Di Pasquale: “A Major at Roland can bring padel into another dimension”

How will this tournament be organised?

Arnaud Di Pasquale: It’s a 56-pair draw that will be played over two weeks, with 8 seeds exempted from the first round. For now, it’s a male-only tournament, but we want to organize a parallel exhibition bringing together the 16 best female pairs. The girls created their players’ association later, hence the delay. But we really intend to have a women’s tournament as well, starting in 2023 if possible. There will be six tracks, including one on the Philippe-Chatrier court: only the lower stands will be open, so we will be on a gauge of 7,000 spectators. There are a lot of unknowns, but a lot of excitement above all.

Is this Major at Roland-Garros modeled on the system of Grand Slams in tennis?

A. D. P. : Yes, that’s right, there will be four too. They are associated with the Premier Padel Tour, a circuit that has just been created and which competes with the Word Padel Tour, the benchmark circuit for the past fifteen years. But this World Padel Tour is a closed circuit and he had players sign exclusive contracts who could not play in other tournaments. With the internationalization and the boom of this sport, the players began to complain about it and created their association.

We at the FFT are affiliated with the International Padel Federation which has chosen as a partner Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) which is behind this new Premier Padel Tour. And we have been following the movement with the idea for a year and the beginning of this mission to organize a major tournament at Roland-Garros. The timing is a bit tight since we are already three months away from the event, but for the development of padel in France, it’s fantastic.

But France is still far behind Spain in this sport. Why ?

A. D. P. : In fact, there are already several generations of padel players in Spain and Argentina, and it’s true that it took longer to develop it (padel came under the aegis of the French Tennis Federation in 2014, editor’s note). Why ? I don’t really know and I wonder. Perhaps it is more practical to organize in hot countries, especially in terms of less expensive open-air infrastructure?

Still, this sport was imported from Mexico and it exploded very quickly in Spain with several circuits. Each region even has its own ranking there: it’s something huge where there are 4 to 5 million practitioners. In France, there are now 130,000 regular players and 280,000 who have played there at least once, which is already interesting. The growth is very important in the last three years, it was really confidential when I started playing there in 2017.

Benjamin Tison is the first Frenchman in the world rankings at 68th place. Can this Major create a craze to go higher?

A. D. P. : Yes, at all levels. Here, we are talking about the high level, but we are on all fronts: the structuring of the competition, the development of the practice as a whole, the young people, the women… We are at the start of everything and having an event like that can bring the padel into another dimension. We have a good chance of gaining notoriety and making this sport known, even if we are already hearing more and more about it. We really have this ambition to be a key player internationally.

And at the professional level, is the objective to develop structures more suited to the highest level? Benjamin Tison trains in Spain for example…

A. D. P. : Competition and skill really is in Spain today, that’s for sure. We also have Alix Collombon who is in the top 20 in the world and she also trains in Spain. Our desire is to also make all this evolve a little: the practice, the dimension of competition. We need a mass policy, but we still lack a bit of visibility. So the fact that broadcasters are more and more interested in it like beIN Sports for this new circuit, that already changes a lot of things. But in Europe as a whole, padel is booming: Italy and Sweden have between 400,000 and 500,000 practitioners.

Where is France in terms of infrastructure at the moment?

ADP: In France, there are 1,000 tracks (padel courts, editor’s note) and we are aiming for 2,000 within two years. In all, 450 clubs offer padel in France. In Ile-de-France, for the moment, there are very few compared to the population base. There are many more in Occitania and in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, and it is starting to be created everywhere, but there are still areas where it is really lacking. So our policy is to support to fill these gaps because the demand is more and more strong.

What is the relationship of padel to tennis? Does he compete?

ADP: The advantage of padel is that it’s not technically very complicated: you can return the balls without having done racket sports before. Very quickly, we have fun. Everyone is able to make exchanges almost instantly and therefore have fun. And when you gradually grasp the subtleties of the game with the rebounds on the walls, you can quickly make shots or spectacular defense. There is a dimension of very rapid progress. These are two points that are very important to me.

I think that’s why there is such a boom today. There are tennis clubs that host padel courts and in this case, the packages and contributions are similar. And as it is friendly, it reflects on tennis, it revitalizes the clubs, it is an interesting economic lever for development. Moreover, in tennis clubs that host padel, there is an increase in the curve of licensees.

The tournament prize pool is 525,000 euros, can a professional player make a good living?

ADP: The best are starting to make a good living, especially thanks to sponsors. But we obviously remain very far from what is practiced in tennis (a little more than 34 million euros in total endowment for the 2021 edition of Roland-Garros, Ed). For the pair that will win the Major, it will be almost 100,000 euros in earnings, which is much higher than what they can win on the other categories of tournaments.