Your first month of padel: what to expect and how to make the most of it

You’ve played your first game. Maybe it was a work social, a birthday party, or a mate dragging you along on a Tuesday evening. Either way, something happened on that court that doesn’t happen with most sports: you walked off wanting to go back immediately.

That feeling is almost universal. Padel converts people faster than any racket sport going. The court is small enough that rallies happen from the start. The underarm serve means nobody is acing you. And the walls – confusing as they are at first – keep the ball alive long enough for something enjoyable to happen.

The question now is what your first month looks like. Here’s what to expect, what to focus on, and what you can safely ignore until later.

Booking courts and finding games in the UK

Most UK padel courts are booked through Playtomic, either via the app or website. Search for your nearest venue, pick a time, and pay online – it works like booking a cinema ticket. Court costs vary, but expect to pay between £32 and £48 for a 90-minute session split four ways, so roughly £8–£12 per person.

If you don’t have three other people to play with yet, look for social sessions. These are run by most clubs and leisure centres, typically costing £8–£15 per person. You book as an individual, a coach organises rotating games of doubles, and you play with whoever turns up. It’s the easiest way into the sport if you don’t already know other players.

Social sessions go by different names – open play, mix-in, Americano nights – but they all follow the same idea: you rotate partners, play short sets, and meet people. Many clubs run beginner-specific and women-only sessions too. Check your local venue’s Playtomic page or website under “Activities” to see what’s available.

Leisure centres run by Better and other operators now offer padel at several locations across the UK, often at lower prices than private clubs. These are worth checking if your nearest dedicated padel centre is a long drive.

What gear you need

For your first few sessions, you need almost nothing. Most clubs hire out rackets for £3–£5, and the balls are included in the court booking. Wear court shoes, cross-trainers, or any flat-soled trainer with decent grip. Bring water.

That’s it. Seriously.

The temptation to buy a racket immediately is strong, but resist it for at least three or four sessions. You won’t know what weight, shape, or balance suits you until you’ve played enough to feel the difference. When you’re ready, a decent beginner racket from a brand like Nox, Bullpadel, or Wilson starts around £50–£70. We’ve written a full guide to choosing your first racket if you want to do it properly.

Padel shoes are worth getting once you’re playing weekly. They’re designed for the lateral movement and sandy artificial turf you find on most UK courts. Clay court tennis shoes work well as a bridge. Standard running shoes are the one thing to avoid long-term – they’re built for forward motion, and padel asks your feet to go sideways constantly.

Your first few sessions: what to focus on

Forget technique. For the first few games, the only things that matter are:

Get the ball back over the net. That’s the whole job. Placement, spin, power – none of it matters yet. If the ball goes over the net and lands in the court, you’ve done well. The rally continues, everyone has fun, and you start building the rhythm that everything else depends on.

Serve underarm and aim for the middle. The padel serve is underarm, struck at or below waist height after a bounce. Aim for the centre of the service box. A soft, reliable serve that starts the point is worth ten times more than a hard one that hits the net. The full rules explain the serve in detail, but keeping it simple is the priority early on.

Stand in the right place. Padel has a basic principle: when your team is attacking, both of you should be at the net. When defending, both at the back. Moving together as a pair – forwards and backwards in sync – matters more than any individual shot. If you’re at the net and your partner is at the back, there’s a gap in the middle that opponents will find immediately.

Talk to your partner. Call “mine” or “yours” on every ball down the middle. Say “back” when you’re both retreating from the net. Padel is a team sport in a way tennis doubles rarely is – you win and lose as a pair, and communication is what holds the pair together. Our etiquette guide covers the unwritten rules of court communication.

The walls: why they change everything

The walls are the single biggest adjustment. Every beginner’s instinct is to hit the ball before it reaches the glass – and that instinct is wrong.

In padel, the ball bouncing off the back wall or side wall is still in play. You can let it go past you, watch it come off the glass, and then play your shot with more time and better positioning. This feels deeply unnatural for the first few sessions. Your brain is screaming at you to hit the ball before it gets away. Learning to wait – to trust the wall – is the moment padel starts to feel like a different sport.

A useful drill: during a rally, deliberately let one ball per game bounce off the back wall before you hit it. Just one. You’ll fluff most of them at first. But within a few sessions, you’ll start reading the angle and timing of the rebound, and suddenly you have an extra dimension to work with.

The back wall is also where padel gets satisfying. There’s a specific feeling when you read the rebound cleanly, step into the shot, and lift a lob over your opponents’ heads from what looked like a losing position. When that clicks – usually somewhere around week three or four – it changes your whole understanding of the game.

The emotional arc of month one

Nobody talks about this, but padel has a specific learning curve that catches people off guard.

Week one is brilliant. You’re having rallies, you’re laughing, you can’t believe how fun this is. The court is small enough that you feel competent almost immediately. You leave buzzing.

Weeks two and three are harder. You’ve played a few more times and you’re starting to see how much there is to learn. Your shots don’t go where you want. The walls confuse you. Better players seem to be playing a completely different sport. You know enough to recognise what you’re doing wrong, but you can’t fix it yet. This is the frustration dip – and it’s where most people either push through or drift away.

Week four onwards, things start clicking. You read a wall rebound before thinking about it. You move to the net with your partner without being told. You start placing the ball with intention. The improvement isn’t dramatic – it’s a series of small moments where something that was confusing becomes automatic.

Knowing this arc exists helps. The frustration of weeks two and three is a sign you’re learning, not a sign the sport isn’t for you.

Coming from tennis? Here’s what to expect

If you’ve played tennis, you have a head start – and a handicap.

What transfers well: Hand-eye coordination, volleying instincts, the split step, understanding of spin, and general court awareness. Tennis players often look competent from their first session because so many of the motor skills carry over.

What works against you: Power. Tennis rewards hitting hard through the court. In padel, a hard flat shot bounces, hits the back glass and comes back as an easy ball for your opponent. The players who improve fastest are the ones who learn early that placement and patience win points, and that trying to hit winners from the baseline is a losing strategy.

The continental grip – standard in padel – is the same one you’d use for a volley or slice in tennis, so it should feel familiar. But the swing itself is shorter and more compact, especially on the forehand side. If you catch yourself taking a full tennis backswing, you’ll consistently hit the back wall on the full.

The hardest habit to break is playing the ball before the wall. Tennis players have years of training telling them to take the ball early and move forward. In padel, the wall is your ally – but only if you let the ball reach it. Expect this adjustment to take two to three weeks of conscious effort.

Finding a regular group

The biggest practical challenge in your first month is logistics. Padel needs four people on the same court at the same time, and co-ordinating diaries is harder than learning any shot.

Social sessions solve this in the short term. But the real breakthrough – for your game and your enjoyment – comes when you find a regular group. Two, three, or four people who play the same evening each week. Consistent partners mean you develop communication, learn each other’s games, and spend less time in group chats trying to fill a fourth slot.

How to build a group:

• Start at social sessions. Play with lots of people. When you find someone at your level who you enjoy playing with, swap numbers.
• Join your club’s WhatsApp group. Most venues have one. People post when they need a player, and saying yes to those messages is how you go from stranger to regular.
• Use Playtomic’s open matches. Some players create public matches that anyone can join. It’s a useful way to meet people outside your existing circle.
• Be reliable. The fastest way to get invited back is to be the person who always turns up. Padel groups live and die on reliability.

What to do after month one

By the end of your first month, you’ll know whether padel has stuck. If you’re still booking courts, you’ve passed the threshold where most people decide this is their sport for the long term.

From here, the path branches. Some options worth considering:

Improver sessions and coaching. Once you’ve played enough to have specific questions – “how do I return a lob?”, “why does my backhand keep going into the net?” – a coached session becomes valuable. Many clubs run improver group sessions that sit between social play and formal coaching. They’re usually 90 minutes, £15–£25 per person, and focused on a specific skill each week.

Americano tournaments. These are social tournaments where you rotate partners after every set, so you play with and against everyone. They’re excellent for meeting players, testing yourself against different styles, and building confidence outside your regular group. Most clubs run them monthly.

Playing with people better than you. This is the single fastest way to improve. Better players move the ball around the court more, use the walls more, and force you to react faster. If someone at your club invites you to play up, say yes – even if it feels intimidating. We’ve written a guide to improving at padel that covers this in more detail.

Club membership. If you’re playing twice a week, membership often saves money over pay-and-play. It also connects you to the club community – ladder nights, team leagues, and the WhatsApp group where last-minute games get organised.

The first month is the steepest part of the curve. Everything after it builds on the foundation you’ve laid: the basic shots, the court movement, the wall play, the people you’ve met. Padel rewards consistency. Keep turning up, keep saying yes to games, and the sport opens up in ways that the first session only hinted at.