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

El Remate #25 | What's hot in 🇺🇸 & 🌎 padel | Mar. 31 - April 7, 2026

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! 📧

🔍 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!

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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

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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 🎾