Ex-pro tennis player Sandy Farquharson breaks down why tennis habits fail in padel. Baseline camping and chip-and-charge tactics don't work on a smaller court. Padel demands different positioning: use the lob to push opponents back and create space for your net player.
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Look at this, a beautiful British summer day. Don't often get this. Players are sitting outside watching the tennis, not normal for this part of the world. And we're going to take you inside to the Padel Club and show you some things that are normal in tennis but not normal in Padel. Camping at the baseline. Many recreational players from tennis don't like to volley in tennis, so they don't like to volley in Padel, so they camp out behind the service line, they're hitting their ground strokes from the back here, and when their partner goes to net, they don't go with them, and it's hugely frustrating for the partner because this player is just staying at the back of the court. Now in padel, you can't really win the points from the back of the court, so as a pair, that's not going to work. Myself and other ex-pro tennis players almost have the reverse. We love to chip and charge. So when you see an ex-college player or an international player come to the padel court, often you see them chipping and they charge to net on any ball, and that's almost the reverse because they come in with high risk and therefore are not successful at higher levels but often get away with it at the beginning. The other is the intention from the back. Often tennis players from the back of the court are trying to hit passing shots where they hit through their opponents like you might do in tennis, or they are lobbing in desperation. They get in a really difficult position and they try and lob as a defense mechanism. Both of these aspects work for tennis, it's how you play in tennis, but in padel there aren't passing shots because you have smaller gaps between your opponents and a bigger gap behind them. So actually in padel, the lob as an attack is a great way to put your opponents on the back foot, to push them to the back of the court, and allow you time to get forward.
