History of Padel: Who Invented It and How It Spread

Padel was invented in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera at his house in Acapulco, Mexico, when a lack of space for a full tennis court led him to build a 20 by 10 meter (65.6 by 32.8 ft) court enclosed by 3 meter (9.8 ft) walls with a tennis net in the middle. The first rules were written by his wife Viviana, and the court he built is the same size as every court in the sport today.

• The sport reached Spain in 1974 through Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe in Marbella, and Argentina in 1975 through Julio Menditeguy.
• The International Padel Federation was founded in Madrid on 12 July 1991 by the Argentine, Spanish and Uruguayan associations.
• Padel is not an Olympic sport and has no IOC recognition, despite inclusion in several continental games.

Who Invented Padel and When?

Enrique Corcuera invented padel in 1969 at Las Brisas, his house in Acapulco, Mexico, according to the International Padel Federation’s own history. A tennis enthusiast without enough space for a full-size court, he built a smaller one of 20 by 10 meters enclosed by 3 meter walls with a tennis net in the center, and the Federation describes this as the first padel court in history. Its dimensions were determined by the size of the plot rather than by any theory of how the game should play, and every court built since has kept them.

The walls were the innovation, whatever the reason for them. Enclosing the court solved Corcuera’s space problem and created a sport in which the ball rebounds and stays live, which is what separates padel from every game it borrows from. The Federation attributes the walls to the constraints of the site; more colorful accounts about balls disappearing into neighboring gardens circulate widely without appearing in any governing body document.

The first rules came from Viviana Corcuera, his wife and a former Miss Argentina, who the Federation records drafted them and presented them to him as a birthday gift. The sport was named Paddle Corcuera at first, which is the root of the naming confusion that still follows it, and the pronunciation page traces how paddle became padel and why English speakers still say the original.

How Did Padel Spread to Spain and Argentina?

Spain got padel in 1974 through a houseguest. Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe spent summer holidays at Corcuera’s home in Acapulco and built padel courts at the Marbella Club Hotel in Andalusia on returning, according to the Federation, and a plaque at the hotel dates the first court there to 1974. Marbella in the 1970s was a resort for European aristocracy and the international wealthy, which gave the sport an unusually well connected first audience and explains how quickly it moved from one court to a national game.

Argentina followed within a year. Julio Menditeguy, an Argentine member of Hohenlohe’s tennis club in Marbella, took the sport home in 1975, and the Federation records the first Argentine courts at Club Tortugas, the Mar del Plata Ocean Club and other cities. Argentina became the sport’s second heartland and remains the source of a large share of its professional players, and the two countries between them defined how padel is coached and played.

Spain and Argentina developed the sport in parallel for two decades and eventually had to reconcile the results. The Federation records that in 1997 Spain and Argentina reached an agreement in Barcelona to unify the rules and officially standardize the name padel, which had been spelled paddle in Argentina. By the end of the 1990s, 11 national federations existed, five in Europe and six in the Americas.

When Was the International Padel Federation Founded?

The Federation was founded in Madrid on 12 July 1991 by the Argentine, Spanish and Uruguayan padel associations, a date and set of founders confirmed both by its history page and by its own bylaws, which record the public deeds signed before a notary with protocol number 2486. Three national associations founding an international federation is a small beginning, and it reflects how concentrated the sport still was 22 years after its invention.

Competition followed immediately. The Federation established the World Padel Championships as a biennial event, with the first edition held in Spain in 1992, in Madrid with the finals staged at the Expo 92 World Fair in Seville. Tying the first world championship to a world’s fair was a statement of ambition for a sport that at that point existed seriously in three countries.

Growth since has been steep and is measured differently by different bodies. The Federation’s World Padel Report 2025 counts more than 35 million active players, 24,600 clubs and 77,300 courts across 150 nations and 20 dependent territories, with 14,355 courts built during 2025 alone. The Playtomic and Strategy& Global Padel Report for 2026 counts 20,900 clubs, 58,300 courts and 19.4 million players for the same period, describing its own estimate as deliberately conservative against the Federation’s. Both are named, dated reports from credible organizations, and the gap between them is a reminder that padel participation figures are estimates rather than a census.

What Happened to World Padel Tour and Premier Padel?

The professional game consolidated between 2022 and 2024 after a period with two competing tours. World Padel Tour, established in 2013, was the sport’s leading professional circuit for a decade. In February 2022, the Federation announced a new official tour, Premier Padel, launched immediately with a major strategic partnership with Qatar Sports Investments, which set up a direct conflict between a federation-backed tour and the established commercial one.

The conflict was resolved by acquisition. On 24 August 2023, Qatar Sports Investments and Damm, the owner of the company organizing World Padel Tour, announced an agreement for QSI to acquire the tour, with both circuits to be unified as a single global professional tour called Premier Padel under Federation governance from 2024. Reuters reported the deal the same day, noting that the separate tours would run to the end of 2023 before unification. Spain’s competition regulator, the CNMC, approved the purchase with commitments in March 2024.

The outcome is a single professional structure with the governing body at the center of it, which is unusual among racket sports and gives the Federation more control over the calendar than most federations have. It also means the money behind professional padel is concentrated in one investor group, and the sport’s competitive calendar now runs through a single commercial entity.

Is Padel an Olympic Sport?

Padel is not an Olympic sport and has not been granted recognition by the International Olympic Committee. What it has is recognition from several continental multi-sport bodies, which is a different and lesser thing frequently reported as if it were the same.

The continental progress is genuine. The Olympic Council of Asia included padel as an official sport at the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games, announced in November 2025, and the Federation’s own release notes that this follows inclusion in the European Games in 2023, the South American Games in 2022, and the Mediterranean Games in 2026. The Federation describes this as padel continuing its pathway toward Olympic inclusion, which is an accurate description of a process rather than a claim to have completed it.

Brisbane 2032 is the target being discussed, and it is aspirational. The Olympic Council of Asia’s own announcement described its decision as paving the way for potential inclusion at those Games. Anyone reading that padel is an Olympic sport, or that it has been confirmed for 2032, is reading something ahead of the record. The Federation’s rules and structure meet the requirements a governing body needs to pursue inclusion, and the sport’s global spread supports the case, but the decision has not been made.

When Did Padel Reach the United States?

Padel arrived in the United States in 1993, brought by Ed Thompson and Felipe Arnold to the Houstonian Hotel Club and Spa in Houston, Texas, according to USA Padel. The pair founded the American Paddle Association as the sport’s first national governing body, the United States played its first international match against Canada and Mexico in 1993, and the country competed in its first FIP World Cup in 1994. Mike May renamed the American Paddle Association the United States Padel Association in 2007, and the body renamed itself again to USA Padel in 2026.

Three decades produced very little and the last five years produced most of it. There were around 180 courts in the United States in 2022. The Misitrano Consulting State of Padel in the US Report 2025 counted 688 courts operating across 31 states as of the second quarter of 2025. USA Padel, citing the 2026 SFIA Topline Participation Report, states that just over 1,000 courts were open across 31 states as of April 2026 and that 1,073,000 Americans played padel during 2025, of whom 238,000 played eight or more times.

Those court counts come from different organizations counting at different times and using different definitions, and they are not fully reconcilable, which is worth knowing before treating any single figure as authoritative. What all of them agree on is the direction and the pace. American padel is roughly where Spanish padel was several decades ago in absolute terms and moving considerably faster, and the current picture of the sport is one of clubs opening faster than players can be taught.

Padel History FAQs

Sources

International Padel Federation, history of padel

International Padel Federation, bylaws

International Padel Federation, QSI and Damm agreement on the acquisition of World Padel Tour

USA Padel, padel surpasses one million players in the United States

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