Doug De Groot first had the idea of building a padel court accessible to the public here about eight years ago. Though it has taken a while — a puzzling permit denial prevented him from finishing one last year at the Buckskill Tennis Club, which he owns with his wife, Kathryn — he now, with Southampton Village’s blessing, has one up at the Triangle Tennis Club on Hampton Road.
A fast-moving paddle game played within an enclosed glass-and-wire 10-by-20-meter space that combines the serving and volleying of tennis with squash’s off-the-wall shots, padel, first played in Mexico in 1969, has been popular in Spain and the rest of Europe, in Scandinavia, and in South America for years.
“It’s extremely popular in Spain . . . some of the best players are from Argentina and Brazil,” De Groot said before an introductory playing session Saturday morning, adding that he expects that padel will soon take off in this country.
Asked where the nearest publicly accessible padel court to his was, De Groot smiled and said, “Miami.” Though his son, Jonny, with whom De Groot, this writer, and Luke Burke played that morning, ventured that one could be found in Lancaster, Pa., “a tennis hotbed.”
The Triangle Club’s court, which sits over a Har-Tru tennis court, has a plywood base and blue turf covering — heated in the winter — that makes for soft footing. The net is somewhat lower than a tennis net, and the balls look and feel like tennis balls but are a bit softer.
Scoring is the same as in tennis. The ball is served underhand off a bounce — as in tennis you get two chances — after which the players close to duke it out at the net with hard-hit volleys punctuated by overhead smashes or by tantalizing lobs that can wind up dying in the back corners. Retrievers can play smashes and lobs off the glass back wall or off the adjacent glass side-wall sections, but these shots are harder to master, this writer can attest, than in platform tennis with its bouncier ball and taut wires — or maybe even in squash, for that matter, which means, of course, that if you want to excel in padel you’ve got to practice.
Presumably because it offers more in the way of shot-making and because of its emphasis on net play, which has been neglected in recent years in tennis in favor of endless baseline rallies, “padel is more interesting than pickleball,” De Groot said as we were walking off the court.
“We can have pickleball here too,” he added in parting. “All I have to do is paint some lines. . . . But if you can play this [padel], pickleball is boring.”