Could the Tolman/Whalleys be Britain’s most successful padel family? With three generations of champions, their credentials for the title look pretty unbeatable.
Not only do they have a bulging trophy collection and heritage in padel that stretches back way beyond the current boom, they now have a growing social media following as they document their shared journey via ‘The Padel Fam‘ account on Instagram.
The story starts back in 2009, when married couple Mike and Caroline Tolman, Mike’s sister Kelly-Jayne and her husband Phil Whalley (all pictured above) were selected to represent Great Britain at the European Padel Championships in Portugal.
All were national-level tennis players and attended High Point University in North Carolina on scholarships (Phil was Lancashire county captain and beat Andy Murray twice as a junior, Mike was Yorkshire county champion).
Back then, their padel experience amounted to a few matches on holiday in Spain — but, at the time, that made them some of the most qualified players in the UK!
Two years later, Dave Tolman (Mike and Kelly-Jayne’s father) was involved in building two padel courts at Huddersfield Lawn Tennis and Squash Club, which was one of the first public padel facilities in the UK.
Fast forward to the present day, and Mike and Caroline are directors at the recently-opened Optimum Padel in Leeds. Their son Harry is no.1 in the LTA 12U boys’ padel rankings, as well as being an accomplished tennis player.
Mike is no.13 in the LTA open rankings and sixth in the over-40s, Yorkshire county padel captain and has won numerous titles on the LTA padel circuit. He recently teamed up with son Harry to win an LTA Grade 5 trophy.
Mike and Kelly-Jayne’s mum and dad, Dave and Sue, represent Lancashire over-60s at the UK Padel County Championships.
Kelly-Jayne and husband Phil live in Formby, Merseyside. Kelly-Jayne organises padel tournaments as well as competing, in between looking after their two young children. Phil is a UK sales consultant for Bullpadel and formerly worked for Babolat.
With Mike as Yorkshire captain and brother-in-law Phil as Lancashire captain, there have been a couple of ‘friendly’ War of the Roses clashes in matches at the UK Padel County Championships. “It’s lucky we’re not competitive at all!” says Phil with a wink.
Sisters-in-law Kelly-Jayne and Caroline recently won an LTA Grade 3 title together. They are the force behind the Padel Fam social media channel.
“It’s a bit of fun,” Caroline tells The Padel Paper. “There’s no agenda, we’re not taking ourselves too seriously, just hoping to inspire other people to join the padel addiction that’s taking over the country.”
Kelly-Jayne added: “Our love of padel is multi-generational, and we’re all taking part in different capacities at a pretty good level. We’ve all completed our coaching qualifications too.
“Our niche is that we’re all on our padel journey together, spanning three generations. While we’re all doing it and loving it so much, we wanted to start talking about it on a daily basis. People now recognise us at tournaments, which is pretty cool.”
Although the family is split either side of the Pennines, they all get together regularly at tournaments and have a multi-generational family padel-fest at Christmas time.
Although they all retain their love of tennis, padel has taken over their affections and become the sport where they’re best known.
“I played tennis to a decent level but reached a point where I felt I couldn’t improve any more,” said Caroline. “With padel, I feel like I can keep on improving.
“The social side of it is amazing. It’s such a friendly sport. I’ve met so many people through playing Open matches. We’ve all just completely fallen in love with the game.”
