Jemima Kelly: my week at Rafa Nadal’s school of padel

{"text":[[{"start":6.48,"text":"I am sitting in silence in a large, air-conditioned waiting room at Palma de Mallorca airport on a hot Sunday with about 12 awkward teenagers. Not your standard issue of awkward teenager, mind, but the athletic, international-rich-kid variety — box-fresh trainers, Rimowa luggage, Babolat racket bag, toned, tanned limbs. The kind I would have been both rather jealous of and very intimidated by as a teen (and still am a bit, to be honest)."}],[{"start":34.66,"text":"I remember that I am no longer 14 and pull myself together, turning to two boys sitting close to me. “So are you guys here for the tennis programme?”"}],[{"start":43.82,"text":"We are about to be driven about 30 miles due east to Manacor, the second-biggest town on the island and the birthplace of Rafa Nadal, the greatest clay-court tennis player of all time. Specifically, we are driving to the Rafa Nadal Academy, a sprawling sports complex and training centre set up by the man himself 10 years ago, which has been so successful that today it has outposts everywhere from Kuwait to Brazil, Hong Kong and Greece. As well as tennis, it now offers training in one of the world’s fastest-growing sports: padel."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":76.44,"text":"Most people — both adults and children — attend these academies for a week or two to brush up on their skills (or lack thereof). But at this flagship Mallorca branch, there is also a high-level year-round residential school for promising young tennis players that has already produced several global stars."}],[{"start":94.08,"text":"“For padel,” replies a 15-year-old Italian boy with a mop of curly brown hair. “For the Rodri Ovide camp.” The strapping 17-year-old Chinese boy sitting beside him says he is too — and they both want to be professional players. A nauseous feeling starts to enter my body. I’m also here for the camp being led by Rodri Ovide, one of the world’s most successful padel coaches, and I had not pictured my fellow campers quite this way. “Are all of you here for the Rodri Ovide camp?” I ask the group. Yes, all of them."}],[{"start":124.4,"text":"Oh God. As I sit in the front of our transfer car and we drive across sun-scorched farmland, I start to imagine the headlines. “My week at a padel camp for teenagers”. “Padel and the art of total humiliation”. We drive up to a school-like building where dozens of sporty youths are swarming and I start getting out of the car."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":143.84,"text":"“No — you are coming with me,” the driver says, ushering me back into my seat. About 90 seconds later, I am standing in the check-in area for the Rafa Nadal Residence behind several full-sized adults, some of them not even particularly athletic-looking. It turns out that Ovide will be splitting his time between two simultaneous camps — one for teens and the other for adults. I have never felt more grateful to be standing in a queue."}],[{"start":170.84,"text":"Subjecting yourself to more than four hours of group-based exercise every day in 35C heat, as a photographer captures you at your sweatiest, ungainliest and game-face-iest, is not everyone’s idea of a fun holiday — even when it is with people of your own age and fitness level."}],[{"start":188,"text":"But if you’re the kind of person who fancies yourself as a could’ve-been athlete — or at least someone (like me) who knows they didn’t ever have what it takes but who slightly wishes they did — then what is on offer at the Rafa Nadal Academy becomes quite compelling: essentially, the chance to be a real-life athlete for a week."}],[{"start":205.92,"text":"“We want people to feel like professional players,” Maribel Nadal, the 37-year-old younger sister of Rafa and deputy manager of the academy, tells me when I sit down with her on my first day — she in a floaty white dress, me in my padel gear. “You’re in an atmosphere with other athletes and people who love sports, and you can do everything that a professional would do,” she says. “There’s the tennis or padel, and then there’s fitness training, physiotherapy, nutrition and all the other activities related to sports.”"}],[{"start":234.44,"text":"Maribel tells me that while her brother is an investor in and “global ambassador” for padel-booking app Playtomic, and has been reported to be “obsessed” with padel, Rafa doesn’t really play it — it was added to the offering here five years ago simply because of the “synergies” with tennis, as well as high demand. Maribel, on the other hand, is a very keen player, and tells me that these days she plays padel more than tennis — not so she can be better than her brother at something, she assures me, but because her friends all play it and she finds it more fun."}],[{"start":265.64,"text":"Often described as a cross between tennis and squash, padel — invented in Mexico but popularised in Spain — probably has more in common with the former: it is played across a net, using the same scoring system, with a ball resembling a tennis ball (though it’s less pressurised and therefore less bouncy). The main squash-like aspect is that the walls at the back and sides are used, but unlike either game, the padel racket is solid rather than strung and it is always played in doubles."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":568.71,"text":"And what padel has, more than any sport I know of, is the ability — probably because of its highly social aspect and how easy it is to play in tournaments — to get people utterly hooked (myself included). The Lawn Tennis Association estimates that there are now some 1mn people playing padel in the UK, up from 860,000 in 2025 and 400,000 in 2024; in the US, the Sports & Fitness Industry Association reports that it is the country’s fastest-growing activity, up 14.5 per cent over the 12 months to June. I started playing just over a year ago and since then have spent more on court bookings, coaching sessions, membership fees and padel equipment than I care to tot up."}],[{"start":569.21,"text":"“Padel players in particular are addicted to the sport,” says Chris Moore, whose American company, Privé Padel sells a “passport” that allows members to book courts at clubs and luxury hotels as they travel. “They have to play whenever they can, wherever they are.”"}],[{"start":569.71,"text":"One of my favourite things about the club where I play in east London is the sense of community, but padel is sometimes considered an elitist, even gauche, sport for those who aren’t good enough at tennis. I would take issue with most of that. But in the US in particular, Moore explains, padel is positioned as a high-end sport, partly because of how expensive it is to play in cities such as New York (in Brooklyn, one club charges $293 per hour for court bookings), partly to differentiate it from pickleball (more like a cross between tennis, badminton and ping pong), and partly because of its popularity among A-listers such as David Beckham and Serena Williams."}],[{"start":570.21,"text":"Padel tourism is growing fast too. These days, you can book yourself a padel stag do (or hen do), a padel staycation, or a padel trip for singles. Privé Padel’s latest trip, costing $4,200 per person plus flights, is a visit to Bordeaux that combines wine tasting with padel — not a pairing I would have thought of myself. Data Intelo, a market research company, estimates the industry was worth $1.8bn in 2025 and reckons that will grow to $5.6bn by 2034."}],[{"start":570.71,"text":"But there tend to be two options: either you go on a nice holiday and play a bit of padel here and there — or you go to a serious padel camp and compromise on the holiday part. The Rafa Nadal Academy seems to be the exception to this rule. Not only am I being trained by one of the world’s premier coaches, but I am on an island full of beautiful beaches, and the accommodation and facilities are top-notch. I am a particular fan of the spa, which has two saunas, a steam room, and various hot tubs and cold plunges, while the fully kitted-out gym, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, sports masseurs and on-site physiotherapists all help with my sense that, this week, I really am an athlete."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":571.21,"text":"And then there’s the fact that I’m training alongside the pros. An unexpected highlight of my stay comes from the fact that world tennis number two Alexander Zverev is staying here, and I can watch him training for the US Open (which he would go on to win) from my balcony. One day, Rafa Nadal himself comes to watch Zverev — he lives nearby, in Porto Cristo, and visits the club often — which provokes a great deal of excitement."}],[{"start":571.71,"text":"My training day starts at 8.30am, when we are put through a 45-minute warm-up consisting of both fairly generic exercises and padel-specific ones — gruelling, but I don’t get so much as a knee twinge all week, so I reckon it’s worth it. After a 15-minute break, it’s time for two hours of padel training, which often takes place in the searing Mallorcan sunshine on one of the nine outdoor padel courts. We then get a three-and-a-half-hour break, during which we can relax and have lunch in the buffet Wimbledon restaurant (for a bit extra, you can have an à la carte meal in the Roland Garros, which feels like an expression of Rafa’s preference for clay). At 3pm, we have an hour-long tactical talk on a different topic each day, and then at 4.30pm it’s time for our final 90-minute burst of padel: a competitive match this time in the same group of four that we stay in all week."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":572.21,"text":"Alongside me there’s a 52-year-old English female fitness coach who lives in New Zealand, a 40-year-old male Indian programmer living in Germany, and a 22-year-old female Ukrainian business student living in Austria. We are not the most obviously compatible group — the 22-year-old has a tendency to get stroppy; the 40-year-old wants to ask a huge number of questions; the 52-year-old just wants “to be chilled” — but by the end we have found a way to all get along somehow."}],[{"start":564.08,"text":"I had imagined that Ovide — a 47-year-old Argentine who played professionally for more than a decade before becoming a coach to top players including women’s number one Gemma Triay — would be only an occasional presence at the camp, lending a touch of star quality. But I am impressed at how much time we spend with him on court. Each group has its own main coach, but Ovide roams around observing us and interrupting when we are doing something particularly well or especially badly."}],[{"start":592.76,"text":"He seems to take a rather utilitarian approach to the game. “It’s not about enjoying, it’s not about if you’re happy with the ball or not, it’s about the result,” he tells us during a training session he has called “la mente del jugador”, the player’s mind. (You don’t have to speak Spanish here but it helps and if yours is rusty, it will improve over the week.) “It’s a mental battle in which you have to be the player not to make the first mistake.”"}],[{"start":617.44,"text":"The idea that being good at the sport is about not making stupid unforced errors is drilled into us throughout the week. “The best advice is to try to stop playing badly,” Ovide tells us. “No fantasy shots.”"}],[{"start":630,"text":"Perhaps what he is getting at is less about utilitarianism, and more about the fact that padel is an exercise in tempering the ego — something I have observed often as I have tried to resist the urge to smash every ball as hard as I can (terrible padel) and forced myself to hit yet another lob (great padel, if used correctly). My ego had hoped that I would come back from the camp and wow everyone at my club, but I am defeated roundly on my first game back. Slowly, over the following games, I notice some improvement, but it turns out that spending six days at a training camp, fun and exhilarating and exhausting though it is, can only get you so far. So I guess I’ll just have to, er, keep padelling."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":672.96,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":689.36,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1789812495_5941.mp3"}