History of Padel

The most curious Padel Tournament in history

PADEL

In 2010 was organized in Barcelona at one of the largest shopping malls in Spain, L’Illa Diagonal, the single tournament of Padel with the largest number of members, of “non-paying spectators” lasting more than two weeks.

As Andrea Balducci (PadelBarcellona.it), the first Italian player in the history of Padel, tells us, in 2010 a single padel court was installed in the L’Illa Diagonal Shopping Center, a huge center divided into several floors, several hundred stores and a daily attendance of thousands of people.
The single court was installed to launch a chain of DIR gyms and promote a club within a gym in the upper part of Barcelona.
They decided to organize a tournament open to all the inhabitants of the city, the enrollments were so many (as Andrea says “it was a barbaric thing!”), infinite rounds and the “travelling” spectators tens of thousands of people that between a shop and another stopped to see the tournament.

Here a short video of that event:

In those years, the Spanish Federation had studied single padel and had made tests with players and masters in order to make single padel officially a sport.
In the end, however, this project was no longer carried out for business reasons, probably because the clubs were against it because it would have reduced their profit margin by 50%.
In Barcelona there are more than 30 individual fields but there are no specific clubs as these fields are installed or where there is no other space to make a traditional field or for specific training but always within clubs with traditional fields.

Carlo Ferrara in collaboration with Andrea Balducci (Padelbarcellona.it – products for Padel and International Padel Academy in Barcelona)

 

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