You are certainly unaware of it, but the archives of Padel Magazine contain, to date, some 16 articles, including many nuggets devoted to game technique or tactics.

Well, believe it or not, but among those 16 articles, only one focuses on the concept of "home" on the ground of padel. The House ? But which house?

To understand, we will start by adapting to padel and to its blue grounds the words of San Francisco, by Maxime Le Forestier: It's a blue house / Leaning against the glass / We come (back) there on foot / We don't knock / Those who live there / Have found the key...

The opposite of no man's land

The "house" padel, it is somewhat the opposite of "no man's land", this zone where we do not linger, which we have already told you about. This "home sweet home" is, in the best of cases, a cozy, comfortable place, where one is safe.

This is an area of ​​the field where you are well placed to defend most of the opponent's balls and where you can prepare your attacks by choosing the right moment to carry them out.

As our colleague explains Romain Taupin in this excellent video, the “house” is at the intersection of the two posts located on either side of the corner of the field. Let's make a small digression: the most observant among you will note that there are four angles in a land, therefore four houses. That's good, because there are also four players!

Defend without risk, with little movement

The advantage of placing yourself in this place and returning to it quickly when defending is that you can play most balls there without too much risk, and with a minimum of movement.

While a player who ventures in front of the service line (no man's land) is very vulnerable and must multiply long volleys and hazardous half-volleys, one who stands in his house, about a meter behind the service, gives himself more time to defend any type of ball (or almost).

Belasteguin window lapel Cascais 2022
Fernando Belasteguin hitting a ball past the glass from his home as Coello looks on

For a right-hander, a step to the left is usually enough to play a ball coming in from the backhand side, whether before the glass or after. Ditto for a ball arriving on the forehand side: one or two steps are enough most of the time.

give yourself time

Big advantage of this placement: it allows you to give yourself time if you let the ball pass to play it after the window, while remaining ideally placed. Conversely, a defender who is too advanced in no man's land will often be in a bad position to play after the glass.

Obviously, if the opponent is in a position to smash hard, it will be necessary to leave the house, run quickly forward and therefore cover more than one or two steps. To deal even better with this kind of case, our colleague Julien Bondia has also theorized another "house": we will call it here the "anti-smash second home", presented in this video.

But to return to our “main residence” from the baseline, remember to come back quickly, as soon as your team is in defense. From there, you can take the time to build your point and prepare your counterattack. Advantage: you will take back the net – sometimes on a lob, sometimes on a deep ball or a chiquita – with more chances of success.

After 40 years of tennis, Jérôme falls into the pot of padel in 2018. Since then, he thinks about it every morning while shaving… but never shaves pala in hand! Journalist in Alsace, he has no other ambition than to share his passion with you, whether you speak French, Italian, Spanish or English.

On the same subject