New indoor courts for padel open, first in country

New indoor padel court at Aforza.

CALGARY -

New padel courts opened in Calgary Saturday, they're the first indoor courts for the sport in the country.

Padel is a combination of tennis and squash, it uses tennis balls and scoring, but it incorporates walls in the game, like squash.

“It has a lot of the skills from tennis, like volleys and overheads and super-fast points, but because of the walls, the points last longer like in squash so you get some incredibly epic rallies,” said Jeff Spiers, the executive director of Aforza.

The sport started in South America more than 50 years ago, but only recently caught on in North America. The game is also growing in Europe and the Middle East where it can be played outside year round.

“It’s grown quite a bit over the last few years, we’ve had probably about 100, 200 new people trying out the sport in the last year,” said Spiers. “So it’s starting to grow and now that we have an indoor facility we’re hoping it’s going to grow even more.

“It’s a real easy sport to pick up, so people can get playing a game of padel right away.”

The courts for padel are around 25 per cent smaller than tennis courts. Spiers said they hope to acquire more land to build additional indoor tennis and padel courts in Calgary.

There are three courts at Aforza and there are talks about building a six court facility in Toronto, according to Spiers.