Tom Farquharson and his brother Sandy are two of the most recognisable figures in padel thanks to their 10 years running The Padel School with its snackable and informative coaching content.
Tom, 32 (the younger brother by eight years), was a world top 400 tennis player, Wimbledon junior doubles winner and hitting partner of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Kei Nishkori. During his five years on the ATP Tour he was coached by Sandy – but Sandy’s unexpected pivot into padel and a succession of injuries and surgeries prompted Tom to do a business degree in Amsterdam, then switch fully to the 20×10.
Tom and Sandy live just down the road from each other in Cheam, Surrey, and their work together on The Padel School takes them all over the UK and abroad, conducting coaching clinics for beginners, club members or corporate clients. They compete as a pair on the LTA Padel British Tour and train with the GB squad at the LTA’s elite men’s base in Alicante.
This deep involvement and experience in both tennis and padel makes Tom the perfect man to ask for a comparison of the two sports’ different trajectories at grassroots level, his experience of playing both sports professionally – and whether padel could ever become bigger than tennis, as it has now done in Spain.
He tells The Padel Paper: “I don’t see padel as a threat to tennis. There’s still an awareness piece with padel and in the UK you still hear the question, ‘What is this sport?’
“Many clubs are resistant to change and there’s still a bit of uncertainty on committees as to whether the investment in courts is worth it.”
It seems only a matter of time before that scepticism disappears though as more and more clubs profit from the addition of padel courts and the diversification of their offer to existing members and prospective new members – and padel increasingly thrives away from the tennis environment.
Tom states: “As more case studies come through and people see the positive effect it has on the clubs, that resistance will reduce. For tennis clubs, it’s a great chance to breathe a bit of life into the place. Players will become more open to picking up a variety of different racket sports. At the moment, that’s probably a stage the sport still needs to go through.
“We’re quite far away from padel competing with tennis with the number of courts, even once the awareness has gone up. It’s still so far from that. We won’t know until it starts happening whether there is a threat.”
Tom takes particular delight in seeing players he coaches gain enjoyment and satisfaction from padel straight away. It’s this accessibility that is turbo-charging padel’s growth more than any other factor.
Tom says: “When I was coaching tennis, people would say, ‘I tried tennis when I was younger but I was rubbish’ or ‘I found it too difficult.’ The technical barriers are quite high so you need lessons to start. It is such a difficult sport to learn.
“But padel doesn’t have those barriers so it is appealing to a new and different cohort of people who perhaps don’t have a rackets background. Beginners always come off the court loving it and wanting to play again. As a coach, that is so satisfying.”
As an elite competitor, Tom finds the padel world slightly different to the intense and bellicose ATP Tour. “Tennis is extremely competitive,” he says. “It’s quite insular and very dog-eat-dog especially on the singles tour.
“In padel, there’s a social aspect at recreational level but at higher levels too. Padel players are friendly towards each other, there isn’t that extra edge to the competitiveness. That might be because it has been an amateur sport for so long. As it becomes more global and more money comes into it, perhaps it will become more like tennis, but I don’t think it is right now.”
There’s certainly no edge between Tom and his brother. They are inseparable; coaching and playing together full-time. “We don’t fall out!” he laughs. “People say to us, ‘Working with your brother must be a nightmare’ but it’s not at all. There’s a big age gap, so maybe that helps!”
Their joint venture, The Padel School, continues to grow as padel participation explodes and players scour the internet for coaching tips. Their social media accounts now has over 440,000 followers.
“We’re trying to provide high quality coaching information for new and improving players,” explains Tom. “People are picking up a racket and they want to improve, but in emerging nations they perhaps don’t have access to that coaching expertise, so they find us.
“We’ve visited loads of different countries and coached thousands of players. Our goal is to grow the largest community of padel players through our social media and get as many players into the game as possible.”
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