Island Padel was set up by two friends in Jersey in March 2021. Their ethos is all about family, community and fun achieved through the playing of the fantastic sport of padel. Island Padel’s aim is to make all players and visitors feel at home at their facility.
When they founded Island Padel the facility had two courts. They have now spent in the region of 1,000,000 pounds and now have three indoor courts as well as the two outdoor courts. This has given them scope to increase participation at the facility and of padel in general. They are very focused on their children’s program which sees them run holiday camps as well as a schools program which has reached and given 700 children a free six week padel program. They have now started running junior group coaching sessions alongside they’re adult ones.
As well as this, they also have one of the biggest leagues for padel in Great Britain. This summer they entertained 85 teams across 10 divisions. They have now begun a corporate league with 24 corporate companies signing up to participate in a 6 week league.
Island Padel recently hosted their first LTA Grade 1 event with a £4,000 prize pot. Crowds packed the court on all sides to watch the men’s final which was between the top seeds Jorge Martinez Del Campo and Rafael Otaolaurruchi and second seeds Frances Langan and Nikhil Mohindra, it was a well contested match that Martinez and Otaolaurruchi came out on top to be the ultimate champions. The ladies final of Lisa Philips and Abigail Tordoff against Helen Crook and Jo Ward also made for fantastic spectating, with Phillips and Tordoff prevailing 6-2 7-5.
Island Padel founder and former Wimbledon doubles player, Scott Clayton is hopeful of the event becoming an annual occurrence. He said “The grade 1 has been really successful and the turnout was amazing, it is exactly what we wanted and envisaged by bringing high quality padel to the island, not only for our player base to have some high quality games but also to give the community of Jersey a feeling of what good padel looks like. We’re very thankful to the LTA for giving us the opportunity to host this grade one event and we hope to do it next year on maybe on an even bigger scale. Hopefully the players have all enjoyed their time on the island and would be keen to come back for more events in the future.”
