Carnage on the courts: Kevin and Eve’s disastrous first game of padel
Can Kevin Fullerton complete a simple game of padel without inflicting grievous bodily harm on himself and others? Apparently not. We sent him to the courts, along with his balletic opponent Eve Johnston, to try the game that’s grown a loyal fanbase
My hands were drenched in blood within minutes of entering the padel court. The injury (the first of many) happened when I opened a pressurised tin of tennis balls and grazed my finger lightly on the serrated edge of the metal lid, slicing a cut that burst forth an estuary of gore across the luminescent yellow of our balls. Was it an omen of the hour-long session to come? A sign of the apocalypse? Birds have been known to fly into the glass screens surrounding a padel court, a deathly felling of animals that could have been ripped from the Book Of Revelation.
I imagined blood spraying from my finger in sprinkler-system streams while hundreds of pigeons cratered their skulls into our glass enclosure. Was this the fate that lay waiting for us? Probably not, since, as my editor had warned me at length, this is a lifestyle piece about trying a new sport and I need to ‘stop heralding the end times in copy’. And it became clear that I’ve got form for this sort of thing. ‘Only you could turn padel into a blood sport,’ my padel partner-in-crime Eve Johnston said to me with the air of a patient but ultimately disappointed teacher.
Padel is part of a new wave of sporting ‘fun’ in which two already extant activities are smooshed together with the zeal of a ye olde worldy alchemist. In this case the back-and-forth of tennis with the wall-hitting carnage of squash and tiny, lightweight rackets that resemble oversized ping pong paddles. It was invented in Mexico in 1969 and has grown steadily in popularity, but only relatively recently has it dug its ball-thwacking tenterhooks into the British populace.
The intention of the game is to serve a ball at waist level, which both Eve and I found almost impossible given the incredible power of a padel paddle, instinctively volleying our serves skyward like we were attempting to down passing airliners. On numerous occasions we managed to lob our balls above the glass barriers of the court, watching them roll into the grass beyond. One of our misplaced shots landed next to a large gym-dude who looked as though he regularly fell asleep to Joe Rogan’s podcast and had multiple revenue streams in cryptocurrency. ‘Sorry about that, mate,’ I amiably shouted at him as I leaned down to take the ball resting against his right foot. ‘Not good enough,’ he replied, tutting and wandering to the other side of the court.
I grew determined to impress the bigger boys of the padel province (incessant blood loss be damned), and so Eve and I upped our game. Within 20 minutes, we had grown accustomed to the seismic impact that even a flick of our wrists could have on the ball, slowing games down to account for the ruleset. But still the men on the opposite court glanced unimpressed at us, perhaps because of the blood-drenched tissue I was clutching during play.
Improving in parity, Eve and I developed from ‘incredibly poor’ to ‘poor-to-mediocre’ in the space of an hour, though we remained unsure of the game’s finer strategies. Our time almost up, we played a deciding match, or what’s known in padel as the ‘golden point moment’. This was a winner-takes-all situation, a clincher that would determine who takes home the blood-soaked tennis ball as a trophy (side note: if more trophies had a clear and obvious DNA source, we’d have cracked cloning by now). I served fitfully and Eve sprinted towards the ball with balletic grace, shooting it towards my throat and knocking me in the Adam’s apple. I doubled over and coughed for a few seconds. ‘You win,’ I heaved. Had we played padel? In a manner of speaking, yes. In a manner of competence, not even slightly.
Nonetheless, my padel pal enjoyed her time on the courts. ‘I had a good time,’ Eve told me. ‘At first, it was a struggle to get into, but it’s good fun if you don’t take it too seriously. I’d do it again.’ Injury-free, she wandered into the greying evening while I hopped on a bus to A&E for a blood transfusion.