BY RJ MITCHELL
IN part two of Tom Murray’s exclusive interview with The Padel Paper the LTA’s Head of Padel has revealed that he is determined to take the sport to a level which will mean that it can rival tennis in terms of popularity in around 10 years.
Murray has also shared that the LTA will be promoting its first FIP tournament this summer with the FIP Rise London Padel Open 2022 scheduled to be held at the National Training Centre, Roehampton, in August and offering a 50/50 prize money split.
The most important man in British padel was also keen to offer advice to any potential court builders out there who are ready to reach out to the domestic game’s governing body as he reaffirmed his position that developing a strong infrastructure is absolutely vital to the sport’s growth in these pivotal years for padel in the UK.
Murray was happy to expand on his vision of how padel can align and flourish with tennis by injecting a welcome dose of vibrancy and brio.
While with three tours now operating internationally the LTA Head of Padel admitted that the competing demands on players’ commitments has never been so great, or perhaps conflicted, yet Murray says there is a significant silver lining to this issue.
First of all, can padel really overtake tennis in the UK?
“That’s definitely the vision, however quite a mammoth of a task. The only country where padel has managed to overtake tennis in terms of participation has been in Spain and it took roughly 30 years,” said Murray with a smile.
He added: “Padel is a sport in its own right, which is proven by its commercial attributes and also the professional tours and the players. However, time will tell if it can become an Olympic sport as that is a long journey as other sports like squash have found out.
“Padel must be played in a lot of countries for that to happen.”
Turning his attention to the plethora of sanctioning bodies Murray continued: “The World Padel Tour have been running for several years but now the International Padel Federation (FIP) has also launched a professional circuit of events.
“Basically there are three tours: ATP, WPT and FIP and many up-and-coming professional players are since being encouraged to play in any of these professional circuits and to just to get out there and start competing.
“Not only has this been confusing to fans but also to the players, who are now conflicted as to which tournaments to compete in and also which ranking points stand to be the most valuable in the near future.
“It will be interesting to see how it all evolves, however on a positive note there’s now a greater platform for players, more tournaments for players which results in more prize money being up for grabs. So, I guess it is a blessing in disguise at least for the time being.
“Projecting forward we are going to take a similar stance to France by launching a performance calendar for our own elite players and those that will transition forward to that level over the next few years.”
An important building block in this is the exciting new tournament slated for the capital in August with the FIP Rise London Padel Open to be played at the NTC: “We are creating our first FIP Tournament this summer in August at the NTC which is perfect for accommodating a large event of this scale and providing the proper facilities for the players,” explained Murray.
He continued: “Ideally there would be more courts, and this will be a strict requisite for venues to host such events next year (requiring a minimum of six courts), however we’re able to run the event over several days.
“It is a chance for us to attract not only top British players but also top players from other countries as they will travel for the kind of prize money that’s on offer, which totals €8k split equally between men and women.
“It’s a good start, but we will need more of these events if we’re to provide a platform for our performance players, which has previously been limited by the infrastructure of venues throughout the UK, e.g. not having enough courts to host this level of event.
“At a certain point that is what we will need to see, venues installing more courts – this will enable us to showcase the sport at a much higher level and thus convince spectators that padel isn’t just another variation of tennis.
“So, with everything bubbling it’s the right time to focus on our elite players like Christian (Murphy), Louie (Harris) Sam, Tia (Norton) to develop their profiles. So that when the sport does go big and is launched in the UK, we can really go big with our players.”
With such an emphasis and importance placed on building new courts to developing padel’s infrastructure in the UK what is Murray’s advice to interested parties?
“As with tennis, the LTA work with SAPCA, a trade association for the UK sports construction industry and therefore recommend that any court providers simply become members.
“Padel Operators who want to create venues are struggling and they are coming to the LTA to say: ‘Help me!’ Whereas realistically the governing body isn’t a commercial estate agent to target locations.
“You look at how David Lloyd developed and they had an entire property division with estate agents around the country. The LTA wants to support these people as much as possible but there is only so much we can do.
“The LTA is happy to provide interest free loans to tennis venues to build padel courts, however the loan is from the LTA Trust and that money must be paid back. So, for the commercial operator seeking funds it is not something the LTA can really get involved with.
“That said, we’re keen to support in other ways, for example issuing letters of support direct to local authorities that can sometimes speed up planning applications.
“As outlined in the LTA’s strategic plan the initial priority looks to develop infrastructure, as without it there’s nothing to build and grow – a complete Catch-22.”
Yet building new courts is not the only vital part of padel’s development that needs to be fast forwarded as Murray was keen to emphasise: “In essence we are ahead of a lot of countries like France, for example, when it comes to developing coaching courses, as they haven’t rolled out their coaching courses but have over 1,000 courts.
“On the other hand we have limited courts and infrastructure but are almost receiving criticism that we haven’t launched our coaching courses yet! My point is all of that is coming.
“The LTA never wants to hold padel back as it is also a way to grow overall tennis participation and we are seeing that in other countries, so we are anticipating the growth and we are planning accordingly.
“The coaching courses are being well structured, supported by a coaching pathway. Additionally, we are about to launch a British Tour of events, rather than simply facilitating graded competition for venues to host and deliver.
“From next year there will be tournaments for national and international players to compete in, as well as competition options for grassroots and youth and this will be the start of a more complete player pathway.”
A case of let ‘bat-tle’ commence!
