Hanna Maddock admits she has only just started taking her padel career seriously, but she certainly has no catching up to do when it comes to fitness.
The 24-year-old, who grew up in the Canary Islands but represents Great Britain courtesy of her English father Alan, has recently formed a promising partnership with GB international Catherine Rose.
They teamed for the first time up at the recent FIP RISE London Open and last week’s FIP RISE Ciudad de Cordoba. Next they will line up at the LTA Grade One event in Jersey and FIP RISE Rotterdam in the second week of September.
While Catherine brings years of experience as a junior tennis player to the partnership, Hanna’s acumen revolves mainly around the gym and athletics.
She has competed in CrossFit competitions and long-distance running for years, as well as playing football and padel. As a junior, her various coaches urged her to give up her other pursuits and specialise. She has now whittled it down to CrossFit and padel, but says a CrossFit competition coming up in September will be her last for a while. From here onwards, it’s padel only.
She tells The Padel Paper: “I’ve been playing padel since I was 16 but never really took it seriously. I was always in and out from other sports. But recently, I’ve really started to focus.
“It’s my dream to be selected for the European Championships in October, so I’ve been competing in Canarian competitions and doing lots of travelling to FIP events and for coaching in Lanzarote and the UK in order to get selected.”
Hanna feels her background in CrossFit has been hugely beneficial to her nascent padel career. “I’ve gained a lot from it,” she says. “I’ve gained a lot of muscle, I feel stronger and faster on court. It just makes you feel better and more confident.
“I go to the gym every day as I think it’s so important to be in shape. Padel is such a mental game, but at the same time, I feel like being physically superior to your opponent is still a massive advantage.”
Hanna grew up living a healthy outdoor lifestyle. She is a manager in her father’s business, El Cruce Surf Shops, and regularly hits the waves of Lanzarote to test out the products.
It was through her father Alan that Hanna first experienced padel. He played for the GB veterans team and a young Hanna would do her homework in the padel club bar while her dad played.
“I used to find it really annoying!” she laughs. “But one day I tried it and really enjoyed it. At that stage I was doing so many sports I never really trained properly or got into it. Now I’m in it fully, I absolutely love it.
“It’s my dad’s dream for me to go a long way in padel, so he’s really excited for me. He’s my No.1 fan and he’s always there for me.”
Hanna’s mother is Spanish and although her dad moved to the Canary Islands from England as a youngster, she has always had the union flag next to her name.
“My auntie and cousins are in England and we used to go back every Christmas, but we haven’t since the pandemic,” she explains. “The LTA have supported me a lot and the team feels like a family. I’ve known Tia [Norton] for eight years.”
It was actually Tia who introduced Hanna and new playing partner Catherine, who first got together at the FIP Rise event at the National Tennis Centre. There, they lost to third seeds and eventual semi-finalists Maaike Betz and Aitana Garcia-Roman 6-2, 6-3.
Then in Cordoba, they qualified for the main draw, progressed as lucky losers after an injury withdrawal then ironically lost to Tia and her Dutch partner Rosalie van der Hoek 6-3, 6-3.
Although they’ve only known each other for a month, Hanna (who is sponsored by Padel Shack and Black Crown) says Catherine already feels like a good friend. “We get on so well,” she says. “Before London, we had never trained or played together, but we went for it. Immediately, we had a good feeling on court.
“Already, we’ve talked about the future. We both have jobs [Catherine is a teacher in London] but turning pro is a possibility. Luckily, I can work from anywhere as long as I have my laptop, so I could become pro and travel a lot without necessarily dropping everything.
“We’re going to give it a bit more time to get results and prove to ourselves we can do it. When we see it’s going in the right direction, we could maybe focus solely on padel for a period of time. At the moment, we’ll continue to juggle both things. The plan is to stick together and grow as a pair.”
