IN our latest exclusive we can reveal that the first ever Welsh Padel Open is set to be held at the Welsh Padel Centre in Cwmbran on the weekend of 27,28,29 May 2023.
The tournament is a major move on from the putative Welsh National Championships held in August at Penarth in August run in conjunction with the Welsh National Tennis Championships.
It also confirms the Cwmbran padel hotbed as the home of the sport in ‘The Valleys’ just under 10 months since it opened on January 29, 2022.
The venue has two outdoor covered courts at present with a third set to be completed before the inaugural Welsh Open has the crack of felt on graphite echoing through the Welsh spring air.
Speaking exclusively to The Padel Paper the owner of the Welsh Padel Centre David Cornwell said: “I am delighted to announce the breaking news that we are in discussion with Tennis Wales to host the first Welsh Padel Open over the Bank Holiday weekend of the 27th, 28th, 29th May in 2023.
“Tennis Wales currently does a National Championship at Penarth but that is a sort of adjunct to the tennis tournament there and we are looking at a purely dedicated Welsh Padel Open and we will be looking for sponsorship and to really have a decent tournament with as high a quality field as possible.
“Our target is to make the Welsh Padel Centre the centre of padel in Wales and the hosting of the first ever Welsh Open next spring will be another big step in that regard. It will be a proud moment for us given we opened just a few months back.
“Right now we are working hard to introduce padel to South Wales and it is growing. We have had people coming from West Wales as far as Swansea and we did attract quite a few over from Bristol before Padel For All at Lockleaze opened.
“But on top of the first Welsh Open we are also discussing an informal veterans Four Nations tournament involving Wales, England, Scotland, and Ireland as what we are finding – and this is no criticism of the LTA and Tennis Wales – is that a lot of our playing base are veterans in the older age bracket and the focus of a lot of tournaments at present is in the other direction.
“I am 63 and when I am in Spain I play people 20 years younger than me so it would be nice to play people in tournament conditions who are of similar age. So this is another exciting development which is being driven by our ambassador Paul Jenkins, who is one of the foremost veterans in his age category, which I won’t mention!”
David’s interest in padel was first sparked, as it is for many, by a holiday trip to Spain where he had his first ‘hit’ and after being smitten by his new holiday love there was only one thing on his mind as he revealed: “The Welsh Padel Centre started after I sold my business in 2017. I’d played padel in Spain but as a result of selling the business and being technically retired we went back to Spain for six weeks and I decided that I would visit the local padel centre Padel Nou.
“It had nine outdoor and three outdoor courts and I thought ‘what a great place to start’ and I took a lesson and an hour later I was saying to myself I need to do more of this and came back desperate to play but found my nearest padel court was Winchester, which had one outdoor court.
“So I then committed to playing the British Padel seniors tour and got stuck right into the competitions and then got my level one coaching badge at Chelsea Harbour Club which was run by a certain chap called Tom Murray (now LTA Head of Padel)!
“So there wasn’t anything local and I thought ‘I need to build my own’ and source the land I needed in that respect. After a false start at St Mellons near Cardiff, where we couldn’t agree commercial terms, early in 2020 I had one last attempt to find a location and I was lucky enough to succeed with that just half an hour from where I live in Chepstow.
“I had joined every social media group between Bristol and Cardiff and advertised the fact I was looking for this land to build a padel club on and eventually I got recommended to the Woodland Road Sports & Social Centre in Cwmbran.
“It was going through changes at the time but had eight abandoned tennis courts that were scattered with paraphernalia of various noxious substances and weed strewn but it was just in the process of being taken over from Torfaen County Burgh Council by a charity and there job was to run the place on behalf of the community which didn’t want to run it themselves.
“So I got chatting with HWBT Torfaen charity who were mandated to make the centre a success and they wanted a 3G football pitch and I wanted a padel centre and we worked out we could put both on the disused tennis courts and we went for it.
“Obviously lockdown made life difficult to conclude but eventually we started building in 2021 and we opened at the end of January this year, and the rest is history!”
When it comes to its operational model The Welsh Padel Centre kicks with both feet: “Our model is both membership and pay-per-play. So you pay an annual membership, which in our case is £80 per year and that gives you the ability to book courts, and of course we have a monthly or quarterly option.
“Our courts range from £12 an hour to £20 an hour at peak evening time and we do £16 during the day and at 9 to 10pm.
“The centre is fully automated and everything is run around the Acebook booking system and the lights are run round this to come on seven minutes before play.
“Acebook are an Irish company run by a Frenchman which is interesting and the entry is by QR code and integrated to the booking system and we offer free loan rackets and balls if people need them although increasingly everyone has their own rackets.
“We are currently up to the mid-70s but the playing base is a lot higher than that as in order to encourage people to play we are not charging a guest fee.
“Although we do have a couples membership one member of the couple will be a member and the other not for that reason, so I would say our playing base is maybe around 130 as there is at least one player for every member.
“At present we have two courts and both are covered with room for the third and we have all the groundwork and infrastructure for a third court in place, right now it is covered and at present used as a seating area.
“By the end of the year we hope to have finished the initial project and the next phase is to complete the third court but absolutely everything is in place and we will be good to go by the time we get to the Welsh Padel Open in 2023.”
