After countless months of rumors, speculation, and frustration from racket-sports lovers of all kinds about if and when padel would ever come to the greater D.C. area, a new, four-court indoor facility known as Padel Up has finally opened its doors in the D.C. suburb of Sterling, VA.
The club’s arrival has already caught the attention of local news outlets like the Washingtonian as well as long-time local squash, court- and platform tennis enthusiast, Richard J. Moroscak Jr., who recently emailed Padel Up founder Sabah Alsabah to say, “Sooooo excited you are opening and will spread the word far and wide.”
In addition to the four pristine courts from Favaretti Padel, Padel Up boats a fully climate-controlled interior with pleasantly high ceilings, cutting-edge camera technology from Save My Play, a fully stocked pro shop with Wilson gear, and a coffee bar featuring Counter Culture roasts.
As the club’s homepage explains, “Our founder is passionate about padel, great coffee, and clean eating. This facility brings all those things together for a one-of-a-kind experience for our customers and their entire families.”
A Long Time Coming
In a recent conversation, Alsabah himself gave me a bit more background on the project, saying:
“I established this business in September of 2022, and it has taken me two years to find the perfect location and actually open it. Real estate in the D.C. area is very hard to come by, especially in the commercial space with the size requirements needed for a padel facility. After a long two years of constant searches, I was finally able to come across this space, which ended up being perfect for what I envisioned.”
He further explains that the space had originally been home to an indoor rock-climbing gym that was among the largest in the U.S. — which, in his words, “very unluckily opened just before COVID and eventually went bankrupt.”
“I finally came across this space — and immediately got it,” he ultimately tells me.
Why Padel? Why Here? Why Now?
Like so many others in the U.S. padel world, Alsabah is a life-long tennis player. And like many in both the padel and tennis worlds he says that for the past few years he’s actively been “resistant to this push for pickleball that has been happening in the U.S.”
Of his transition to padel he tells me, “I’m from Kuwait originally, and I went back to visit family during COVID. Padel is gigantic there, but I had never even heard of it before, really.”
He continues, “So, my friends kept trying to get me to come out and try it… and I thought to myself, ‘Pickleball? No, I’m not doing this.’ But then eventually I was bored and they convinced me to join them… and I played… and I was hooked immediately. Coming from a tennis background, it felt very natural to me.”
“Then there’s the social aspect of the game… the strategic aspects of playing off the walls. I just loved it. Loved the idea, loved the concept, loved the look and feel of the courts, loved it from a business standpoint. So, I thought I could really make something happen with it here in the D.C. area, which is where I’ve lived my whole life — and I was shocked to learn there were no courts here,” he concludes.
As we discuss, unlike many other parts of the country, the D.C. area is really an ideal place to open a padel club, too, given its incredibly diverse population and large number of residents from parts of the world where padel is extremely popular.
Just the Beginning
When I ask Alsabah about his strategy for attracting players to the club, he informs me that he comes from a digital media background, so social media and online advertising will be a key component of growing interest in the community. However, he also admits it won’t be easy.
“It’s definitely going to be an education challenge, because while I have a lot of interest and a lot of people reaching out, there are also a ton of people saying, ‘Oh, cool, pickleball!’ So there is the challenge of educating them that it’s not that — it’s something different,” he tells me.
He adds that while he’s already been contacted by a lot of people with connections to Latin America or the Middle East, in order for the club to reach its full potential, he knows he’s also going to have to get a whole lot of Americans interested in the sport as well.
Speaking of the club’s full potential, Alsabah notes that eventually Padel Up will be open from 7am to 11pm daily, but for now they are only open for half their hours most days (3pm to 11pm), telling me, “we’re hammering out some kinks and working on getting everything running smoothly.”
Once that happens, he says Padel Up will host a large grand opening event, likely sometime in the first few weeks of December. So, please be sure to stay tuned D.C.-area readers!
You can visit Padel Up at 44810 Old Ox Rd Ste. 165, Sterling, VA 20166. You can reach them by phone at (703) 563-0311 or e-mail here. For updates, you can follow them on Instagram.
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