Extreme padel boom in Italy — 100 courts i Palermo: ”No sport has had such success”

The success of padel in Italy is believed by many to be linked to the dark pandemic that hit the country hard. 

Many sports and activities were shut down entirely and forbidden to practice during the lockdown. Among the activities the authorities considered safe, a few Italians barely knew. One was padel.

— No sport in Italy has ever had such success in such a short time, said Salvatore Palumbo, a Sicilian former under-18 tennis champion and soon to become a padel instructor to the Guardian. 

According to data from the Padel National Observatory, since early 2020, the number of padel courts in Italy has increased fivefold, up to almost 5,000.

— Italians had to deal with one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. Playing sports was the only relief and a reason to leave the house, said Salvatore Palumbo. 

And when restrictions were lifted in the country, more and more Italians were curious about the new sport, which is perhaps becoming the country's second-biggest after football. 

— In Sicily, there were already dozens of padel players, but [later in] the pandemic, they became thousands. So last year, with a group of friends, we decided we had to seize this opportunity and invest in this sport, said Edoardo Scarlata, 38, a lawyer from Sicily’s capital, Palermo, to the Guardian. 

Today, Palermo has about 100 padel courts. Many of these have supplanted five-a-side football pitches.

This weekend also saw Italian Roberta Vinci, the five-time Grand Slam tennis winner, go through to the main round of the World Padel Tour's Miami Open when qualifying was held in Madrid. 

— I hope there will be a World Padel Tour event in Italy in the future," says the star, who lives in Milan to Padel Alto. 

The qualifying competition in Madrid was her first outside Italy. 

— There is a lot of growth in Italy. The difference with Spain is that it is more in power only in Italy. In Spain, people can think padel in a different way and play more calmly,