I don’t get the appeal of tennis over padel

Tennis is much harder to get good at, so takes a lot of time and effort to get to a level where it's fun. Padel has a much lower entry barrier. Best regards a tennis player turned padel player

Tennis is much older, therefore a longer history for people to be tied to and it’s much, much more widespread. It’s also far more accessible in terms of infrastructure than padel courts. Whether one looks more boring than the either is entirely subjective. I’ve taken up both sports in the past month, and I enjoy playing padel more, a large part of that is due to the less steep learning curve to becoming semi decent and therefore a more fun time getting cardio in. In terms of skill padel has a much lower level of entry. But for me tennis is an incredibly elegant and technical game, and my struggles in keeping the ball controlled in rallies as a beginner gave me an even greater appreciation for it. TLDR: longer history x to each their own

as someone who grew up with tennis I can tell you that I enjoy both equally, for different reasons. You might not miss anything. Its just different strokes for different folks, and that's fine. No need to start something

I started padel first. Then played tennis with some of my padel friends. I really like the athletic aspect of tennis. You have to have great lateral movements, rotational stability/power, amazing hand eye coordination, correct kinetic chains, just to reach the skill floor of tennis and play some friendly games. Its athletic requirement is what hooked me. Because of the high skill floor, most people can’t find tennis fun until at least they have more than half of the fundamentals down. And that takes like 3-12 months depending on the person. I know plenty of people who have played for 1-2 years and they can just barely rally and can’t even serve. Padel has a much lower skill floor. While it isn’t as easy as pickleball, you still don’t need to have your kinetic chain right at all to play some friendly games. Serves are also much easier in padel. You can play proper friendly matches with just a couple weeks of practice if you’re talented or dedicated. The glass is difficult to play around at first but it’s not a requirement for beginners friendly games. However, because of the high skill floor, I find so much joy in learning and playing tennis. I like to encounter bottlenecks whether it’s physical or skill related and find ways to overcome them. Just the serve itself has been such a hard but rewarding journey. You definitely need to enjoy the process if you start tennis as an adult. Padel definitely has more variety of its shots and you need to pay attention to angles and bounces and glass. Tennis shots are still different though, but the angle of broadcast makes every shot look the same.

Tennis is more demanding and technical. Also 90% of the shots are ground strokes. While padel there is way more variety and feel better to play for newcomers.

I imagine it’s a standard thing. People are the same with squash. Padel is far far farrr easier to play and become a decent level at over any other racket sport.

It really is a very personal thing. I had tennis lessons as a kid, but other than that its been 20+ years without playing. Started playing padel like 5 yrs ago, love the sport and now I own a padel club, playing all the time. Still, I don't watch professional padel and am a huge professional tennis fan 🤷🏻‍♂️

Tennis looks boring to the spectator, because you cannot see the spin and the weight of the ball from above or far in the court. So what you call "baseline ground strokes" all have different speed, spin and weight to them. It is way difficult to maintain a rally in a tennis court, trying to put your opponent at a disadvantage while getting the ball over the net and repositioning yourself. It looks "boring" because good players make it look easy. Being able to do this consistently in a Grand Slam over a best-of-five sets format with some matches taking more than 5 hours is another beast to marvel at. Tennis also has the hundred years of "culture" that introduces a certain way to dress, represent and behave in and out of the court, which is something I really appreciate. If tennis and padel were dances, tennis would be ballet and padel would be street dance. Both are beautiful in their own way and it is hard to compare.

Different beasts entirely. Don't let the similarities fool you. Skills can translate somewhat but they are vastly different games. 

I played tennis for 20 years before picking up padel about a year ago. I eventually decided to drop tennis just so I could fully commit my time and energy to one sport. Tennis is a great sport. It has so much history and decades of built-up fanbase. Padel has incredible diversity of play: bandeja, vibora, x3, x4, bajada, lobs off the glass, the angles and creativity you can bring to every point keep things fresh. Overhead shots are a huge part of the game and I love that. Going back to tennis, I think I'd miss that variety. Also service games feel more balanced. In padel, the serve puts you in a more neutral position rather than handing you an automatic advantage. Compare that to tennis where you can watch a servebot pound aces for an entire set and barely see a rally. I do want to get back to tennis at some point. But right now padel just hits different.

Padel is immediately fun and affordable. Tennis is much more technical and it takes time before you start to enjoy it.

Tennis is only fun if you can enjoy the process of suffering through being bad at tennis. Once you get decent, like 3.5, maybe even 3.0, it's very fun. I hit 4.0 in padel then tried tennis. Golf was my first serious sport so I'm fine with suffering. Now I'm a 3.5 in tennis and have zero motivation to play padel. I still like it, but it's meant to be an accessible racket sport with a lower barrier to entry. Most people I know play it for the social aspect and because it's still a good workout. But it's not even close to the difficulty of literally every motion in tennis. Some love that. Some don't. Play what you like.

To someone who plays both, tennis is 80% technical and 20% tactical while padel 50/50. That means you can technically dominate your opponents in padel and still lose. Or maybe cuz I only play singles tennis.

Built CV tracking for both sports. The numbers back you up - padel rallies have way more direction changes, more surface interactions, players constantly leaving and re-entering the frame. Our ball tracking model had an existential crisis every time someone hit a vibora into the glass. Tennis was almost boring to build for by comparison.

I liked tennis but it was very hard to find suitable time to play because I live in a hot country. You can really only play early in the morning or at dusk. Finding opponents is hard and leveling up In padel being mostly indoor I can play at any hour with a lot of people of all ages and backgrounds . Is very social and fun. That’s why people don’t use Playtomic here. WhatsApp groups are very addictive because you can have fun and banter and finding matches is more easy by connecting to people

I personally think padel becomes super boring at a professional level. To me it’s a sport that only really shines at that casual intermediate level 2-4. I prefer playing padel casually and watching tennis professionally.

It’s not really fair to compare padel, pickleball, or other racquet sports to tennis nor does it make sense. Tennis is almost in its own category in terms of complexity and difficulty. It’s kind of like comparing learning algebra to learning advanced mathematics or linguistics. At a certain level, tennis becomes less about just “hitting the ball” and more about mastering timing, footwork, spin, biomechanics, strategy, mental endurance, and technique all at once. Padel and pickleball are incredibly fun and way more accessible for most people. You can rally and enjoy yourself pretty quickly. But tennis has such a brutally high skill floor that you can spend six months practicing and still struggle just to develop a reliable serve. That’s part of what makes it so rewarding and respected. The depth of the sport is almost endless.

Eso es porque sos un idiota que no sabe nada y no entendés la diferencia técnica y física por algo Tapia gana 1 millón de Euros al año y Sinner 150

I feel that padel is much more accessible for people living in metropolitan area: \- due to court size, you'd find lots of court in the middle of the city. with tennis i often have to dedicate a time to go to the court which is often a bit further away from city centre \- they are mixed with lifestyle, you'll have coffee shops and restaurants in the premise so you get to play as well as socialise \- the ecosystem makes it easy to find games. with tennis i have to arrange a match with my mates through whatsapp. with padel you just hop onto playtomic or padelmates and find a match \- and obviously the fact that the barrier of entry for casuals are lower

The amount of athleticism and skill needed to be average at tennis is 100% more than being average at padel. I can see why tennis folks would feel that padel is settling similar to how oadel folks would feel that pickle is settling. Add in the history of tennis and im really struggling to understand your confusion lol

Tennis can be discouraging honestly. You spend your time pick the balls in the fence

Tennis has been around for maybe 800 years, Padel has been around for less than 60 years. Give it time.

Aside from the fact tennis has been around a lot longer, tennis goes through cycles. When I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s all the best tennis players except for one or two were serve and volley players who liked quick points, great court coverage, and moving fast. As in, a lot of what we like about padel when you add quick direction changes etc. And although there are great all court players now, none of the top players is a strict serve and volley player like Pete Sampras, Boris Becker, John McEnroe or Tim Henman even so we don't often see that aggression on the tennis court.

We only have indoor padel courts and outdoor tennis where I live. Tennis is breezy padel is sweaty.  I mostly just play singles in tennis so the game is more rhythmic. It’s easier to move on from mistakes for me because I often feel bad to weigh down my partner.  Hitting the ball hard is encouraged in tennis and that’s therapeutic to me.  Padel is a much more exciting sport to watch. 

I think the appeal of any sports is the athletes behind, tennis have rafa, roger, novak that are not only tennis players but also global icons

I think padel is a better game for being social and tournament play. I like the dimension the glass adds and the skill.of dealing with different bounces. Overall I enjoy tennis more. It's more of a one vs one battle, it's more about your mentality and dealing with presure. Its more technical. And nothing is sweeter than hitting a pure ground stroke winner or service ace.

Well, for starters you are comparing apples to oranges - if you are comparing doubles padel to something, it should be to doubles tennis. You can't fault singles tennis for being baseline to baseline while ignoring that doubles tennis is nothing like that. There's not much, if at all, more variety in padel shots than in tennis. You add a whole topspin element there, and the variety on tennis serves mirrors some of the variety on padel overheads. Overall, tennis is a significantly more difficult sport, and there's a lot more nuance in how the ball is controlled and shaped through spin that you are missing. The big differences to me are how lobs and drives in padel rarely win points, where they are winners in tennis, so "going for it" looks a bit different.

\> And yet tennis is a much bigger sport than padel in most of the world. What am I missing. about 100 years. Padel is relatively new, and in my mind atleast, all the best parts of tennis.

Different people have different tastes. Tennis has legacy. Padel doesn't. Is that really so hard to understand?

It’s because tennis is a serious sport with hundreds of years of culture and thousands of layers of play. Paddle, ping pong, video games, and lawn darts are varying examples of competitive things that may be more fun on a given day, but ultimately are unserious and will never hold the same weight.

Padel is the ADHD version of tennis for people with fried attention spans that can’t commit to honing their abilities in a sport

You can’t just have 1 or 2 hours of tennis and even begin to think about having fun. Hell, I would say in order to have fun you need at least a year of lessons.. After that, tennis becomes way better, and makes padel feel like a toy sport if you know what I mean.

Padel > Tennis