When was padel invented? The complete history of the sport

Padel dates from 1969. For most of the years since it was an obscure sport played mainly in Spain and Argentina, largely invisible to the rest of the world. Now it’s the fastest-growing racket sport on the planet, with more than 35 million active players worldwide according to the FIP, and courts opening every week across the UK.

So where did it come from? And why did it take so long to get here?

The accidental invention: Mexico, 1969

Padel was invented in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera at his holiday estate in Acapulco, Mexico.

Corcuera was a tennis fan, but his property simply didn’t have enough space for a full-size court. So he built something smaller – a 20 × 10 metre court, about three-quarters of the area of a tennis doubles court. The walls of his house and the surrounding terrain became part of the design. He added metal fencing to stop the ball escaping into his neighbour’s garden, and improvised a set of rules to suit the confined space.

He called it Paddle Corcuera, named after himself, and it was – at that point – a private game for friends and guests at his estate.

The story of how it became a global sport begins with a visitor to his estate.

Spain adopts it: Alfonso de Hohenlohe and Marbella

In the early 1970s, a Spanish nobleman named Alfonso de Hohenlohe visited Corcuera in Acapulco and played the game. He loved it. When he returned to Spain, he built two padel courts at the Marbella Club on the Costa del Sol – one of the most glamorous resort clubs in Europe at the time.

That was the spark.

Padel spread quickly through the Spanish upper class, then into the general public. Spain has a deep tennis culture, a love of outdoor socialising, and long, warm summers – it was a natural fit. By the late 1980s, padel courts were appearing across the country. By the 1990s, the sport had national attention, with senior figures photographed playing it and hundreds of clubs established.

Spain remains the spiritual home of padel. If you want to understand why the sport looks and feels the way it does – the social format, the mixed doubles emphasis, the café-court-café rhythm – you need to understand that it was shaped by Spanish club culture.

Argentina and the South American explosion

In 1975, an Argentine businessman named Julio Menditeguy encountered padel in Marbella and brought it home to Argentina. The sport took hold there in a way it hadn’t quite anywhere else – Argentina developed one of the most competitive domestic padel scenes in the world, and Argentine players have dominated the professional game for decades.

Brazil followed, and much of South America joined in. By the time the sport started getting serious professional infrastructure, its two main centres were Spain and Argentina – a transatlantic axis that still defines the elite game today.

The professional era: circuits, tours, and Premier Padel

The first professional padel circuit, the Padel Pro Tour (PPT), launched in 2005. It was a Spanish-based competition created in collaboration with the Association of Professional Padel Players and the Spanish Women’s Padel Federation. For several years it was the only serious professional circuit in the sport.

In 2013, a new circuit – the World Padel Tour (WPT) – was founded with backing from the Estrella Damm brewery. The WPT grew quickly and eventually became the dominant professional competition, running tournaments across Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and the UAE.

Premier Padel launched in 2022, set up by the International Padel Federation (FIP) with Qatar Sports Investments – the same group that owns Paris Saint-Germain. In August 2023 QSI bought the World Padel Tour’s business, and from 2024 the two merged into a single tour under the Premier Padel name. The circuit is now the recognised global professional tour, with major events in Rome, Paris, Doha, and beyond.

Padel has also been working towards Olympic inclusion. It featured in the European Games in 2023 and the South American Games in 2022, and 2032 in Brisbane is being discussed as a realistic first Olympic appearance.

Why the UK arrived so late

If padel was exploding in Spain and Argentina through the 1980s and 1990s, why were British players still decades away from discovering it?

A few factors:

Tennis politics. The LTA had little reason to promote a sport that wasn’t tennis. Padel sat in an awkward gap between tennis, squash, and something new – and national governing bodies are rarely enthusiastic about sports that might cannibalise their own.

Infrastructure. Padel courts require specific construction – glass walls, metal fencing, a particular surface. In countries where the sport hadn’t arrived yet, there was no capital waiting to build them and no community of players to justify the investment.

Geography and climate. Spain’s outdoor court culture doesn’t map directly onto a country where it rains in August. The shift to covered and indoor courts was essential to making padel viable in the UK year-round, and that required a different – more expensive – build.

The social media effect. What changed wasn’t so much a strategic push as an organic explosion. Instagram, YouTube, and the visibility of players like celebrities and footballers taking up the sport created a wave of curiosity in the late 2010s that existing infrastructure couldn’t have generated on its own.

The UK boom

The LTA took over governance of padel in 2020. At that point, there were just 69 courts in the whole of Great Britain. The growth since then has been remarkable: 870 courts by the end of 2024, past 1,000 by mid-2025, and 1,825 across 551 venues by May 2026.

Participation has followed a similar trajectory. Around 15,000 people played padel in Britain in 2019. By the end of 2025, the LTA put that figure at 860,000, and by May 2026 at around one million.

You can feel it if you’re playing regularly. Courts are busier. Clubs that opened a year ago already have waiting lists. Brands that ignored the sport completely are now sponsoring tournaments and signing players.

The UK arrived late to padel – but it’s making up for lost time fast.

Where to go from here

If you’re new to the sport and want to understand it better before stepping on court, our guide to padel vs tennis breaks down the key differences – and why former tennis players often find padel harder than expected despite the smaller court.

Once you’re playing, knowing the rules of padel properly makes the game more enjoyable and saves you from awkward disputes over service faults and wall bounces. Worth spending twenty minutes on before your first proper session.

The sport Enrique Corcuera invented by accident in a Mexican garden is now being played weekly by millions of people who have never heard his name. That’s a strange and satisfying kind of legacy.