How to start playing padel

Unlike tennis, padel lets you rally on day one. The court is small, the racket is short and frameless, the ball is slow. The walls help too: a ball that would be out on a tennis court comes back off the glass and stays in play, so a beginner's mistake doesn't end the point immediately.

That means you can spend an hour on court with friends before your first lesson. But being able to play and learning properly are different things, and the order below is for the second one.

Both. Play only matches and you'll be making the same mistake three months from now; take only lessons and you'll never learn to use what you know under pressure.

The ratio that works in practice: one lesson a week, one or two casual games. You don't have to take lessons alone — group lessons of four are cheaper and let you try what you learned in a match straight away.

• Month one: stance, grip, reading a ball off the wall
• Month two: volleys and serve
• Month three: bandeja and lob — the pair that makes padel its own sport

What a first-timer finds hard is rarely striking the ball; it is predicting where the ball will go. A ball off the glass runs against tennis instinct: in tennis you move behind the ball, in padel you move to where the ball will arrive and wait for it.

A good coach teaches no shots in the first hour. They watch three things: how you hold the racket, where your feet are when you strike, and whether you can wait for a ball off the wall. Until those settle, shot variety is memorisation.

Turning up alone is fine. Most clubs run beginner open sessions or introductory classes, and a group lesson of four is both cheaper and lets you try what you learned in a match within the same hour.

Short answer: shoes. Most clubs rent rackets, balls come with the court, but shoes are personal and most injuries start there.

Padel shoes are built for lateral movement; playing in running shoes is the fastest route to a rolled ankle. Tennis or indoor court shoes are fine for the first few months.

Don't rush the racket. Playing a few weeks on rentals and noticing what feels comfortable leads to a far better decision than buying an expensive racket on day one.

Padel courts are multiplying fast in Turkey, but they're not on every corner yet. The club finder on this site pulls the nearest courts from OpenStreetMap data — your location is never stored, it only goes into the query.

Once you've found a court, the real problem is finding players. Most clubs run a WhatsApp group and will point you at people near your level, so ask on your first visit.

The most common beginner mistake is trying to hit hard. Points in padel are won by putting your opponent in a bad position and waiting for the error, not by power.

Order your learning like this: first keep the ball in play, then stand in the right place, and only then add shot variety. Everyone who breaks that order plateaus around month six.

• Waiting for the ball off the wall — don't rush it, the ball comes to you
• Getting to the net and staying there — padel is a net game
• The lob — the only shot that pushes opponents back off the net
• A well-placed bandeja instead of a hard smash

Every one of these happens in the first months and every one is fixable. Catching them early is easier than unpicking a habit six months in.

• Running towards a ball off the wall — it is already coming to you, and going to meet it leaves it behind you
• Swinging wide as in tennis — the racket is short and the space is tight, a compact controlled stroke is enough
• Reaching the net and not holding it — retreating after one ball past you ends the net game entirely
• Smashing hard at every chance — the ball comes back off the glass and hands the opposition an easy one
• Not talking to your partner — a ball down the middle is settled by calling it, and two players going for it loses the point
• Dismissing the lob — it is the only way to push a good pair back off the net

Padel looks gentle, but most of the movement is lateral, with sudden stops and turns. The risk collects in three places: the ankle, the shoulder and the elbow.

The ankle comes straight back to footwear. A running sole is built for forward motion, and during a lateral step the foot slides across it. A flat court shoe is the first thing to buy.

The shoulder takes its load from smashes and the bandeja. Starting cold brings soreness in the first months; five minutes of arm circles and soft hitting on court removes most of it.

The elbow usually traces back to grip and to too heavy a racket. For a beginner a light racket is always the right call: a heavy one returns more power, but until the technique exists to use that power it is simply added load.

Padel needs four people, and a lopsided match ruins the evening for everyone. Play with three people far better than you and you never touch the ball; play with three far weaker and you learn nothing.

That's what the level test is for: three minutes, calibrated so you don't overrate yourself, with an uncertainty range attached. Being able to give a number instead of "intermediate" in a club group meaningfully improves your odds of landing in the right match.