Three years ago padel in Swansea meant two outdoor courts beside a football pitch. This weekend Swansea hosts the opening event of a national series, with players from their twenties to their sixties competing in Llansamlet.
The UK Padel Masters Series opens at Jaxx Padel on Saturday and Sunday, the first of five events the organiser says will take it to venues in Wales, England, Scotland and Portugal before the finals in March. Men’s and women’s draws run in four age groups, Open, Over 40, Over 50 and Over 60, with an Over 70 category hoped for at later events.
Jaxx, on the old Press Glass site at Mill Stream Way in Llansamlet, has nine indoor courts and four outside, is open 6am to 11pm, and calls itself Wales’ largest indoor padel centre. It belongs to Swansea.com, the group behind Pure Swansea.
The group says it put the city’s first two courts in at the Pure Swansea ground in 2023 and added three more in July last year “due to demand”. By its own count that makes 18 courts across the two sites.
‘They don’t seem to be going away’
Padel is tennis crossed with squash: a court a third the size of a tennis court, walled in glass and mesh so the ball stays in play off the back, and a solid racket with no strings. It was invented in Acapulco in 1969 and reached Britain slowly, with about 15,000 players in 2019.
The Lawn Tennis Association counted around 860,000 last year. It now puts the number at more than 1.4 million, on 2,353 courts, and says 6,664 people have entered its competitions so far this year against 5,000 in the whole of 2025.
Swansea Council‘s tourism manager Steve Hopkins put it more plainly to councillors in April. When padel courts turned up in the council’s study of the bay foreshore, he said: “Dare I say it, padel courts, they don’t seem to be going away.”
Six at Parc Tawe, three in Mumbles, two in Neath
Pure Padel Clubs wants six indoor courts in the Ninja Warrior unit at Parc Tawe. Its application says its courts elsewhere are busy more than 90 per cent of the time, and that it struggled to find anywhere else in Swansea big enough.
Ninja Warrior’s owner, Burhill Group, says no final decision has been made and the centre is trading as normal.
Mumbles is next. The council has applied to build three courts on the old seafront tennis courts between the Oyster House and the bowling green, after a consultation in which it says most people asked for racquet sports, and padel most of all.
“Padel is one of the fastest-growing sports in the UK and is attracting people of all ages because it’s fun, social and easy to learn,” cabinet member Cllr Andrew Stevens said.
Businessman Rico Maza has offered £400,000 of his own money to build and run four courts on the site himself in return for a long lease. Mumbles Action Group’s alternative keeps the courts too, and swaps the car park for a lido.
Across the border, Neath Sports Centre is in line for two courts on its unused tennis courts by spring 2027, the first in Neath Port Talbot. The council’s foreshore study wants courts beside the Singleton boating lake as well.
‘Still competing decades later’
Nick Baker, chief executive of UK Padel, said: “Padel is wonderfully accessible and sociable, it also brings out a competitive spirit in people of all ages. You can pick up a racket for the first time, discover a love of the game and still be competing decades later.”
He added: “This weekend captures everything that makes the sport so special, with schoolchildren representing their schools in Bristol while players in their sixties are competing alongside younger generations at our Masters Series in Swansea.”
UK Padel says women made up half the field at last season’s Masters finals, and more than 220 players entered last month’s Over 60 Padel County Cup. On Sunday its Schools Under-18 Championships return to Rocket Padel Bristol with more than 25 schools, after 132 players took part last year.
Matches from Swansea will be streamed on UK Padel’s YouTube channel through the weekend, with the Bristol results to follow.
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