PARKER, Colo. — It may look like one of the racquet sports you’re familiar with, but what’s happening on some courts in Parker is something completely new in Colorado.
“We have players coming from all over the state to come here and play this game here on these courts,” said Robert Gurolnick, head instructor of padel at the Parker Racquet Club. “Spain is what we would call the mecca of padel.”
It’s not tennis or pickleball, but a game called padel. In fact, it’s been around for 60 years in some parts of the world.
“[There are a] minimum of 7 million players in Spain,” Gurolnick said. [It's] bigger combined than soccer and tennis. In Europe the game is massive. It was originally invented in Mexico. A gentleman wanted to build a tennis court in his backyard and didn’t have enough land. So, he built this court and closed the back walls originally with concrete.”
Even though the sport is called padel in the U.S., it has a different name virtually everywhere else in the world.
“In the rest of the world, except the U.S., they call it paddle,” Gurolnick said. “In the states, when one of the founding fathers wanted to really grow the game here, he said, ‘We’re going to call it padel.”
At the moment, the Parker Racquet Club is the only place you can play padel in the entire state of Colorado. But, the hope is the sport grows in popularity and more and more courts pop up.
“People are like, 'I’d love to come see the Rocky Mountains. I would love to come to see, you know, the state of Colorado, all its beauty and play padel, too,'" Gurolnick said.
The cool part about this sport is that the barrier to entry is low, no matter your level of skill.
“Power is neutralized by the glass, so big hitting doesn’t work,” Gurolnick said. “That’s why people can play this game. They don’t have to be big hitters; they don’t have to be powerful.”
“It’s a little strange at first because it’s a paddle without any strings,” said Barry Riddle, who built the Parker Racquet Club with some partners a few years ago. “But, the sound is great, the control is great. And, it’s just all the dynamics are where they should be.”
Riddle discovered padel after a trip to the East Coast where he quickly fell in love with the game.
“I played it for about 20 minutes, and I made the decision right then and there that we’re going to go padel,” Riddle said. “It’s just so easy to learn, so fun, so dynamic, that it was a pretty simple decision.”
The Parker Racquet Club now offers lessons to all ages and skill levels. You can join a free, introductory class to learn the basics.
If you want to know more about padel, you're in luck.
There's a tournament this weekend at the Parker Racquet Club on Saturday, and Sunday. The cost is $70 a team, and the deadline to enter is Wednesday. Click here for more information on entering the tournament or watching as a spectator.
