. Level Padel just launched, founded by three Premier Padel players focused on feel, balance, and products shaped by real match play, not showroom hype.

• The 2025 United States Padel Association (USPA)’s Annual Report just came out. My buddy Austin provided 3 quick takeaways here.

🤩 Cool Padel Court of the Week

📍 Arnhem, 🇳🇱
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? We got you covered:

• Premier Padel Just Got One-Upped

• I’m On One

• 📌 US Padel is Ass-Backward (& How We’re Missing the Point Entirely)

Thanks for reading! My promise: I’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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Buenas, fellow padel addicts! Welcome to the 14th newsletter of El Remate: your weekly(ish) dose of everything happening in the fastest-growing racquet sport from a 🇺🇸 POV. From London to Buenos Aires to New York City to Madrid, we’re covering it all.

🔍 Topics we’ll cover this week

Premier Padel just got one-upped, and it’s happening in Miami. Elsewhere, Rolex makes its padel debut by backing world No. 1 Arturo Coello. Meanwhile, the 🇺🇸 padel arms race keeps escalating, with one facility planning FIFTEEN courts.

And if you’ve ever felt like you get lobbed way more than everyone else at the net, we break down exactly how elite players quietly make that problem disappear.

In This Issue:
— Why Rolex betting on Coello matters more than you think
— Denver & Orlando go big
— How to curb getting picked off at the net
— Padel’s biggest prize-money event ever hits Miami this upcoming weekend
— Plus: VC money, celebrity investors, and… cave padel?

Take it to the glass. Seguimos!

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🇺🇸 Club Openings 

From Denver & Orlando, With Love

🏔️ Mile-High Goes Indoor/Outdoor

Miami-based Ace Padel is planting its flag in Denver’s RiNo Arts District with a design-forward, social-first club slated for Q3 2026. The 26,000-sq-ft space will feature 5 indoor courts with 30-foot ceilings, 3 outdoor courts by the Platte River, plus saunas, cold plunges, lounges, and a bar.

🐊 Orlando Teases Padel Power Move

Orlando’s tourism department just released a lineup of new experiences for 2026, hinting at a padel + pickleball complex dubbed Society Park. Opening in April, the venue will feature a spa, two restaurants, and a whopping 15 padel courts!

📈 Up Your Game 

Stop Getting Picked Off at the Net

You and your partner finally claw your way to the net. You’re feeling dominant. You’re feeling aggressive. You’re feeling like this is your point.

Then, you get lobbed… again. And you start to wonder why it seems to happen to you more often than to other players.

Here’s how elite players quietly minimize getting lobbed:

• Net positioning is critical. If you drift too far or crowd the wrong space, you open passing lanes and invite lobs. Elite players adjust constantly to keep coverage tight and angles closed.

  • Ball near your sidewall? Step slightly forward to cut angles.

  • Ball down central? Shift to the middle to cover passing lanes.

  • Ball near the opposite side? Move laterally to prevent a clean lob.

• Stop feeding the middle. Volleys aimed toward the sidewall (especially near the cage) are harder to lift cleanly. Middle balls are a lob invitation.

• Short volleys are your friend. Short volleys (in front of the service line) die down after the wall, while deep volleys come up. If you keep playing low volleys deep, you’re basically teeing up your opponents.

• Grip pressure matters more than you think. Fast ball coming at you? Tighten the grip and block it. Slow ball? Relax your hands and add slice. Trying to muscle slow balls is how errors happen.

• Feet >>> Corners. Look before you volley. If your opponent is leaning, exposed, or late, play the ball at their feet. It’s less sexy than toward the corners, but it sure as hell wins points.

➡️ Lobs are unavoidable. Master these tips, and suddenly they come your way less… and more points start falling in your favor.

🌍 International Happenings  

Rolex Enters Padel, Taps World No. 1 Arturo Coello (🇨🇭)

Rolex just entered padel by sponsoring world No. 1 Arturo Coello, marking the brand’s first direct bet on the sport + its most dominant active player.

The Details:

• Rolex joins an extremely small group of sports it considers “institution-grade,” alongside tennis, golf, sailing, and motorsport

• Coello becomes the first active padel player backed by Rolex, joining a brand roster that includes Roger Federer, Carlos Alcaraz, and Tiger Woods

• Luxury watches have appeared in padel before. Richard Mille had a lifestyle/ambassador relationship with Fernando Belasteguín in the 2010s… but this is the first forward-looking sponsorship of a dominant, still-ascending No. 1

• The deal follows other major brand moves into padel, including On Running also partnering with Coello (covered last week) and Red Bull reshaping the sport’s media presence

Our take: The timing and intent is unique here. Rolex historically waits until a sport looks structurally permanent before committing, and it almost never backs athletes this early in their narrative arc. By tapping Coello now, Rolex is signaling confidence in its future cash flows, audiences, and staying power.

🏆 Pro Padel Roundup 

Miami Is Kicking Off 2026 Padel In Style (🇺🇸)

The Reserve Cup Series is back for 2026, kicking off January 22-24 in Miami with a glitzy, high-stakes (money-wise), multi-city padel spectacle that blends elite players and celebrity energy.

The Details:

• Reserve Padel officially launches the 2026 Reserve Cup Series in Miami, returning to the Reserve Miami Seaplane Base before expanding to additional global cities later in the year

• Big-time basketballer Jimmy Butler will serve as the Honorary President

• Features what’s expected to be the largest prize purse in padel history (likely ~$1.7M), compared to ~$650K at the Premier Padel Finals

• Top global men’s players Agustín Tapia, Arturo Coello, Ale Galán, Federico Chingotto, Franco Stupaczuk, and Mike Yanguas (among many more) are confirmed to play

• If you’re feeling spontaneous, last-minute tickets are available here

Our take: While this is not a FIP or Premier Padel ranking-points event (thus no impact on official standings), saying it “doesn’t matter” would miss the point. There’s massive prize money, global exposure, sponsor pull, and cultural cachet all at stake. For players, it’s about cash and brand. For fans, it’s about seeing the sport presented at its most polished.

🎯 Quick Hits

• Jimmy Fallon is doing the Lord’s work

• Prominent 🇺🇸 clubs get big-time investments:

  • Tennis legend Andre Agassi invests $20M in Ballers

  • The Australian Open’s VC arm, AO Ventures, invests in Padel Haus via its $40M fund

• Former World No. 1 shares six top racket picks tailored for every player, from beginners to seasoned competitors

🤩 Cool Padel Court of the Week

📍 Stockholm, 🇸🇪
More info here!

Missed a recent issue? We’ve got you covered:

• I’m On One

• “Now Kith!”

• 📌 US Padel is Ass-Backward (& How We’re Missing the Point Entirely)

Thanks for reading! Our promise: we’ll keep the newsletters coming, you share with a friend if you’re enjoying. Está bien? Forward to a friend.

For more on-the-ground 🌎 padel content from a 🇺🇸 POV, follow @padelyanqui on Instagram! 🤝 And if you have any feedback or news to share, just respond to this email :)

See you next week & keep smashing those volleys 🎾

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