CONSTRUCTION of two new padel courts is underway at Skipton Tennis Centre at Sandylands, in anticipation of demand for the increasingly popular racquet sport. Reporter Will Abbott went to have a look.

THE more than £300,000 project will deliver two canopied courts between the clubhouse and Engine Shed Lane, with work recently getting underway and completion planned for the autumn.

The courts will complement Skipton Tennis Centre’s existing open-roofed padel court, which caters to around 200 regular padel players and hosts coaching sessions for different experience levels.

Padel is played in doubles, which contributes to its social and relaxed atmosphere – in the words of Skipton Tennis Centre founder and CEO Adam Cox, it is “inclusive, social, vibey.”

The sport has been gaining in popularity since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic due in part, in Mr Cox’s view, to the Lawn Tennis Association’s recognition as the national governing body for padel in late 2020 and to high-profile media attention.

The sport has a larger player-base already in the likes of France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy – though nowhere more than in Spain, where (with six million participants, across 20,000 courts and 2,500 Padel venues) padel has been integrated into the Spanish lifestyle and is one of the nation’s most popular pastimes.

Instrumental in cultivating a passion for Padel this side of the Channel has been Peter Vann, who drove the plan to build the UK’s very first padel courts at Huddersfield Tennis Club.

Skipton Tennis Centre is an eligible venue for the furthering of Padel in the Craven area, having beaten the rest of the pack to win the Lawn Tennis Association’s Club of the Year award in 2017.

The accolade was recognised in 2018 at the All England Club at Wimbledon, where Mr Cox, and other winners, received their prizes at a lunch attended by the likes of HRH the Duchess of Gloucester and former British number one player Andrew Castle. Skipton Tennis Centre was also named Club of the Year for the North of England by the Lawn Tennis Association in 2018, one of five regional clubs UK-wide to be recognised.

The centre runs a large coaching programme across mini tennis, junior tennis and adult tennis, in addition to its padel programme.

It also conducts outreach work in primary schools in the area, and heavily reinvests the income generated from coaching.

Mr Cox, sitting in the clubhouse fresh from a padel coaching session, made sure to clear up any confusion around the sport’s name.

Whereas “a lot of people in the town centre will say, ‘Oh, you’ve got a paddle board down at Skipton Tennis Centre’ a paddle board’s something you’re gonna do on the canal,” not at the Centre.

“Padel is a sport in its own right in the family of racket sports.”

“It’s easy to play and get started … the rules are similar to tennis … and there is no overarm serve to start the point – that’s one of the biggest attractions.”

Padel, which was created in 1969 in Mexico by Enrique Corcuera, calls for an underarm serve after a bounce, making the sport more accessible for beginners.

If the ball bounces off the side or back fences, it is still in play as long as it had already bounced since the previous hit.

Matches are played with a stringless racquet reminiscent of a beach bat, made of composite material and with a perforated surface (and which Skipton Tennis Centre supplies at no extra cost to its bookers).

Padel is “great for strength and conditioning, great for reactions, great for brain function and improving sending and receiving skills,” says Mr Cox.

He notes that padel has been co-signed by high-profile athletes, including Formula One racer Carlos Sainz, Junior, who mentioned padel when asked about relaxation methods off the track.

But unlike in the driver’s home country of Spain the UK is not blessed with reliably sunny weather and hence the canopy covering planned for the two new courts.

“In its simplest form, we’re not in Spain, we’re in the north of England and it rains a lot,” said Mr Cox.

CGI blueprints tease a finished product that will consist of tarmacked and astro-turfed courts and a canopy of glass and steel, with the project delivered in part by regional firms AM Bowdin Groundworks and RKB Electrical.

Funding for the project comes from coaching revenues, sponsorship, commercial borrowing and funds synced from neighbouring sports clubs.

After the project’s completion, Skipton Tennis Centre will embark on a second phase, to install new floodlit tennis courts and to convert the existing three tennis courts into a different surface, still to be decided.

There are also plans to introduce pickleball courts to the Centre.

More information can be found on Skipton Tennis Centre’s website at https://www.skiptontennis.com/.