Marbella is synonymous for the uncountable hours of sunlight throughout the year, which makes for a spectacular environment for outdoor sports, also known for its great places to enjoy relaxing walks: beachside on the Golden Mile, in the surrounding mountains and through Puerto Banus with its exclusive boutiques, marina, restaurants etc.. Marbella is also renowned for its outdoor sports, boosting an individual’s serotonin levels to the max. From a wide variety of sports available such as: golf, football, volley ball, tennis and water sports, today we will talk about the relationship that Marbella has with one of the most fashionable and trending sports – Paddle.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with this sport, paddle is a sport that has been practiced since the 80’s. Paddle is a doubles game (sporadically it can be played as a singles game but it is extremely difficult to play) it consists of 3 fundamentals: the ball, the racquet and the court. Paddle combines the best parts of various racquet sports such as tennis and squash. The court is somewhat smaller than a tennis court and it has tall walls at either side.
Paddle has developed tremendously in many European countries; Great Britain, Portugal and Spain and also in other parts of the world including Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile. The World Paddle Tour (WPT) is one of the most famous worldwide competitions for Paddle, as well as the World Paddle Championships.
The tight relationship that Marbella has with the sport of paddle is because our city was the starting point for the game. In 1974 Alfonso de Hohenlohe was invited to Mexico to visit his dear friend Enrique Corcuera. During his stay he was interested in trying one of the new sports that his friend had invented, incorporating to the game of Fronton an extra 3mtrs high wall, adding a net in the middle and enclosing the sides of the court in with mesh. It was played with wooden racquets and became the game of Paddle-Tennis. His great enthusiasm for this new sport was clear, on his return to Spain and after having perfected a few details on the court, learnt the rules and studied the game well, he constructed the two first courts in Spain in the Marbella Club. He began to encourage his friends to play the game, therefore promoting the sport. The new trend that this game created in a short space of time began to attract famous athletes from the tennis world including Manolo Santana, who began to organize paddle tournaments and promoted paddle throughout the Costa del Sol to the effect that many clubs began to build their own paddle courts.
In 1975, a great friend of Alfonso de Hohenlohe who was also a regular in Marbella at the time, Julio Menditegui an Argentinean millionaire, was witness to this new sport and decided to take the game with him to Argentina. Some of the best Argentinean Polo players happened to be in Marbella at the same time as him and learnt how to play the game. When they returned to Argentina they promoted the game as a fun and easy sport to play, also explaining their low cost and easy to install facilities which were needed to setup. The sport took off and became the second most practiced sport in the country.
Here we can see how Marbella as a city and culture is a trendsetter and a starting point for many new ideas. Paddle is a relatively new sport but it has had an enormous impact in the media and has grown tremendously since the 80’s, proof of this is that the Puente Romano is advertised globally through “Pulse Play” as one of the best paddle and tennis academies in the world. This is no surprise, as we are aware of the amazing work that the academy does to train and educate the up and coming tennis and paddle champions, Marbella is extremely proud to be involved in this.
Marbellas surrounding areas boast many paddle courts with unbeatable qualities and facilities, such as on the Golden Mile: in the Marbella Club Hotel, the Puente Romano Hotel, the Manolo Santana, they all host various paddle tournaments including the World Paddle Tour and the Open Costa del Sol which have both been considered the best tournaments of 2013. National level tournaments and competitions have been hosted in Marbella including the “Paddle Forces” which took place in San Pedro de Alcantara in 2015.
Summing up, we can see that Marbella, City of Paddle, offers many more outdoor activities than maybe once believed, when thinking of Marbella as a beach and golf destination. Let’s not forget that if you are looking for an apartment or home in the area, Marbella Unique Properties is proud to help in that search, whether you are a paddle fanatic and or you are thinking of trying playing for the first time, we can help you find a property in a development that includes a paddle court. Through the years, developments and urbanisations of both villas and apartments have began to include paddle courts in the grounds adding to the exclusivity of the complexes. Who knows maybe soon we will be inaugurating the first “Paddle Open hosted by Marbella Unique Properties”.
Marbella Unique Properties