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If you've played tennis for years, your first six weeks of padel will be a mix of "this is great" and "why did I just smash that ball straight into the back glass?". I see it every week at The Park. Tennis players walk on with good hands, good footwork, and a swing that's been working for them for two decades — and the sport quietly refuses to reward any of it for the first month.
Stick with it. Padel was built for you, even if it doesn't feel that way at first. Here's what the transition actually looks like, week by week, and the four things tennis players consistently get wrong on the way.
Most tennis players pick up a padel racket and rally inside ten minutes. The bat is short, the court is smaller, the ball moves slower. Your hand-eye coordination is doing most of the work. You'll win a few points off old habits — a clean drive, a sliced backhand — and you'll walk off thinking padel is straightforward.
It isn't. You're just still playing tennis. The padel will start in week two.
The first time the ball pops up off the back wall behind you and you turn around to find it sitting there waiting to be hit, something clicks. Padel isn't tennis with a smaller court. It's a different sport that happens to share a few movements.
Tennis trains you to attack any ball that bounces. Padel asks you to let it bounce, ride the wall, and then play it. Most tennis converts spend their first month volleying balls they should have let go, or smashing balls that would have died in the back corner if they'd left them alone. The walls aren't your enemy. They're your teammate.
By the third week, the tennis habits start costing points. I've watched this play out with hundreds of new players. The same four mistakes come up every time.
In tennis, hitting hard wins points. In padel, hitting hard sends the ball off the back glass and into your opponent's volley. The whole point of a padel rally is to make your opponent hit the ball from below net height. Big drives keep the ball bouncing high — exactly what they want.
The fix is uncomfortable. Slow down. A softer shot that dies in the back corner is worth ten times a screamer up the middle. Hamish runs a drill where he asks tennis players to hit at 60% for an entire session. They hate it. Then they win.
Tennis players will play the ball direct off the bounce in situations where letting it hit the back wall would have given them a much easier swing. It's not laziness — it's twenty years of training that says "hit the next ball". Padel asks you to wait. Let the ball come to you off the glass. Take it at waist height instead of chest height. Your shoulders will thank you.
In padel, the team at the net wins about 70% of points. Tennis players default to the baseline because that's where you live in singles. In padel, you want to be at the net, with your partner, controlling the kitchen. Get there as soon as you can after a serve. Don't go back unless you have to.
This is the big one. Tennis gives you one overhead — the smash. Padel has four or five: the bandeja, the vibora, the rulo, the gancho, the topspin smash. Each one is the right shot in a different situation. Tennis players default to smash everything, which works for about three weeks and then stops working.
The bandeja is the one to learn first. It's a flat, low-trajectory overhead designed to keep your team at the net. We coach it in a single 60-minute lesson and it changes a tennis player's game more than any other shot.
Somewhere between week four and week six, something shifts. You stop fighting the walls and start using them. You catch yourself letting a ball pass and waiting for it to come back off the glass. You play your first proper bandeja and it actually lands. You start to enjoy points that last 20 shots instead of trying to end them on the fourth.
This is when tennis converts go from "I can play padel" to "I get padel." The game opens up. Strategy starts to matter more than power. You start finding shots you didn't know existed.
Your tennis shoes will be fine for a few sessions. Beyond that, get padel-specific shoes — the sole pattern is different and you'll grip the artificial turf properly. Your tennis racket is no use. Padel rackets are solid, not strung, and they swing nothing like a tennis frame.
If you're shopping for your first padel bat, go for a teardrop with a fairly even balance. It'll feel familiar enough to your tennis swing without being so head-heavy that you smack the ball through the back glass on every rally. We've got a guide over at shop.padelpark.nz that breaks down what to look for.
Two things. First, book a coaching session in your first two weeks — not your eighth. The earlier a coach catches your tennis habits, the easier they are to retrain. We do specific tennis-to-padel sessions at The Park with Gustavo and Peter. Second, play with people who are slightly better than you. Tennis players who only play with other tennis converts spend a long time hitting the same wrong shots back and forth.
Padel will be frustrating for a month. Then it'll click and you'll fall in love with it. Most of the tennis players I know who've made the switch now play padel three times a week and tennis once. Some have stopped tennis altogether. None of them have gone back the other way.
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Never Played Padel Before? Here's Exactly What to Expect — the first-timer walkthrough if you're booking your first session.
If you play twice a week and take one coaching session in your first month, you'll be a competent club player in about three months. Strong tennis players sometimes get there faster — but only if they can let the tennis habits go.
The grip and swing are different enough that most players notice their tennis serve gets a bit looser for a few weeks. After that, no. Plenty of our members switch between the two without issue.
Yes, eventually. Padel-specific shoes have a herringbone or omni sole designed for artificial turf. Tennis shoes work for a few sessions but they wear out faster and grip less well.
A continental grip works for most padel shots, which is similar to what tennis players use on volleys. The padel grip is shorter so the feel is different in the hand. Most players adjust in a session or two.
To start? Yes. To master? No. Padel rewards patience, strategy and shot variety more than tennis does, which means there's no ceiling — there's always more to learn.
Padel Park in Frankton has indoor courts open 24/7 to members, plus coaching and equipment hire. Book online or message us on WhatsApp.
Written by Nicholas Woods — owner of Padel Park Hamilton & accredited padel coach.
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