In France, tennis players ranked 15 or higher who switch to padel benefit from a ranking assimilation, allowing them to start with points based on their best tennis ranking. While this rule is intended to encourage transfers to padel, it raises questions of fairness.

An advantageous assimilation, but is it justified?

According to the assimilation grid, for example, a tennis player ranked between 3/6 and 15 can start at 3th place in the men's ranking, which places them among the best from their padel debut. The better the tennis ranking, the higher the padel ranking. In France, there are around 70 players with at least one tournament in the last 000 months.

tennis padel assimilation Credit: FFT

Cependant, le padel is not tennis. The two disciplines require different skills, so why do tennis players have an advantage?

Some padel players find this unfair

Is this system really fair? If the system was put in place, it is precisely because players who have a tennis base have facilities in padel. It is very factual. But that does not prevent all these padel players who come from tennis from wanting to develop skills specific to this sport.

Just look at the French top 20 ladies or gentlemen and we will see that many are coming from tennis.

With the increase in the number of licensees and padel tournaments, it has become much more difficult to climb the rankings starting from scratch. The ranking of assimilations have however been adjusted several times to reflect these developments. Result: many assimilated players find themselves well ranked upon entering the French circuit. Among the lot, some do not necessarily deserve their ranking. But is it so serious?

A question of balance

If you feel like you want to take the assimilations aim to avoid imbalances in tournaments, they must also evolve to ensure better equity. The FFT acts in this direction. But is there a perfect system that takes into account the players ranked in tennis who do not deserve their assimilation ? The question remains open.

Benjamin Dupouy

I discovered padel directly during a tournament, and frankly, I didn't really like it at first. But the second time, it was love at first sight, and since then, I haven't missed a single match. I'm even ready to stay up until 3am to watch a final of Premier Padel !

On the same subject

Tags