Lauren van der Westhuizen is on a mission to create “a bit more balance” in the British padel industry as she launches House of Racquet — one of the UK’s first female-founded padel clubs.
House of Racquet has just submitted planning permission for its first site, featuring covered courts with a clubhouse in a London location, with further projects in the pipeline in the south of England.
The philosophy of House of Racquet is certainly not to exclude men but to include everyone, providing a subtly different take on padel club culture which caters for a more diverse range of needs, particularly those of women.
“There’s definitely a gap with women at leadership level in padel in Britain — those setting the tone for the whole business and offering a slightly different perspective,” Lauren told The Padel Paper.
“It’s not about one perspective being better than the other; it’s just the more diverse ideas, opinions and experience you have, the more inclusive your club is going to be. It’s the things that might not be immediately obvious, because they’re probably not part of a male CEO’s lived experience.”
Lauren’s background is in law, but whilst she was practising and studying for her Masters, the 16-hour working days started to take a toll. She had a realisation: “The only bit of my life I was enjoying was playing sport or being in the gym.”
She took a three-month sabbatical in Bali, where she discovered padel through some women at a running club she’d joined.
“I was never very good at tennis, and found the idea of learning a new sport from scratch as an adult mildly terrifying, to be honest! But we’d sit at the padel club at the end of a run and chat, or watch a game. I quickly realised that everyone was new to the sport and no-one cared if you were good or not, so I decided to give it a go. Thank goodness I did!”
“The club was a really social hangout with co-working space, a wellness centre and a real sense of community. People dropped by, sometimes just to chat or watch. It was open and completely unintimidating.”
Returning to London a year ago, she got a somewhat different experience of padel. “Everywhere seemed to be booked up and I couldn’t believe the prices!” she recalls. “And why did the clubs I walked into feel intimidating?
“It wasn’t that they were deliberately exclusionary, there was just a distinct lack of women playing or hanging out at the clubs, and the beginners’ and women’s classes I found were often scheduled in the middle of the working day. On their socials feeds the only women featured were like Instagram models. The scene just didn’t feel representative.”
By late December last year, she had formulated an idea to build a padel club that better represented a broader potential customer base. Then, in February, she returned to Cape Town (where she has family links) where a chance encounter on the padel court led to her meeting the team behind South Africa’s Virgin Active Padel Club chain.
“It was a no-brainer partnering with a team with so much experience in the padel industry and sports and leisure overall, and who — crucially — shared my vision to open up the sport,” says Lauren. “I’m really grateful to them for championing me and supporting a female-founded challenger brand.”
So what are the subtle differences that will mark out House of Racquet for its appeal to women, girls and other demographics who experience barriers to sport participation? Lauren has consulted with Women in Sport about the typical barriers to entry so her decision-making is based on research.
“It’s also about really understanding who our local customer base is. What do they need? What’s stopped them from playing before, or coming back? How can we help alleviate that? My mission is to really listen to what people need and what their barriers might be, rather than making assumptions.”
Location is also a key factor for women. Padel clubs in unlit or remote locations may be off-putting. “We know that feeling safe is a top cited concern and barrier to sports participation for women and girls. It’s really not just about the club itself. We need to look at the journey to and from the venue. Does it involve walking through a park? Is the nearest station well-lit or staffed? Is there anything else open nearby or do people have to walk through remote backstreets on their own? Add the winter weather to the mix and it’s hardly an inviting incentive to leave the house, or alter commutes to and from work, school or university.”
“We’re prioritising convenient, urban locations for our clubs — spaces that you can bring friends, colleagues and the family, or feel safe coming on your own,” Lauren states.
Small details matter too. From providing baby changing and space for a buggy, to looking at where the nearest step-free transport access is. Lauren intends to iron out these kinds of off-putting bugbears.
With the planning application for site one in London submitted, Lauren is now consulting with nearby primary schools, universities and charities about local outreach partnerships.
“That is my favourite thing about padel — it’s a social leveller,” she says. “It brings in people from all walks of life. You have a lawyer, someone in finance, a primary school teacher and NHS worker on a single court. It’s so refreshing, and such a nice way to make new friends outside your immediate social circle / career as an adult. That’s why I’m set on bringing in as diverse a group of customers as I can.
“We really want a place that’s welcoming, not as expensive as the padel experience elsewhere, and inclusive. It’s not about excluding anyone or being women-only, it’s about creating a bit more balance. It’s about walking in and seeing people that look like you, and feeling like you belong. A home from-home in a fast-paced, and often isolating city.”
Fully agree that a broader spectrum of people playing padel is very important, but it is a big worry for me that padel is becoming a rich person’s plaything and out of reach for some people who don’t have the amount of money to play that is being charged in certain parts of the country
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