Padel Tennis Court in China

Padel tennis has been one of the most talked about new sports in the world over the past few months. In addition to being included as an official sport at the 2023 European Games, the top global event has received funding from Middle Eastern investors, with branches coming to Africa and the International Federation of Plate Tennis (FIP) actively promoting the sport to be included in the Asian and Commonwealth Games.

2022 is the year of the rise of minority sports in China. While Frisbee and Lu Chong have become social currencies for youth in first-tier cities, plate tennis, which is popular overseas, is also quietly growing in China. But while other sports are rapidly gaining popularity everywhere, plate tennis seems to be catching on only in Shanghai, and only in a few cities, such as Changsha and Chengdu. In first-tier cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the movement is nowhere to be found.

It is hard to imagine that an imported sport would become such a “local feature” in China when all popular elements are spreading rapidly.

Two kinds of Shanghai School

Plate tennis was born out of tennis. On intercontinental cruise ships in the early last century, aristocrats liked to play tennis on the ship, but they were afraid of dropping the ball into the sea. So they thought of building glass walls to surround the court.

By 1969, the first plate courts appeared in Acapulco, Mexico, and the game spread to Spain, where it quickly spread to Spanish-speaking and Latino-speaking countries around the world. FIP officials say there are now more than 25 million people living in plate tennis worldwide, and that participation in the sport has doubled in the past five years.

In terms of the rules, plate tennis is similar to a cross between tennis and squash — players can either hit the ball twice before it hits the ground, as tennis rules dictate, or wait for it to bounce off toughened glass on the side of the court and then continue hitting it. In addition, the board tennis court is 20 meters long and 10 meters wide, less than one third of the standard tennis court, and both are doubles. And the racquet also added foam cotton on the basis of carbon fiber, relatively less elastic.

Because of these rules, compared with tennis, plate tennis requires less strength and movement, and pays more attention to agility. And for those with tennis, badminton, and table tennis basics, similar swings make plate tennis a newbie friendly sport.

Of course, in order to be popular in the current social media-led communication environment, the new movement also needs social functions, fashion properties and the effect of “coming out”. Plate tennis obviously has no shortage of these.

The sport was introduced to China in 2016, two years before the China Tennis Association launched the China Plate Tennis Tour, but it has only accelerated in the country since this year. Wu Jianxiang, marketing director of Shanghai Board Tennis club PadelX, told Lazy Bear Sports that the club was founded in 2018, but before this year, the majority of the sport’s players were foreigners living in Shanghai, accounting for 70 percent of the total. Since the end of the epidemic in Shanghai in June this year, the proportion of domestic players has increased rapidly, and now the proportion has surpassed that of foreign users, nearly 60%