Padel School Academy set to serve up UK first at Padel Maidenhead

Tom and Sandy Farquharson (left) from The Padel School have created an academy at Padel Maidenhead

--

Two brothers who formed ‘The Padel School’ nearly a decade ago offering hints and tips for players looking to improve their on-court game, have embarked on a project which could see Padel Maidenhead become a centre of excellence in the UK.

Tom and Sandy Farquharson announced last month that they would be creating a ‘Padel School Academy’ at the Maidenhead centre in Braywick Park, with the aim of improving coaching and talent identification to bring through the next generation of potential GB players.

Sandy has played Padel for Great Britain for more than 10 years and is now the national performance coach, while Tom is a current GB member and recently helped the country qualify for the Euro Cup in October.

They launched The Padel School, an online Padel training platform, nearly a decade ago and it has grown online and on social media/You Tube.

There are three strands to the work they do. The first offers online training videos for players and this has grown in popularity over its various social platforms. The Padel School now has 600,000 followers and its videos were viewed more than 100m times last year. This year, their coaching videos have been seen by more than 80m people hoping to improve their technique in what is one of the fastest growing racket sports in the world.

There are only around a thousand Padel courts across the UK, but there’s a bit of hype surrounding the sport and many people are finding their way to a padel court from more traditional racket sports such as tennis and squash.

Aside from the videos they put out on a weekly basis, the Padel School also offers more tailored online training programmes for players at www.Padelschool.com while the third arm of what they do - and what’s going to happen in Maidenhead - is the creation of Padel School Academies.

Padel Maidenhead will be the third of those to be established with the first opening at The Replay Club in Boynton Beach, Florida and the second opening at Coaliton Padel in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Speaking to the Advertiser, Tom said he feels Maidenhead is the ideal location for the school to launch its first UK academy.

He said “It’s one of the fastest growing racket sports in the world and in the UK. It’s growing massively.

“Essentially, what we’ll be doing is training the coaches at Padel Maidenhead in our own unique training methodology.

“They have a great facility at Maidenhead, and we want to bring a high level of coaching quality to the club from beginner to performance level training programmes.

“It will be our first academy in the UK and it’s a big milestone for ourselves. Hopefully it will be good for Padel in the area as well. We’ll be training the coaches to coach adults and juniors and as the sport grows in this country, this infrastructure we’re helping to bring in at Maidenhead will help bring through the next generation of junior players.

“We’ll be working with the coaching team and getting them trained up. We’ll go in and do training for a series of days but it’s not a one-off thing. There will be ongoing coaching support from an online training programme.

“They’ll also have access to us, and we’ll be doing continuous coach training with them as we go. They are going to be upskilled continually rather than being certified after a few days and then left to it.

“Sandy has played the sport a bit longer than me. He competed for the GB men’s team for the past 10 years and is now the coach. I’m also on the men’s team and we both transitioned from tennis.

“We’ve made that transition and in this country a lot of players are doing that. It’s also about helping these ex-tennis players and squash players adapt quickly to Padel.

“As junior programmes are implemented a lot of players are coming from these other racket sports. In Spain someone might have played Padel their whole life but it’s so new in this country, players will be transitioning.

“Both the men and women’s team both recently qualified for the main draw of the Euros Cup, which is in October. That’s the top eight teams. We’re relatively strong for where the sport is but as the sport grows in the UK and there are more junior programmes in place, we’ll hopefully climb up that ladder in the European standings.”