Building for the Euros: Tom’s Takeaways from Holland

It was one of the best organized tournaments I've been to. The centre court was incredible.

Tom, we are here with an episode today to recap your tournament in Holland, your training in Holland, how's that been going and I suppose look forward to the future. We got the Euros coming up. Exciting times. How did this week go for you both training in Holland, like with the Dutch team and then also competing in the Utrecht fip?

Yeah, it was a really good week. It was a nice combination of training and matches. To actually have training so focused leading up to a tournament was, I think, quite unique in the sense of. In the uk, it sometimes can be a bit of a struggle getting good matches in regularly before a tournament. And so it was such a luxury to be able to. To go there. I think we got there four days early and we literally just played matches in the morning, matches in the afternoon leading up to the tournament itself. And what a tournament. I mean, it was one of the best organized tournaments I've been to. The center court was incredible. I don't know if you saw some.

Of that stadium court and it's like three tiers of people watching around the court. Like, it looks amazing.

Yeah, it was. It was something I've never experienced before, particularly because I played in grandstand courts before in tennis. But to have that style of viewing, it really made you feel like the people watching was so close to the court. The atmosphere was amazing. There was music blaring out in between games. It was super cool. And, yeah, great week.

It's very different, isn't it, that to tennis?

I mean.

Well, you've played centre court at Wimbledon, so I mean, you're almost comparing to that. I mean, here the crowd is close, obviously, and it's a vertical stand, so it's. I mean, you almost feel like you're part of the atmosphere, don't you? Part of the crowd, yeah.

And I think what's really nice with Padel in general is that because it is such a new sport in a lot of emerging countries, I feel like people are kind of changing the playbook a little bit and trying to find ways of creating something new, something exciting for people to watch. And just the overall atmosphere was very different to tennis. Tennis sometimes can feel like you got to be quiet and in between points, no one wants to make any sound to put the players off. I know that some tournaments is different, but on the whole there's that. That feeling towards it. But I think what they've tried to do is create this new, interesting, fun sport that is great to Go and watch and you go and have, have some drinks there and you go there with friends and you, you know, you shout a little bit and you, you get involved and it was, yeah, just awesome. And as a player to play in those conditions, I didn't find it distracting at all, actually. I found it just fed off the energy.

Well, you almost separated by the glass in a way, so you are protected in terms of sound a little bit. I mean, I went to Queens and watched a little bit of tennis and I've forgotten what it's like. Like you're there in silence, the back of the court and you're whispering like, so you don't make any noise. And it's, it's a very kind of pretentious atmosphere, I think, whereas this paddle is a lot more sociable, a lot more, more relaxed. So in terms of the training this week, then you trained indoor, I think, right throughout the week and then the tournament was actually outdoor. How did you find your game? Like what was going well? What did you struggle with?

Yeah, the training side was super interesting. And for me, like I said, I haven't actually done many training weeks where I've had that many matches that much. Even though it was practice, competition, but that much training and competition in a row. I mean we were, it was quite funny because we were almost laughing with some of the players because we literally would arrive, we'd warm up and then it was like, right guys, straight in. You're going to play a set, straight in. And it was like that every single session, which is perfect for us because there were different players, different game styles, we had to adapt to different matches. And for me personally, I need that competitive training and those kind of match play situations, just a higher volume of those. So I really noticed even by like day two or day three, just getting that volume in consistently, like my game I could just see was improving versus, for example, when we train here, for example, we might have one good match a week and I still think there's benefit of that. But when you have a match in the morning, a match in the afternoon, a match the following morning, another match, they just, that that volume, somehow your, your kind of brain starts to adapt to it and you start seeing improvements in your game. And the Dutch team, I mean we, we obviously brought our, our men's team and the women's team came over as well to train and we trained with their men's team and I think we also trained with their under 23 team and the club we were at actually had their own academy so we could actually see that even the juniors training on the other court, there was juniors in the gym doing gym sessions. I mean they, they had a kind of full on academy here, which was great to see and you can start seeing it with some of the talent that's coming through there. Their under 23 team had some great talent on it. You look over at some of the juniors playing, you can see they're going to be very good as well. So they're. The Netherlands is really starting to develop that infrastructure and we'll see in the next few years that there'll be very good players coming through.

Well, I think the key is that they started a few years ago actually and they've got such good depth of players. I remember six or seven years ago it would be a little bit like here where there are a handful, but now there's so many players coming through and I think that in the UK at the moment there's such a buzz around Padel, everyone's super excited. Oh, this is great. And we've got some good and players are doing a lot of celeb stuff and there's lots in the media. But we are so far behind these other countries. Like you've talked there about a junior academy. I mean we're not at that stage with clubs in the uk. It's very difficult for us to get games at the highest level at the moment in the UK and it's. Yeah, I mean we're miles away and we're not talking about behind Sweden, Italy, Portugal, let alone Spain or Argentina. We're talking about like Netherlands and Belgium and these countries that are, they've just got more courts than us. They've had the game for. Well, they haven't had the game longer than us. We've had Padel in the country for quite a long time, but actually moving forward, it's only been moving forward relatively recently, but yeah, we are a long way away from that. And you probably see that like we essentially sent what, five or six of our strongest GB team to Holland and there you train with some of their team, some around of 23s and there's so many players, isn't there?

Yeah, it was really eye opening actually to see how far they've developed and to see the talent that's coming through. And I agree with you around the number of courts and they do have more courts than us, but I also think that, I don't think that the number of courts is a factor. I think it is just in general because obviously more people can access Courts and perhaps that affects the pricing and therefore it's more accessible and everything like that. But I also think that you can see they've put an infrastructure in place so early on that they've made it a priority to, to bring on juniors and to, to look at this almost from a grassroots level. And I think it was just so eye opening seeing that. I mean the uk, yes, it is growing and there's a lot of buzz around it. And now if you speak to people on the street and say, you know, do you know paddle? They go, yeah, yeah, I've seen it. Or you know, my friends play. But it's still a very seen as a bit of a social thing, whereas there, I'm sure there is a social aspect, but they've also put in the effort and investment and time into growing performance and growing the infrastructure that's needed to bring on players.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? It's like chicken and the egg. Which comes first in terms of courts? I mean for me I think you need a critical mass of courts because right now there's loads of tennis clubs that have just put in two padel courts. Well, that's not a full time coach. Like you're not getting a full time coach there. You're probably getting someone that could do a quarter of a full time coach in terms of hours. So coaches are either not getting the experience or not getting trained because you know that there aren't enough courts. Now there are some bigger facilities and their coaches are getting experience, but nowhere near what it is in Holland. I mean, I think Holland is near the 4,000 mark in terms of courts. Now obviously they've been working that for a number of years, but yeah, I think it comes together. So moving on now to your tournament. So how was that? How did you play? How are the matches? Tell us.

Well, match. That's how the tournament. That's how it went. Yeah. Not plural. No, so well, the training went really.

Well and it was really strong tournament.

It was a very strong tour. I mean one of the strongest I've ever played in. And I mean it was great just seeing the level that was there. I think there guys top 20, top 30 in the tournament. And yeah, it was, it was a tough draw. Sam and I played. We just got in main draw which shows you how strong it is. And it was, it was tricky. We had to, we had to adapt. There was some matches that were played indoors on a very fast conditions and then there was one center core, which is what we talked about, which Is what where I ended up playing. And that was outdoors, very slow. The wind was very strong in the Netherlands, which I was used to having, having lived there for a few years when I was a bit younger. So, yeah, very difficult conditions to adapt to, particularly all the training we'd done beforehand. So it was a challenge. I think it took us quite a long time, and, you know, me personally, took me a long time to adapt to those conditions. The outdoors, it was slow. When I trained here, I really trained majority of the time indoors. So that was a real learning for me is knowing how much you have to change your game when you. You do go from an indoor to an outdoor court.

I've got an interesting question for you, and one probably you can almost use your tennis experience for as well, is that when you move to new conditions, how much time do you think it takes to acclimatize or get used to those different conditions?

I feel like. Have you got a stat?

For me, I don't have a stat. I don't have a stat. Well, I was just thinking, you know, we've moved recently from the clay court tennis season to now grass court season, and then they're going to move on, on to hard. And here you're talking about indoor court to outdoor court. And I'm just thinking of the recent Red Bull as well. We had Buenos Aires, which is really slow court, then into Rome and Valladolid, which were very fast court. So it's just, it's interesting, you know, even at the recreational level sometimes, especially in the uk now it's summer, people are playing outdoors and indoors. Like, how long do you think it takes for you personally, and I think some people adapt more quickly. But how long do you think?

Well, let's just say that by the middle of the second set, I felt like I was starting to get used to the conditions. And it took me probably half a game, at least half a game to adapt. Now, I think in an ideal situation, if we look at tennis, for example, I think it's different because, yes, the surfaces change the game, but also as a tennis player, you typically have your own game that you're trying to put onto the other opponent. So whether you're a aggressive baseline or you're, you know, a grinder or you're a big servolier, you're not suddenly going to change that. If you go on a clay court or you go on a grass court now, you might adapt, you might stand a step closer to the baseline to be more aggressive, or you might change the odd thing but it doesn't change the game too much. Whereas if I look at the game we had here in the Netherlands, indoors, anything really that had been lobbed to us, anything that we could smash or hit fast, it was like the end of the point indoors, and we went to a court where our opponents were playing super high lobs to us. And the court was so slow one, it was so difficult to take those lobs out the air because the ball was moving so much. And if you could, the court was so slow that you couldn't really bring the ball back to your own side. And if you tried to go out for three metres, you could run out. So it really made the game almost like a complete opposite. And it really took the first. First set for me to try and figure out, okay, how are we actually going to finish the point? Because we would set up the point well, we'd hit some good volleys, then the lob would come up and it wouldn't be necessarily a great lob. But then I made a lot of mistakes in that first set because I would try and bring the ball back to my side and I couldn't quite get it out or I'd try and hit 3 meter, they would run out and win the point from it. So it was. Yeah, I don't know. I've tried. I've. I think I've dodged answering the question there, but I think it definitely takes me some time to get used to new conditions. And probably I would say a learning point for me is next time I am in those new conditions, in paddle, for example, moving indoors to outdoors, is to. To start thinking about these new shots, like really think, okay, now I'm outside, I'm going to use that high lob and now I'm outside, maybe I'm going to have to accept that I can't finish straight away and maybe I have to use the rulo more or maybe I have to use the fake smash. And I think in a way that's what I learned from this match, was that I was almost forced to learn that because I lost so many points from it. But hopefully next time I'll actually go in proactively thinking that it's an interesting one.

And I remember this conversation with jj, the performance psychologist, around almost taking yourself out of the equation, as in not thinking exactly where you are between the court, taking yourself out and almost looking at the court objectively and almost looking at your thoughts and your focus objectively, and our mental toughness course. I know there's a few videos in there that are talking about changing momentum and focusing and refocusing in some of the advanced videos. And it's a real skill to be able to be in the thick of it, but then also to take yourself out and go, right, this is not working in my game or that's not working or in these conditions, this is quite difficult to do. And I think at the pro level in Premier that they've got a coach at the change of ends and they can help with that. But for the majority of us, there's not a coach and you need to be able to have those skills. And that dissection of the game is equally important for recreational players. Like you're going to go some days and a certain shot is going to be off or the wind is going from one direction or your opponent smashing really well or whatever it might be. But it's almost being able to, to refocus and make sure you are concentrating on the right bits and thinking about your game.

Yeah, exactly that. I mean, we discussed in a previous podcast, didn't we, about the importance of resilience in winning matches. And like you just referenced there, the mental toughness course. I mean, that's such a great resource for players. I know. We'll put a link in the show notes if you're interested in checking that out. We've had amazing feedback from people that have tried that and they've just said it's just been like golden to helping them winning matches. And it's so true though, because if I look at, okay, if I almost take a step back from the matches that was played there and you know, we're now looking at players that are 20, 30, 40 in the world. The one factor that really a lot of those players had and got them through those matches was grit and resilience. And if I think of looking at that court that we played on, that slow court, really what we needed to do was accept that the conditions were super slow and just say, okay, normally we'd be able to finish the point in five, six, seven shots or when a lob goes up, we can finish. That's what we've been training and actually go, you know what if it takes 15, 20 shots, 30 shots to win a point, that's what we're going to do. Every single point. And we had to almost accept that. And I think we were a little bit too slow. And it just reminded me of what we talked about last time with resilience of yes, there's a technical and a tactical aspect to all of Padel, but I feel like underlying all of that is this mental aspect.

Yeah, definitely. And even more, I think at the recreational game, like, how many times do players come off and we say, oh, how was the first set? Oh, I just, I just couldn't hit the ball. We're like, you're like, no, no, no. I've had sessions with you, I can see you hit the ball. No, no, no. You know, it's like the self esteem or the, the confidence in shots just completely vanishes sometimes and it's really important that you're able to turn that round. And it's at every level right the way up to premier and you see that every week in their tournaments. So it's, you know, a good move for us now with Euros coming up, is to focus on that mental resilience. And also, well, we're going to go two or three days early to make sure we get used to those conditions in Madrid. At altitude. It will be fast, so you'll be able to kick the ball out there.

Yeah, well, this, this is what was quite interesting because I actually didn't realize that the tournament in the Netherlands had an outdoor center court. So it was, actually, it wasn't until the day before that I was told, oh, by the way, you're playing outdoors.

It'S really unusual that to have indoor fast and then one outdoor slow court.

No, I mean, it was, it was one of those, it was such a cool experience that I loved it. But yeah, it was just another, it was another chance to take some learnings in and like we just talked about there, having some resilience, grit, adaptability, all of those mental aspects that are so important for players of all levels. So it was, it was a great week and look forward to the Euros.

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