Padel is quickly becoming more and more popular among Dutch athletes. The original Mexican racket game will even have an international tournament in Utrecht. Is sports really a hack?
You can see the padel game as a mixture of tennis and squash. You play on a smaller version of a tennis court, but the glass walls are part of the game, just like squash. The sport came from Mexico through Argentina to Spain. Padel is currently the most popular with 4 million players. In the Netherlands there are about 75,000 players and about a thousand padel stadiums.
In September, the first international padel tournament in the Netherlands will be held in Utrecht. 1,400 participants are already registered for pre-registration. Does the Dutchman have a chance to win? “The Dutch are up quickly. We’ll have to beat Spain, but they are by far the best,” Copa de Badel organizer Gert Jan van Dijen told RTL Nieuws.
Frank Neering of PadelNL expects the sport to become very big in the Netherlands. “There is still a huge amount in the barrel. In the next five years we will definitely break into the top five sports in the Netherlands. You can see it mainly in the number of sites. There are many jobs being built”, He told EditieNL.
Bronn (nen): RTL News
