In the second part of our exclusive series of interviews with the top seeded nations in the World Championship qualifiers we turn the spotlight on the No.1 ranked Danish ladies team.
The Danes are staples at the top table of team competition and finished sixth in the European Championships and 13th in the World Team Championships last year and rely on a hardcore of experienced ex-tennis players to provide a rock-solid backbone to their ranks.
National champion Gitte Haxen is the most prominent player in their ranks and recently played World Padel Tour in Stockholm while the team is coached by Soren Ording.
But as the Danish Federation’s secretary Kristoffer Jørgensen revealed although this has served them well it can be a double-edged sword while it is also too early just yet to expect a call-up for Denmark’s former world No.1 tennis player Caroline Wozniacki.
Kristoffer revealed: “In Danish padel we have a bit of a transition of tennis players coming into padel and we are trying very hard to raise the level of player coming in, especially to the women’s set up.
“We are in that moment where we are having to develop the girls coming from tennis into proper padel players and it is the case that most of the girls do have that tennis background originally. So we have to work on them to adapt to the padel game so they don’t put too much tennis into their performances on the padel court.
“That is very important for us in how we are currently developing our players. But we have eight players who are pretty much even in their levels and that gives us the opportunity to switch around and play different pairs and hopefully that will give us an advantage to win the matches we need to qualify.
“Our No.1 is Gitte Haxen and she has her own padel centre so she coaches, plays, and practises like a true pro and she is our highest ranked player and she played in Stockholm on the World Padel Tour a fortnight back.
“But our average age on the team is pretty high, so we play with some very experienced players mainly in tennis terms but it does give us a good foundation for the padel team.
“I think we will have to work a little bit more on Caroline’s (Wozniacki) transition from tennis to padel because the tennis players now succeeding in padel are very often those who played a bit more aggressive in tennis than perhaps Caroline did.
“Her good things came from a good defensive or baseline approach so although I haven’t seen her play padel before I know she plays a bit but isn’t quite ready to play for the women’s national team just yet.”
When it comes to the Dane’s approach to qualification pragmatism is the watchword: “When you are a top seed you get a better draw and so the other strong teams are seeded and this means that on paper it will give us a better chance to win the group and make the qualification final.
“In every qualification it is about winning so you can make the final stages but we also realise that padel is growing in every European country and it is hard for us to follow the development in the other countries.
“As the top seeds in the ladies competition there is expectation and we know that but I think most of the expectation comes from ourselves as both the men’s team and the women’s team made Qatar (World Championships) last year and we would very much like to have that experience again.
“But it is very important for us to show that we have developed and can compete against the other top European nations and this is a very good window for us to showcase the development of our sport in Denmark.
“At present we have around 800 courts in Denmark and that is a number that is growing. We believe that 100,000 in Denmark play padel at least once a week and a lot of them a lot more than that, so it is vital for us to show we can compete. It is also a matter of giving the best players the best available experience in the sport so we keep them in padel.
“We also need to show them that padel is a sport that it makes sense to try and be the best at you can be.
“Of course our national team is also a target for our younger players to look up to and aspire to and that is one of our main challenges to make padel available for kids at a very young age.
“We want to change the fact that padel is at the moment a sport that you transition to from other sports at say 25, that is something we are working very hard to change.”
Much like Germany in the men’s competition the Danes are keen to avoid being drawn with Portugal who are very much the competition’s favourites in both tournaments and are unseeded as they did not take part in last year’s World Championships.
As Kristoffer explained: “When you have a nation like Portugal and they are not seeded that is a danger. They are a very competitive nation and even although they are not seeded they are one of the favourites and we want to avoid them in the group stages if possible.
“Padel is a young sport in almost every country in Europe outside say Spain and Portugal. We know that even although we are the top seeds we know that we must take it one match at a time.
“It is very hard to define how good Bulgaria are, how good is the Czech Republic, as we just don’t see them play. So it is a very good experience to come out of our home country and play in Europe and test ourselves against other countries.”
