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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?". We see it constantly 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. The same four come up again and again.
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.
The harder habit to break is topspin, and it catches good tennis players more than anyone. In tennis, topspin is how you hit hard and keep the ball in — the spin drags it down into the court. In padel that same spin works against you. The ball may well drop in, but when it reaches the glass it kicks up off the wall at a height that hands your opponents an easy ball. Flat is the padel default. For a tennis player it feels wrong for a long time, and it's worth persisting with anyway.
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 holding the net wins the large majority 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 front of the court. Get there as soon as you can after a serve. Don't go back unless you have to.
This is the big one, and it's the hardest adjustment for the strongest tennis players.
In tennis, a smash ends the point. That is what the shot is for, and if you've played to a decent level it has been ending points for you for years. In padel, a smash that isn't executed perfectly comes straight back off the glass. Now the other team is moving to the net, you're facing a counter-smash, or you've simply handed back the net position you'd just won. The shot that used to finish rallies is now the shot that costs you the front of the court.
Padel answers that with variety. Where tennis gives you one overhead, padel has several — the bandeja, the vibora, the rulo, the gancho, the topspin smash — and each is the right shot in a different situation. Defaulting to the full smash 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 rather than win the point outright. 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. We stock Asics padel and pickleball shoes in store at Frankton, so you can try them on before you buy. 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.
And the thing a shop probably isn't supposed to tell you: you don't need the most expensive racket. Not starting out, and not at low intermediate either. An hour of private coaching will change more about your game than any racket on our wall will.
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. 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. Plenty of tennis players who make the switch end up playing more padel than tennis — and very few go 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.
You can, but be careful with it. Topspin brings the ball down into the court, which is useful, but it also kicks the ball high off the glass and gives your opponents an easy next shot. Flat is the safer default while you're learning.
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 at 82 Duke Street, Frankton has 3 indoor padel 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 and accredited padel coach. Drafted with AI assistance, reviewed and fact-checked before publishing.
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