TS4 may be the fourth most deprived postcode district in the UK but it is proving to be a hothouse of padel growth.
In fact it is occupied by the Tennis World club which has one of the fastest growing padel contingents in Britain.
When the club first decided to build two outside padel courts back in 2019 it was a bold move by any standards, yet two months later they were roofed and by 2021 the outside courts were now inside.
Now, with padel income increasing from £24,000 p/a to £55,000 p/a in three years on a fully pay-per-play model, Tennis World Middlesbrough has 200 padel players who take to the court every week.
The man behind this remarkable story is Nigel Garton, the club’s Operations Manager and Head Padel Coach, and he was happy to confirm that although autumn is fast approaching, the growing season for padel is far from finished: “Really padel took off straight away. Obviously we do have a tennis club with 400 members and quite a lot of them tried padel and at the beginning it was more tennis members than new people off the street but now I would say we are the other way around,” revealed Nigel.
He continued: “Of course some of the tennis players do both, while a few tennis players have even stopped tennis and only play padel but we now have a lot of new players who only play padel.
“I’d say we have in the region of 200 users per week and we average something like six hours usage per court per day and if you add coaching on to that it would be more.
“We would love to add more courts and we will look at that in the future but right now if we had four courts we would fill them from 5pm to 9pm but interestingly we wouldn’t do any better than we do during the day.
“I am a fully qualified tennis coach and initially I did quite a lot of tennis holidays and introduced a lot of people on them to padel and that definitely laid a foundation. But the post code we have which is TS4 3SA, is the fourth most deprived in the UK, so this is not exactly prime territory for the boom of padel!
“That said I have spent a lot of time at the club during the day and in the evening and anyone who came to the club I would try and coax them onto the padel court and also offer free coaching sessions.
“What we have found is if someone plays padel once they really like the game, if they play twice they think it’s a fantastic game and if they play three times they are hooked. So three is the magic number and the target is to get them on court for that third time.”
With Tennis World being a members club and owned by members everything is reinvested in the club in whichever direction is most needed.
The club also has a plethora of international players like Libby Fletcher who competed for Team GB at the recent World Championship European Qualifiers at We Are Padel Derby.
While busy man that he is, Garton himself is playing a key role in coaching the GB Veteran Ladies squads and recently ran an elite coaching camp at the Reserva Club in Sotogrande as the age group teams geared up for the major championships looming on the horizon in 2023.
Garton himself gained his padel coaching badge under the espouses of the game’s first governing body in the UK British Padel and his passion for passing on his expertise is clear: “We have various coaching groups on Wednesday day-time and Saturday morning although as yet we don’t have junior coaching as there is not a need for it at present but that is something we need to develop and the challenge there is court space and coaching availability.
“We have also had schools in to try padel and they have really enjoyed their sessions but I think until the sport is more televised and children can see the superstars of the sport like (Juan) Lebrón and (Alejandro) Galán then it will stimulate growth.
“We did have a junior section for padel with around 10 kids and they went to GB training and two were picked for GB juniors while my son Theo is ranked No.8 at U18 and there are two other excellent juniors Ethan Bardo and Sean Meyer who have great promise.
“But since then there hasn’t been much and for example at the European Under-18 championships we didn’t enter a team.
“Once the LTA have officially launched the sport next year then I think that will really make a difference. I know there is a job out at the moment for a Performance Officer role with the LTA and part of that is to bring in more junior events and players.
“I think this is a key aspect going forward in terms of getting more kids playing.”
