Padel’s administrators have been asked to take older players more seriously following the success of the recent Super Seniors Festival at The Padel Hub in Slough.
GB ladies’ seniors manager Sally Fisher got together with Sally Brown to organise the event, ably assisted by Nicky Horn and Rosie Connell. The event had three categories – The Legends Cup (for men and women over-59s) and the Phoenix Cup (for over-69s).
Over 50 players participated (with some travelling from overseas) and courts were kindly provided free of charge by The Padel Hub owner Charles Winterton. Organisers are already looking to stage a second, expanded Super Seniors Festival early next summer.
Tournament director Nicky Horn feels over-60s were being under-served in British competitive padel, with the LTA only offering tournaments for women at O40 and O50s, and men’s at O40, O50 and O60. Nicky also feels a personal touch is necessary when dealing with this cohort of players.
“We’ve got the feeling from organisers of other events that there was no appetite from older people to play tournaments, but we felt strongly that that wasn’t the case at all,” Nicky told The Padel Paper.
“We contacted people we knew from the circuit by email or phone to get them involved. We really focused on giving people the best possible experience, with proper games which were treated seriously.”
Nicky makes the comparison with tournament draws that use seedings algorithms. She said: “In the past that has caused annoyance because the algorithm doesn’t know who the best players are, only how many registered tournaments people have played and their results. That has often ended up with several top-end pairings in the same half of the draw, which makes a mockery of the result.
“At the Super Seniors Festival, we listened to the players and asked them how they wanted it to be organised. Our personal knowledge of players ensured the rankings were correct. The impact was that everyone had lots of really good matches and the tournament was better as a result.”
All Super Seniors Festival participants will soon receive a questionnaire in order to improve the experience even further next time they enter. There is also talk of a Super Seniors training camp in the summer.
Nicky said: “We want to encourage the LTA and other tournament series to focus on these age groups because they’re just as important as the younger ones and the open-age categories.”
