The year 2022 has confirmed France's enthusiasm for padel. This is the case for the number of licensed players (25 last September) and for the number of unlicensed players, which could reach 000, according to the most generous estimates. The number of fields exceeds 500 tracks of padel referenced FFT, while the site Padelonomics lists 1464, including 259 created in 2022.

Despite these good figures, France is not the European country where the padel is the most dynamic. Not to mention the Spanish cradle, where the number of practitioners flirts with 4 million, countries such as Italy, Belgium and Sweden are seeing an unprecedented boom in practice in the sports field. The infrastructures are more numerous there than in France, as well as the number of players, compared to the population of each country.

In addition, in these countries it is generally easier to take courses in padel and this for many reasons. One of them is that it takes big clubs to dedicate at least one track to teaching. “Today in France, there are only a hundred clubs which have four pitches or more and therefore the possibility of welcoming a teacher of padel full time", observes Romain Taupin, the creator of Padelonomics, himself a coach of padel formed in Spain.

A paradoxical situation

The state of education in padel in France is paradoxical to say the least. On the one hand, we have thousands of tennis instructors holding a State Certificate or a State Diploma for Youth, Popular Education and Sport (DEJEPS) mention tennis. These have the right to teach the padel and the possibility of passing in one week and 40 hours of training a Federal diploma of monitor of padel (DFMP).

However, few are the tennis instructors who bet on the padel : the majority are too busy with their tennis lessons, some are not motivated by the padel or find that few clubs have enough to support them through this teaching. Another obstacle: the big clubs in France are private for-profit companies, while tennis teachers most often work in associative clubs, sometimes as employees.

To these observations, Romain Taupin adds another, concerning the new TFP (Professional title), a diploma 100% padel, which involves 240 hours of training (costing €4500) spread over 4 to 6 months: “Those who pass the TFP padel swell the ranks of those who apply to work in the hundreds of clubs big enough to have a teacher. However, in the dozen or so French leagues (out of 18) where this TPF exists, more teachers are trained each year than the number of large clubs created in one year. This therefore leads to a surplus of teachers, which can only increase in the coming years, because the growth of the padel in France is mostly done with small clubs.”

As we said, Romain Taupin was trained in Barcelona, ​​in the academy of Pablo Ayma, the current coach of the French men's team. But his Spanish diploma does not authorize him to teach in France, for lack of equivalence. Too bad, because he would have the skills, as evidenced by Youtube channel tutorials. And in the many French leagues where the TFP is not yet offered, there is a shortage of teachers of padel.

You have to be overqualified to train beginners

We touch here on another paradox of education in France, where you have to be overqualified even to show the rudiments of padel to beginners.

Elsewhere in Europe, it is much easier to become a teacher of padel. In Italy, for example, there are three formations to teach the padel : level 1, level 2 and instructor (“maestro”), the latter being the most capped. In Belgium, no diploma is even necessary to proclaim oneself a teacher of padel and have the right to teach freely. But for those who wish, training is provided: the most basic, that of initiator, lasts only one week.

The majority of classes are taught to beginners or intermediate students

Analyzing the reasons for the success of padel in Belgium, Romain Taupin rightly quotes this training: “Thanks to a one-week training course open to all, you can become an initiator of padel ! That is to say that in one week they train enthusiasts who will give their all 100% to convert new players! […] I recommend taking the example of Spain or Belgium, where we offer much shorter training, over a week. The idea is to provide the basics of padel to initiators, in order to then be able to train beginners and amateurs. On the other hand, to teach at a high level, of course, you need in-depth training. We can very well imagine a training in two stages: level 1 coach then level 2 coach”.

The initiators, “evangelists” of the padel

But how to make work thousands of initiators whereas the clubs which can make live a teacher are so rare?

The main difference is that an initiator has another job and only gives a few hours of lessons per week. In small doses, this can also be done in small clubs, where such enthusiasts convert new ones and accelerate the boom of the padel.

Romain Taupin is convinced of this: “These buffs are sort of evangelists of the sport. They grow the padel quickly and increase demand: as a result, occupancy rates will be better and investors say to themselves that it is really interesting to invest. So growth is even faster: we thus end up in a virtuous circle, with a reduced risk for those who embark on it, whether teachers or investors.”

And Romain Taupin concludes:

“For me, to make a very heavy training for all teachers so that they become experts and teach at a high level, is to make a mistake in the content of the training. This is to forget that 95% of practitioners of padel do not dream of a high level at all: they simply dream of having fun after a day's work. They want to forget their daily life, get to know other people and do it with a good facilitator, who will correct two or three small faults without going into scale exercises that will frustrate the students. We are here in tune with the times: the search for immediate pleasure.”

Read also "The padel is it the pétanque of the 21ᵉ century?”

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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.

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