If the first Open of World Padel Tour is launched with qualifying currently taking place in Madrid, the crisis between the players and the WPT seems to be getting worse.
The Professional Association of Padel (PPA) goes up again in the niche by denouncing the “arbitrary behavior” of the WPT which goes “against the development of the padel".
For PPA, it is incomprehensible to see Wild Cards being awarded to “amateur players while professional players fight for the main draw".
The Miami Open should bring together the best players in the world. But obviously, with this letter, the players want to demonstrate that they do not support the “values of World Padel tour'
The spirit of a Wild Card should be to promote the padel around the world, by giving the opportunity to young local talents to make themselves known and to measure themselves against the best players on the circuit, and not to attribute these Wild Cards arbitrarily to people who practice the padel in an amateur way and which, moreover, deprive professional athletes of their place in the final draw.
Sincerely, we understand that this fact prostitutes and distorts the basic principles that should regulate and be present in any activity that wants to be configured as a sport; such as fairness, equal treatment, personal improvement, reward based on personal performance, and countless others that have made world sport what we know today in other disciplines and which unfortunately in ours are not always present. We understand that this fact will not have been consulted by our international federation either, given that we are sure that as the highest regulatory body of our sport, they would have opposed this commercialization of the competition head on. .