New padel courts set to open on Saturday
The nice part of padel is that anyone can play – from young to old
The newly built padel court at the Parys Golf & Country Estate will officially open their doors on Saturday.
Claire Woods, co-owner of the padel courts in Parys, says that everything is on track for the grand opening on Saturday. Rackets will be available for hire and balls will be for sale.
According to Claire, they will open a shop with padel items to purchase at a later stage.
The facility consists of two double padel courts.
The court will be open on Saturday from 08:00 until 16:00.
An opening day special of 30 minutes booking spots free. Only 30 minutes time slots available. Rental rackets available at R50 per racket. Balls available for purchase at R150 per sleeve.
Players can book the Parys padel courts online on the Playtomic app, or join the WhatsApp group Hello, Padel. The courts will be open Mondays to Sundays 07:00-19:00.
Padel is described as a mixture of squash and tennis, the sport was found in the late 1960’s by a Mexican, Enrique Corcuera. He built a court to play a racket-based ball game at his home in Acapulco. The court was smaller than a tennis court due to property constraints. He found that if tennis balls were overhit, they would go all over the place, so he surrounded the court with walls on all sides.
From this humble beginning the sport, now known as padel, is considered an outdoor social sport, played like squash in an enclosed court sharing similarities with tennis. Players must pass the ball over the net into the opponent’s side by hitting it with a racket, smaller than a tennis racket and not strung.
Players are allowed to hit the ball after it bounces off a wall/fence to keep the ball in play. Serving is underarm, and not overhead like in tennis.
Padel is mostly played by four people in a game of doubles, but can be played individually. SA’s first two padel courts were built in 2020. As of this year, players have a choice of 400 courts all over the country. Within the next three years, South Africa is anticipated to have 2 500 courts.
