PIC: Mark Lewis
By RJ Mitchell
AUGUST is proving an historic month for padel in Wales with the first ever Welsh National Padel Championships due to take place at Windsor Penarth LTC from Sunday, August 21.
Promoted by Tennis Wales and supported by Game4Padel, who manufactured the court at the venue, there are hopes that as many as 16 pairs in both the men’s and women’s championships will compete.
The event is being run in tandem with the Welsh National Tennis championships and tournament director Mark Lewis has admitted that the over-arching ambition of these inaugural Welsh Padel Championships is to take another firm step forward in growing the game.
The court at Windsor Penarth LTC was the first padel court built in Wales and was officially opened by former GB tennis No.1 Annabel Croft in May.
The court was installed in April 2021 by Game4Padel and hosted the club’s British Tour Tier 1 tennis tournament with the Welsh LTA and Game4Padel National Development manager James Rose continuing to work closely together since then to build padel in the principality.
Entry enquiries are continuing to come in as we countdown to Monday morning’s 10am deadline although so far Gareth Bale has resisted the temptation!
Yet tournament director Lewis, who is also media manager for Tennis Wales, is positive about the padel missionary work taking hold in the valleys: “It is a very nice thing to be a national champion in any sport and this tournament has the added bonus of making its winners the first ever Welsh National Padel champions and I would hope that would prove a suitable draw.
“We just want to get the message around Wales. We know that padel is one of the fastest growing sports out there and we have a newly opened Welsh National Padel Centre and we just want to get entries from as many parts of Wales as we can and use the national championships to grow interest in the sport in Wales.
“With the Welsh National Tennis Championships down in South Wales and being hosted at the two Penarth Clubs we just felt that if we are doing tennis why shouldn’t we do padel and max out.
“So the first round is on Sunday, August 21 and the closing dates for entry is this Monday morning (August 15) at 10am.
“Obviously it is just the one court so in that respect we are aiming for 16 pairs in both the women’s and men’s draw with the format being round robin box through to the finals.
“At the moment we have a solid entry in the men’s while in the ladies we would like to see few more pairs and over the weekend we hope to hit our target in both competitions with quite a few fresh enquiries coming in overnight.
“In fact we even have a couple of Spaniards who have entered but at the moment Gareth Bale seems to be holding off putting pen to paper!”
With a new National Padel Centre in Cwmbran padel momentum is clearly growing in Wales and Lewis said: “This was from an entrepreneur up in Cwmbran who sold his business and built some courts and we have two already and hopefully a third on the way and they have been very supportive of the idea of a national padel tournament.
“So it’s great to have that second venue in Wales for padel. But we are having constant conversations with clubs in terms of them having any dead bits of space that we want them to think about converting to padel.
“We really want to grow the number of courts we have and so the number of padel players and we have launched a local padel league with the LTA and the first round of entries was one of the biggest in the UK and we just want to keep things going.
“At the launch of the court in Penarth Annabel Croft came down for a day and did a Q&A on the court at Windsor Penarth and that was a huge help in terms of growing the profile of the sport and we have built strong links with Game4Padel who we believe have a great model for growing the sport in Wales.
“In particular James Rose, their National Development Manager, has been a big help and they are also getting behind us with some prizes for the national padel championship.
“While on Thursday 25th August we are setting the day aside to have an open day and fun events and looking to get families who are spectating with the tennis involved and James has been a huge help in this regard.”
It is a partnership that Rose believes can drive the sport’s direction firmly in the right direction and the Game4Padel National Development Manager said: “Padel Wales with their CEO Simon Johnson now have a firm remit to drive padel development in Wales and although they are a little bit behind England and Scotland, they have put a task force in place to grow padel across Wales.
“From this point of view Game4Padel has a very good relationship with them and things are starting to happen. Once people see what padel is it just grows and snowballs.
“With Penarth LTC & Windsor LTC due to co-host the Welsh National Tennis Championships at the end of August they approached me to ask if Game4Padel would be interested in helping run the first Welsh Padel Championship tournament alongside, and I said: ‘Why not!’
“As you know it’s on one padel court so it won’t be the biggest event in the world but everything must have a starting point. You have a captive audience with the Welsh National Tennis Championships happening and we have just put it out there.
“Tennis Wales will run the event with Game4Padel providing advice and support. I will be visiting the club on the Monday and Tuesday to provide introductory sessions where needed and, of course, Game4Padel will make a few contributions to the prize-giving on finals day.
“The whole idea is to grow the padel community. Ideally, for this first event we will have four groups of four and then run sessions throughout the week with one group playing between 9am and 1pm in the morning.
“In essence you will have four pairs playing all the time and just enjoying a lot of match play and court time and of course plenty of connection with other people to hopefully continue playing together after the tournament.
“With the tennis championship running in tandem we hope to generate extra interest and involvement all of which we believe can be really positive for padel in Wales.”
Any players interested in competing in the first Welsh Padel Championships should email: mark.lewis@tenniswales.org.uk before 10am on Monday August 15 to confirm their entry.
