Padel London has made its next stop along the M25, this time in Epsom, and co-founder David Segura was delighted with how the event went down. He said: “I got really good feedback on the event, the Epsom club captain was really happy and other people all enjoyed the organisation and format of the event.
“The turn out and participation was great. There were people coming from all parts of London. There were people from Wimbledon, Epsom and people from Stratford came, who usually only play in Stratford, which we were very happy about.”
The day was split into two sessions with the morning featuring improvers and lower intermediate, followed by the evening session with the more experienced intermediate players.
The morning session was won by Mark Robbins and Tom Clark, who narrowly defeated Nicolas Albanel and Alex Perez in the final.
Perez, who was part of the runner-up team, was full of praise to Segura and co for arranging the tournament.
In the evening, Nicolas Benitez-Acevedo and Ryan Harper-Bermejo were the victors in what was another tight final, Daniel Todorov and Justin Griffiths just falling short of the title. The level of some of these matches even brought some members of the Epsom Lawn Tennis Club to a standstill.
The quality of padel on show was extremely pleasing to Segura: “Although the quarter-finals were not unbalanced there were clearly stronger players than others. When it got to the semi-finals the results were 6-5,6-4, so it was really close. It is good to highlight that in the evening session all the semi-finals went to the last game. And it is timed so when the 25 minutes were over, they had to play an extra game to decide who would go to the final. The standard in the finals in both sessions was excellent.”
The format for Padel London events is its unique selling point with the matches being timed, each being 25 minutes long, rather than playing a traditional best of three-set match.
“All the players loved the format as well, a lot of them were doing it this way for the first time. They loved how fast it was, and how competitive it was but also social at the same time.”
“Everyone seemed to enjoy that it was not like a traditional tournament, where you play one match and then wait around for three hours until the next one. In this format the maximum time you would be sitting off is 25 minutes, and they loved that as sometimes they would be playing non-stop for around two hours. There was no time when they had nothing to do.”
While not a professional tournament with prize money, the winners and runners-up did receive some very exciting gifts. In the morning session the champions received Akkeron ORO and Akkeron Nexus 2022 racquets, totalling around £340. The victors in the evening received Akkeron Furia and Helios racquets, which were even more expensive at around £450.
Segura said that some entrants were surprised by the generosity of the prizes. “Even the runners-up received goodie bags that would have cost around 100 pounds!”
Although the Padel London event went down a treat in Epsom, this is the last tournament of the year. They are looking to expand their programme in 2023, with the first tournament taking place in January. Co-founder Segura has revealed that they are looking for new sponsors to help encourage more players to compete with them, and more venues to hold their tournaments next year.
