For about 4 years now various friends have been mentioning, demanding, imploring that I try padel tennis, and/or pickleball. “It’s the best!!!”, they yell. “You’ll love it!!!!”, they say. “It’s just like tennis but… errrrr… not tennis!!!!”

Ok, so just to clarify and remove any ambiguity, its like this: you want me to stop playing tennis, which I love, adore and play every single weekend and have done, passionately, for about 40 years, and instead play some alternative version of ‘not tennis’, loosely based on the game I know and love, just because ‘it’s different’. Is that the gist? Or how about: so I have to give up tennis to appease a bunch of venture capitalists who’ve invested billions in ‘the next big things’ and soon all the tennis clubs will be steamrollered out the way so they can build more Padel courts which are smaller and have a much bigger yield. Because you can play tennis in any park for a fiver. But you can’t play Padel for much less than 60 quid an hour. Ooooooh, go the VCs, licking their lips, so that’s 12 tennis courts, making 17 Padel courts, each bringing in £60 an hour, seven days a week, half under cover… THAT MAKES A SHITLOAD OF CASH!!!!

My little tennis club in my local park is a prime example. It was called ‘The Angela Buxton Tennis Centre’ since she opened it in about 1958, just after Angela Buxton made it to the Wimbledon final. Lost, obviously, but SHE WAS THERE! Then later becoming the Northway Tennis Centre. Its lovely. Just four courts in a beautiful park. The new ownership of which has now received preliminary approval to be converted into…

Fucking Padel courts. Obviously. I applied to become a Padel player but Barnet Council refused. On the grounds that I’m a massive asset to the game of tennis, an exemplary and elite player of outstanding skill and beauty.

So here, in Tenerife, we joined a Padel session at our resort. They have courts, it’s a Spanish game, ffs, they should have courts. And we played. Mel and I with an ‘instructor’. Hit the ball that way, there its out, here its in, you can bounce it off the back wall and play it. Go.

It’s like tennis but… not tennis. It’s tennis for those who can’t play the real game. It’s a poor facsimile of a beautiful game. Bit shorter, less running round, very Spanish. Funny little racquet, almost a paddle. Hmmmm.

If I may say, candidly; it’s a game for poofs. For lowlifes with no talent, no skill, not enough fitness for tennis. Criminals will like it, paedophiles, clergymen in general, anyone with more than one letter of ‘LGBTQ…’, and Kier Starmer probably loves it. Plays with Kim Jong Un, Jeremy Corbyn and Putin.

Yet I absolutely hate to even say it: it was fun. And enjoyable. But sadly I’m a man of (very few) principle(s), so I won’t be enduring that again. Other than this afternoon. Possibly tomorrow.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx