It Takes Three

“You get worried that the person you’re playing with is going to feel like they’re stuck with you, or you might not be quite good enough.” The prospect of playing padel with strangers initially brought a familiar sort of anxiety for Christine, a GP from Berkshire. Would she be good enough? Would the others be happy to have her on court? And what if she turned out to be the weak link? It’s a reasonable concern when you’re about to spend an hour with three people you’ve never met. You can go for a run without learning anybody’s name. With swimming, you can do fifty lengths in blissful silence. Even tennis only asks you to find one other person. Padel, meanwhile, wants three, which becomes slightly inconvenient when you don’t already have them to hand.

So you join an open match, answer a message or let an app find your playing partners. Suddenly, you’re standing inside a glass box with three strangers, trying to remember their names while quietly assessing their playing abilities. Usually, you play a game, exchange a few pleasantries and go home. But sometimes you play again. And then, without quite noticing when it happened, the stranger on the other side of the net becomes someone you know.

For Blue, a brand consultant who moved to Mallorca with her family last year, that first encounter felt particularly daunting. She and her husband had taken a few lessons, but her first proper match was a women’s training session involving four courts, two coaches, a room full of unfamiliar faces and a language barrier to navigate. “I remember messaging my friends beforehand saying, ‘Oh my God, I’m about to walk into this group of complete strangers and I’ve never even played a match before.’ It was really nerve-racking, but also a good challenge.” Determined to pursue the sport and garner a friendship group turned out to be fruitful for Blue: “The first person I met now happens to be my closest friend. It’s a hilarious cliche but we kept finding ourselves at the same place and same sessions. Now, we go out together and work together. Padel was just how we met.” 

When the same stranger appears twice

The first game has a ready-made conversation. How long have you been playing? Where do you usually play? What level are you? There’s a ball to follow and a score to keep, with awkward silences conveniently interrupted by someone serving. The second encounter is different. You recognise a face, remember a name and perhaps ask how someone’s week has been. The relationship begins to acquire details beyond playing level and preferred racket.

For Christine, getting to this point has taken practice. “You definitely do have to put yourself out there,” she reveals. “I haven’t done it for so long.” That doesn’t mean she wants every playing partnership to become a friendship beyond the club. She points out that the different people she meets means their lives don’t necessarily overlap elsewhere. “A lot of those relationships will naturally stay as padel friendships because there’s just such a big variety of people that you meet, especially when playing socials.”

The benefit, then, isn’t necessarily a new friendship group (not every connection needs to turn into a dinner invitation). It’s the growing confidence to put yourself in unfamiliar situations, knowing that the initial awkwardness is usually manageable. “I’ve met so many new people in a short space of time,” Christine says. “I think it probably has made me a bit more comfortable just walking up to people.” For Joe, a business entrepreneur from Beckenham, it’s opened up a new way to experience the world: “I’ve been to Portugal, Italy, Holland, Spain, Australia and Thailand all through playing the sport. Everywhere I go my racket comes with me. Being able to play padel and make new friends is the best part of the game.”

Of course, familiarity needs a little help. Open matches, beginner Americanos and club WhatsApp groups make it easier to meet people without arriving with your own ready-made foursome. For Blue, one woman setting up a WhatsApp group for local players helped turn individual matches into a regular fixture. “Suddenly there were loads of us in this group. She would book courts every week and everyone would sign up for whatever they could make.” 

There is, naturally, a social life to the social life: the main group, the smaller groups, the discussions about who has been moved up a level and whether they deserved it. There can be quite a lot of politics for a sport involving four people and a small blue court. But the group chat also makes the next encounter possible. A person you enjoyed playing with is no longer someone you might happen to see again. They become someone you can ask.

Marketing executive Justine found a similar route into a new social circle. Despite having lived in the area for years, she’d never developed much of a local friendship group. With a background in sport and a degree in Sports Science, she was comfortable being active, but she was starting from scratch with a racket when she joined Woolfox, a country club near Stamford. “I persuaded my partner to join and quickly two friends followed,” Justine explains. “Weekly games became a fixture and they were often followed by drinks or dinner.”

At one of the Americanos, Justine met Hayley, who was new to the area and keen to make friends. Through further matches, their circle expanded to include Sarah and Lisa. “The four of us became the 7am Friday morning group,” Justine reveals. “When rain closed the outdoor courts, we moved to a café nearby instead.” Time together, on and off the court, has encouraged new business ideas, support with house renovations, divorce and endless phone calls. “We’re now planning our first padel holiday,” confesses Justine.  

An unlikely foursome

A padel court has a different sorting system from most social circles. You might be matched with someone twice your age, someone from another country or someone whose working life would never bring them within a hundred metres of yours. Your common ground is simply that you’ve both turned up to play. For Justine, that means meeting people she might never have known, including Charlie, a regular she plays with who has become a friend. “He’s thirty, while I’m fifty five with two children. Without the game our lives wouldn’t have crossed outside the sport.”

When the game spills over

For Blue, moving to Mallorca meant leaving behind established friendships and familiar routines. She’s since made a close circle through padel, with the sport helping to cement relationships that might otherwise have remained more casual: “I can probably think of 10 or 15 friendships I’ve made through padel that would continue if I never picked up a racket again,” she says. For someone who moved abroad without an established local friendship group, that’s a considerable change. Yet Blue didn’t arrive at the court looking for friends: “People turn up to a padel court expecting a good game. Nobody arrives expecting to make a friend.”