By RJ Mitchell
HE has been referred to as ‘The Godfather of British Padel’ and was responsible for introducing the sport to the UK in 2006 as well as building the first two public-access padel courts on these isles in 2010/11 as Chair of Huddersfield Tennis Club.
In 2013 he became president of British Padel and played a key part in running the game’s fledgling governing body alongside Tim Edwards and Tom Murray before becoming integral in the decision to invite the LTA to become the game’s new parent organisation in line with what had previously taken place on the continent.
Now in an exclusive interview with The Padel Paper, Peter Vann shares the story of the game’s early years in the UK, as padel first captured his imagination on holiday trips to the famous La Manga club in Murcia, to such an extent he would debus from his plane to take to the court before checking into the famous racket sport and golf resort.
Yet it was in the quaint East Sussex town of Rye, where the first ever British National Padel Championships were held in 2006, that Vann resolved to chart a course which has taken padel from curiosity to the cusp of main stream and which will ultimately see the LTA officially launch padel in 2023.
And while Vann may have once been the man he says that now there is nobody better than Murray to lead padel into its brave new world.
He said: “First of all when we merged British Padel with the LTA with Tom as Head of Padel – Tim and I knew there was no one in the world better qualified to fully expand the game we are all so passionate about. Tom Murray is the kingpin.
“The three of us had seen that Sweden, Belgium, Holland, France, and Germany had all begun to develop padel in the early noughties.
“In Belgium in particular it had taken off when the governing body went to the Belgian Tennis Federation and they backed these guys who were trying to grow it. Basically they had a portable court that they put up in busy public spaces in city centres, people watched them play and loved it and padel went boom in Belgium.
“It was soon the same in Italy and France where the tennis federations took padel on and it became clear to us that three guys doing it for love not money was not the best way forwards, despite our passion, in the UK.
“So when we first met Scott Lloyd, who’d just come into the LTA as CEO, he knew exactly what padel was, and when we came under their umbrella padel had massive credibility and immediate government recognition from the sports councils.
“Moving on from that after the affiliation with the LTA in 2019 my role as president and Tim’s as VP disappeared and at the same time Tom took a role as Head of Padel and then COVID hit.
“Yet there was a silver lining in this as the pandemic allowed the time for British Padel to become integrated into the LTA, and almost 150 courts have been added.
“Now even though the LTA haven’t officially launched the sport, watch out in 2023 as padel will become stratospheric when they do.”
Yet the story of the game’s first official governing body, British Padel, to quote the good book, almost seems a case of time and chance as Vann explained: “At Rye at the first British Championship in 2006 I had met a fellow called Tim Edwards from London and he’d been playing padel at the Harbour Club and by the end of 2012 two other organisations in the UK installed padel courts.
“One of them was the David Lloyd club down in Chigwell in Essex and the other was a private enterprise with two guys who put several courts into an old warehouse in Canary Wharf in London which was going like a train.
“Of course one of these guys was called Tom Murray and the other an ex-professional Dutch hockey player called Erik de Witt and the governing body of the sport at that stage was called the Padel England Association (PEA) and the FIP (International Padel Federation) license for control of padel was held by de Witt and Tom Murray.
“Coincidentally Tom, Tim, and I played for GB in a couple of European competitions in 2012/13 and at one of these it became clear Tom and Eric had some issues and Tom explained he had formed British Padel and that it was going to become the governing body and he invited me and Tim to join him to help run the sport.
“I think Tom had seen from his position in London just what I had been doing through as many mediums as I could to build padel’s profile.
“So Tom had formed British Padel after he’d split with Erik but Erik’s name was on the FIP (International Padel Federation) licence and he maintained rights to use and deliver British Teams to play in international events.
“This led Tim and I to have a meeting with Erik to get this license back and we came to an agreement to clear some debt to FIP which had built up and basically to pick up this tab in return for the license and that’s how British Padel became FIP-affiliated.
“Subsequently Tom, Tim and I ran it from 2013 up until 2019 as a non-profit making body to start the long process to get padel recognised by Sport England and the UK Sporting Councils, during which time we were organising a national tournament circuit, attracting sponsors and creating training qualifications courses.”
“We were also helped by other people who had an interest in padel, so it was a small group of passionate people trying to do something and by 2019 there were about 60 courts in the UK, most on the back of entrepreneurial desire and passion.
“Really the governing body didn’t have a pile of money or credibility yet what it did have was passion and growing interest and during this time we had envisaged that British Padel would come under the wings of another sporting body and the obvious one was the LTA.”
Vann still sits on the LTA’s Padel Development Committee and Yorkshire Lawn Tennis Council as Padel Councillor.
While the competitive streak in him, which saw this adopted son of Yorkshire represent GB in European Open Events in 2012/13, and in two Seniors World Championships between 2018/2020 as well as the inaugural 5 Nations cup 2017, is ultimately what lit the touch fire for the sport in Blighty thanks to that trip to the padel hotbed of Rye.
Vann recalled: “In 2006, as I was hooked on padel and I came across a National British Championship which was amazingly in Rye and I thought ‘well I play a bit and I’ve got to enter this championship’. So a friend and I drove all the way down to Rye and discovered it was a one-day event at a club with one concrete-walled court.
“The fellow who was running the tournament was a Spaniard called Antonio Chaves, who had moved to England and was trying to start padel in the UK and the thing that surprised me about it was the number of Spanish players who were there.
“It wasn’t a big tournament and matches were best of seven games and held over one day but I spoke with some of the Spaniards and they were from Valencia, Barcelona, Murcia and naturally I expressed my amazement they had come all the way from Spain for a one-day event but they said: “Si, it is padel!” and they explained to me that they played eight times a week back home!
“That was my light bulb moment. I thought if that sport is as big as it is in Spain then surely there is an opportunity to develop in the UK?
“So in 2006 I got all excited and as chairman of Huddersfield club at the time knew the two grass tennis courts in place cost thousands of pounds to maintain and I suggested replacing these with padel courts.
“I kept prodding the board about it and eventually they listened to me and we put a plan together, got some money from the local authority and member loan/donations. By 2010 we had all the money together but I had resigned from the board, and with a new team in place we were told: ‘We are not going to do that!’
“Of course I said they were wrong and that we were going to do it. So I sat them all down and explained why we were doing it, what we were doing and put eight cheques in front of them and by 2011 April we installed two courts and launched padel to Great Britain.”
The rest, as they say, is history! That was many moons ago, but it’s clear that the intervention of Peter Vann all those years ago and everything he has done since has been critical in establishing padel in the UK.
So, the padel community here has much to thank him for.
We look forward to speaking more with Peter in the future.
Interesting. To RJ Mitchell, please feel free to contact me so I can give you the full story
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