The promoters of padel in India could not have found a better sports personality than former All England champion P. Gopichand to join the Indian Padel Federation in their promotional activities to give the sport a fresh fillip and make it more popular across the country.
Padel is relatively new to India and is said to combine the best elements of tennis and squash and nicknamed as ‘tennis with walls’ and ‘squash in the Sun’.
Supriya Devgun, former bronze medallist at the 2017 BWF World Senior Badminton Championship, also joins the Indian Padel Federation as a key Board Member.
In a chat with The Hindu, Gopichand, the chief national badminton coach, said padel picks up the best features from other sports like tennis, squash and even badminton, which should make it a big hit in the days to come.
“Padel has a World Tour and that speaks of the growing popularity,” he said.
“The best part is that it is played on a court which is one-third the size of a tennis court between two doubles combinations. This means occupying very less space with no entry barrier — a kid and a 60-year-old can indulge in the sport,” said Gopichand.
“At the professional level, the demands and the guidelines will be different for sure. But, for anyone familiar with other racket sports, this is a wonderful concept,” he said.
“As a proponent of encouraging more and more [people] to play any sport, I am really pleased to be associated with this as it would also help society in ensuring that kids spend time on something which should lead to a healthy and competitive lifestyle,” Gopichand said.
On his suggestions for making padel more popular, Gopichand felt perhaps efforts on creating the infrastructure at different levels — and not just at schools — and also organising as many events as possible would help the sport take off.
“Any sport needs a coaching system in place with scientific back-up and making optimum use of any technology for better results and padel should be no exception,” he said.
Gopichand also hinted that some of the regular India shuttlers might also try their hand at this sport as some sort of a break from their daily badminton training schedules.
