Last month saw arguably the most famous and spectacular venue ever conceived for a padel tournament – and no, it wasn’t in front of a 500-year-old-cathedral in Spain or at the base of Table Mountain in Cape Town (though such scenes are certainly common on the pro padel circuit).
Instead, the A1 Padel Grand Master event (which was sponsored by none other than the New York Yankees) was set in the shadow of the skyscrapers in New York’s iconic Central Park and was a feat of logistics and engineering expertise.
Jubo Logistics, Infinity Brands, and Padel+ joined forces to organize shipping, transporting, setting up, and maintaining the court, as well as the lighting. The man spearheading the project was Lee Witham.
Witham’s UK- and US-based company, Padel+, is the distributor for JUBO padel courts in North America, the Caribbean and the UK. JUBO’s Infinity model is the official court of the A1 Padel tour, so it was Witham’s task to get it through the busy streets of NYC, erect it on site, and prepare it for the elite players, spectators, organizers, and a legion of inquisitive potential investors. No pressure then!
Big Apple, Bigger Challenges
“The venue was incredible,” Witham remarks. “It was like something out of a movie. You were sitting there underneath the skyscrapers and you felt so small. When the court was up and illuminated the scene looked absolutely stunning.”
But it took several 18-hour days from Padel+’s ground crew and many logistical headaches before Witham could stand back and bask in the picturesque autumnal urban scene.
“Doing anything in New York City is not easy,” he says. “Logistically it was very, very challenging. The tournament had been delayed from the summer due to permit issues, so having it in October brought the weather into play.”
The tournament was staged on the Woolman ice rink at the south end of the park, which regularly hosts mass participation pickleball.
“We had very heavy rain and the ice rink was actually flooded four days before the event,” says Witham. “Once that was cleared, our installation team worked for days and then until 4:30 a.m. to get the court set up for matches starting at 10 a.m. the following day.”
More heavy rain caused the semi-finals to be postponed on Saturday – which was when most of the tournament’s special guests and potential investors were arriving.
“We got there in the end, it all came together, and the court looked amazing,” Witham recalls proudly. “Myself and our Sales Director, Rob Krizek, brought some pretty big investors in to see padel for the first time and they were blown away by it.”
Padel’s Promising Future in America’s Largest City
Witham lived in New York for 20 years and is a lifelong squash player (as well as Padel+, he runs Squash Plus, specializing in innovations in outdoor squash courts) so he knows the US racket sports scene well.
He says of padel’s growth in New York City: “It’s obviously early days but there’s a real buzz. The tournament definitely wasn’t sold out but we had a non-paying mezzanine for passers-by and they were very curious to know what this really cool sport was. It’s important at this stage to just get it out there and put it in front of people so they can see it.
You still have to do your elevator pitch, but we’ve completed some really huge projects recently and we’re getting more and more inquiries every day. It feels like it’s about to get very big very quickly.”
Given the ever-increasing number of celebrity padel junkies, new projects being announced from coast to coast, and padel even recently being featured on The Today Show, it’s hard to argue with Witham’s forecast for the sport’s future in the U.S.
A version of this article was originally written by Mike Dale for The Padel Paper on November 3, 2023. It has been modified and updated.
