5 Tips For Your First Padel Match

Your first padel match can be nerve-wracking. Maybe you have had a few casual hits with a friend, watched some clips online, or just booked a court on impulse. The good news is that padel is one of the most beginner-friendly sports there is. You will get a rally going in your first ten minutes, which is more than most people manage in their first tennis lesson.

The catch is that the things which make padel easy to start are also the things new players get wrong for months. Here are five that will save you a lot of frustration.

1. Let the wall do the work

This is the single biggest difference between padel and tennis, and it is the one almost every beginner fights against.

When a ball goes past you towards the back glass, your instinct is to chase it and hit it early. Do not. If the ball has bounced once on your side of the court, it is still live after it comes off the glass. Turn, follow it, let it rebound, and hit it on the way back out.

The wall slows the ball down and gives you time you did not think you had. Balls that feel like lost causes are usually the easiest ones to return, once you stop panicking about them. Spend your first session deliberately letting balls go to the back wall, even when you could have volleyed them. It will feel wrong for about twenty minutes and then it will click.

Worth knowing: if the ball hits the glass before it bounces on your side, it is out and the point is yours. Learning to spot that early saves you running for balls you do not need to touch.

2. Get the serve right and it stops being a worry

The padel serve is underarm, which catches tennis players out. There is no overhead serve, no ball toss and no power delivery.

Stand behind the service line. Bounce the ball once. Hit it at or below waist height, with at least one foot on the ground and behind the line. It has to land diagonally in the opposite service box. If it lands in the box and then hits the wire fence, that is a fault. You get two attempts, the same as tennis.

The most common beginner fault is contacting the ball as it bounces up past the waist. Let it drop. A slow serve that lands is worth more than a quick one that does not, because in padel the serve is not a weapon. It is just how the point starts.

3. Stop trying to hit winners

Padel points are usually lost, not won. The team that makes fewer mistakes takes the match, and it is not close.

Coaches generally suggest playing most of your shots at around 50 to 60 percent of your full power, and saving the big swing for when you are already at the net and the ball is sitting up. If you have come from tennis or squash, this is the hardest habit to break. Flat, hard shots come off the back glass and hand your opponents a free attack.

Aim to put one more ball back than the other pair. That is genuinely the whole strategy for your first few months, and it beats people who have been playing longer than you.

4. Move with your partner, not around them

Think of the two of you as connected by a short rope. When one moves forward, the other moves forward. When one is pulled wide, the other shifts across to cover the middle.

When you are defending, both of you want to be just behind the service line. When you are attacking, both of you want to be at the net. What you want to avoid is the space in between, sometimes called no man's land, where the ball lands at your feet and neither of you can do anything useful with it. Beginners often park themselves in the middle of their half of the court and stay there all match.

Talk constantly. Call "mine" or "yours" out loud, and agree before you start who takes the lobs down the middle. Most middle balls are lost to politeness, not to the opposition.

5. Use the lob, it is your reset button

The lob is the most underused shot in beginner padel and the most useful one you can learn.

When the other pair are at the net and you are pinned at the back, a lob over their heads pushes them backwards and gives you time to move up. You do not need to hit it perfectly. You just need height and enough depth to stop them smashing it.

Do it when you are under pressure, when you are off balance, or when you simply do not know what else to do. It turns a defensive point into a neutral one, and neutral is where beginners win.

The scoring, quickly

Padel scores exactly like tennis. 15, 30, 40, game, and you need to win by two. First to six games takes the set, with a tiebreak at six all. If you have played tennis you already know it. If you have not, your opponents will keep score for you and nobody will mind.

Before you play

You do not need to buy anything for your first few games. Most centres hire rackets, and borrowing one is a sensible way to work out what you actually like before you spend money.

Once you are playing regularly, the racket does start to matter. A round-shaped racket with a low balance is far more forgiving than the diamond-shaped frames the professionals use, and starting with the wrong one will hold you back and can be hard on your elbow.

If you want a hand with that, use our Racket Finder, or read Padel for Beginners for a fuller guide to getting started.

Better still, come and see us. We are on Hanson Road in Liverpool, and you can pick the rackets up, feel the weight and the balance, and hit a few balls before you decide. That is the part you cannot do online.