Section · Padel
Padel is the racket sport the world already plays: doubles on a glass court, walls in play. The US game is small, and compounding fast.
The short version
Padel is played by four people on a court about a third the size of a tennis court, enclosed by glass and mesh walls. The ball is like a slightly softer tennis ball; the racket is a solid, perforated paddle with a short handle, no strings. Serves are underhand and must bounce first. After the bounce, the ball can be played off the glass, which is the part that rewires a pickleball brain: the rally is not over when the ball passes you. Scoring is tennis scoring, games and sets, which anyone who has survived a club ladder already knows.
The feel, for a pickleball player: longer rallies, more defense, more angles, and a lob that is a weapon instead of a prayer. Most pickleball players are functional in their first session and hooked by their second, which is why so many US clubs run both sports under one roof: about 30% of US pickleball venues now offer padel, up from 5% a year earlier.
| Padel | Pickleball | |
|---|---|---|
| Court | Enclosed, glass and mesh walls, about 66 by 33 feet | Open court, 44 by 20 feet, usually on shared or converted space |
| Players | Doubles, almost always | Doubles mostly, singles exists |
| Equipment | Solid perforated paddle, short grip; pressurized balls, slightly softer than tennis | Solid paddle; plastic ball with holes |
| Serve | Underhand, after one bounce, into the diagonal box | Underhand, no bounce required (drop serve allowed), cross-court |
| Walls | In play after the bounce. The glass is a teammate | There are no walls |
| Scoring | Tennis scoring: games, sets, deuce | Side-out or rally scoring to 11, win by 2 |
| Rally shape | Longer, defensive, built around the lob and the wall | Fast hands at the kitchen, won in inches |
| Cost to play | Court fees, split four ways; peak hours at US clubs can run $80 to $100 an hour for the court | Often free at public parks; a paddle and a ball |
The US game, honestly
The verified picture, from the sources named below: SFIA tracked US padel for the first time in its 2026 report and counted about 1.07 million players in 2025, of whom about 238,000 play regularly. Courts went from 688 at 180 facilities in mid-2025 to roughly 1,000 entering 2026, with club count growing about 51.5% year over year. The courts are concentrated: Florida holds about 41% of them, Texas about 18%, California about 10%. Capital has noticed ($15M raised by the Pro Padel League in March 2026, a $50M club-development fund), and so has search: US interest rose about 72% in 2025.
And the caution, printed in the same size as the pitch: Sweden built padel courts faster than its players arrived, and hundreds of venues failed between 2022 and 2024 while the sport itself survived. The US starts from about 1,000 courts for 340 million people, a very different density, and most US padel is being added by clubs that also run pickleball rather than betting a building on padel alone. The risk here is not that padel disappears. It is that it stays a Florida-and-big-metro sport longer than the headlines suggest.
For US players, almost none of the basics exist yet in one place: the specialist retail shelf is about four shops, the visible English-language coverage is European or trade press, and the plain rules explainers, gear basics, and where-to-play guides for American players have mostly not been written. This page is the start of that shelf: what padel is, how it differs, and where the American game actually stands.
Where to go next
Padel coverage here starts with this page: what the game is and where the US game stands. Rules explainers, gear basics, and where-to-play guides are the natural next pages as the American game grows, and new padel coverage is announced to the Paddle and Rally List first. Meanwhile, the pickleball side of the clubhouse is fully open.
The Paddle and Rally List
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