Padel tennis ready to hold court in the UAE

Officials of the newly formed UAE Padel Tennis Association (UAEPTA) are confident the country will soon enjoy a prominent status in the world of padel with its top-notch facilities and an ever-increasing pool of players.

Hugely popular in Spain and America with more 20,000 courts available around those countries, padel tennis has recently made inroads in the United Kingdom and the USA, with the formation of national associations in those countries, and now the UAE has also decided to follow suit, encouraged by the growing popularity of the sport in the country.

The UAEPTA is headed by Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum bin Juma Al Maktoum, an enthusiastic player himself who has taken part in the padel tournament at the Nad Al Sheba Ramadan Sports Festival the past two years, both as an individual and a member of Uncle Saeed team, and the chairman is determined to provide the every youth of this nation an opportunity to play the sport.

“The plan is to spread this sport as per the instructions of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, by working in the community across the country, using every means possible,” said Mohammed Mubarak Al Mutaiwie, the vice-chairman of the UAEPTA.

“So our work will involve marketing this new sport properly, approaching the different departments to promote the sport, and looking for new locations to set up courts.

“We are planning to approach schools, youngsters and people of different ages, and invite them to have a taste of this sport. Hopefully, within a short time we will have a UAE team ready to compete locally and globally.”

The opening of a swanky, new 800-seater padel arena at the Nad Al Sheba Sports Complex will certainly help the association’s task and Al Mutaiwie says the doors of the facilities are open to anyone wishing to come and play.

“We are confident this facility will attract people to come and train here,” he said. “We have a great team here to help us, the best of trainers, and a great facility.

“We have already seen over the last Ramadan tournament and this that more and more people are playing padel tennis. So we are very optimistic we will find some very good players to represent the country.

“Maybe, within two months we will be able to identify the best talents and create a national team.”

The new padel tennis arena was inaugurated earlier this week with enthusiastic fans packing the stands to watch 20 of the world’s top professionals take part in a tournament.

“I hope the presence of the international players here will show to the rest of the padel world the ambition and vision of padel tennis in the UAE,” said Matteo Europeo, the sports manager at the Nad Al Sheba Sports Complex. “We have got the ball rolling and now we want to push the sport to new levels.

“This is obviously one of a kind facility. We have been working very hard with the support of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan and all the staff here at NAS Sports Complex, to put together probably one of the best padel arenas, not just in the Middle East where this is one of the first, but in the world.”

A mix between tennis and squash, padel has been increasing in popularity across the country, among both the Emiratis and expatriates, and many of the country’s tennis players took part in the NAS2014 padel tournament.

Omar Behroozian, the UAE’s No 1 tennis player, was also one of the participants and he really enjoyed taking part in his first padel competition.

“We were not here for the tournament last year because we were preparing for Davis Cup,” said Behroozian. “But a few colleagues from the tennis scene played it and they said it’s fun. So this year we decided we will try it out.

“This is really a lot of fun. I just hope more locals will be encouraged to play it and hopefully it can shoot up the popularity of racquet sports.”

With padel tennis being played indoors, it certainly gives tennis players an option through the long summer months. And that could be on of its USPs in this part of the world.

“We have been lucky to have quite a lot of the ex UAE tennis players and the current ones coming to play in the tournament,” said Sandy Farquharson, the racquet sports manager at Nad Al Sheba Sports Complex. “That kind of enthusiasm from them is definitely going to help promote it within the country.

“I think this is an ideal sport, not just for this region, but generally. It’s a lot easier to learn from racquet sports perspective. It’s much easier for people to enjoy playing. It’s doubles, it’s more sociable, it’s indoors and its smaller – you can fit three padel courts to one tennis court. So it’s perfect.”

Europeo is also optimistic looking at the progress padel has made in the UAE over the last couple of years and promised every kind support for the talents coming through, or waiting to be discovered.

“We have already received directives from His Highness Sheikh Hamdan that he wants to see this place busy, he wants to see many people coming here, and he wants to see many tournaments organised, at different levels,” Europeo said.

“So that is our aim – to organise more amateur level events, more female events, and obviously try to progress on the professional side, from the UAE national team side.

“So there are many sides of development we are focussing on and slowly, slowly we are going to touch all the areas that are interested in the sport.

“This is a sport that is fairly easy to pick up. We have already seen a lot of interest from the UAE tennis and squash players. So hopefully, they will soon take on some more padel tennis and if their level is good enough, surely they will have all the support that they need.”

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