A question comes up regularly during the tournaments of padel, especially for the P500 and P1000 categories: do players really want ranking matches?

When for his P1000 from Pau, which took place this weekend at the Les Bruyères Sports Center, this problem has resurfaced.

The organization had done everything to ensure that there was padel all weekend, and for all players, with conditions almost never seen for a tournament of this level. Indeed, for €25 per player, the services offered were quite incredible. Judge instead:

Tournament registration with a minimum of 4 games in the long format
Sporty masseuse
Access to the fitness room and the relaxation area: spa, hammam, jacuzzi

Except that, for Frédéric RICHEME, the referee of the P1000, some players did not respect the organization: " What if we finally offered these services for P100 tournaments? he quips.

Let's try to clarify this.

Players do not continue the tournament

Let's take the context: it often happens that players, once they are eliminated from the main draw of a tournament, do not wish to play the classification matches

For a number of them, there is generally not much accounting interest to pursue. Indeed, a player invested in the French circuit often prefers to return home a day earlier, telling himself that he will always have a chance of scoring more points in another competition rather than playing several classification matches at the end. uncertain.

Result :

First the umpire has to deal with the numerous packages, which he sometimes learns at the last moment.
Then some pairs who had prepared to play the ladder matches and came to the club specially find themselves unable to play.
And finally, the host club sees its center emptied of all those players who leave right after losing, " like in tennis some will say...

« Once again, the idea is above all not to oppose the padel and tennis. They are two different sports with their qualities, their history, and we love them both. But the conclusion is there…” tells us Frédéric Richeme.

How do we want to organize our tournaments?

« Le padel is a sport that is traditionally played over a whole weekend. However, we can clearly see that in the Top 100, there are many players looking for points at all costs and who do not want this system..

Often former tennis players, they are used to direct eliminations and they don't want to play for matches where there are only a few points to win. Again, this is not a review. The question is, where do we want to go to develop these tournaments?” Frederic continues.

Faced with this observation that can be made in many French competitions, the question is whether or not we want classification matches. Should we do like tennis with knockout tournaments?

“Are we sure we want to move towards this form of tournaments? » question the manager of French Padel Shop Pau.

A clarification and/or a sanction

For the referee, perhaps a clearer positioning of the FFT in relation to these classification matches is needed.

“Does the FFT want to continue and encourage these classification matches for the atmosphere and for the philosophy of these competitions? In this case, perhaps it should sanction players who disappear without even warning...

I think that it would be necessary a clarification for the installation and the organization of the tournaments, in particular for the categories P500 and P1000. »

Pierre Leleu and Benjamin Berthelot Dorian and Thomas

An immediate solution for clubs

Sometimes, clubs and organizers offer another competition independent of the main tournament, on Sundays for example on the sidelines of the semis and finals of the P1000. A P500 usually, which encourages players who lost in the first rounds of the main draw to stay at the club all weekend. What if the solution was to make it systematic?

Franck Binisti

Franck Binisti discovers the padel at the Club des Pyramides in 2009 in the Paris region. Since padel is part of his life. You often see him touring France going to cover the major events of padel French.