Although North America’s most high-profile pro padel competition of 2024 doesn’t kick off until tomorrow, when the Pro Padel League (PPL) begins play of its second season, racket sports fans in Charleston, SC, were treated to a jaw-dropping pro padel showdown this past Saturday as part of the Credit One Charleston Open pro women’s tennis tournament.
While many of the fans in attendance had never seen padel played before (or even heard of it, for that matter), the general consensus from everyone I spoke to was that the level of play was “amazing” and that the whole experience was “beyond incredible” with players running out the door to retrieve balls on multiple occasions. The match also spurred some serious interest in the sport.
Credit One Charleston Open tournament director Bob Moran reports, “Everyone saw what the potential for the sport is and people were just completely ‘wow’-ed by it. We couldn’t have been more excited about the response we got from everyone who was on site for it.”
Granted, it helps when one of the four pros playing in the exhibition is the legendary Juan Martin Diaz, an Argentine who was ranked No. 1 in world for 14 consecutive years and once won 23 tournaments in a row. Diaz was joined on court for the Credit One exhibition match by other top-tier talents including Jose Carlos Gaspar, Maxi Rozas, and Javier Marti.
Although the padel court (which is the first in Charleston and only the second in the entire state of South Carolina) was originally just going to be a temporary installation during the Credit One tournament, the reception the sport has received thus far has led to a change of plans.
Moran, who also serves as President of Beemok Sports & Entertainment, which owns the LTP facility where the Credit One tournament is held, tells me, “We built the court about a month ago. And for the past two weeks or so prior to the tournament, we’ve had all kinds of members and folks in Charleston coming out and playing. It’s been awesome.”
“What we’ve discovered is that our higher-level tennis players who rarely break from their routine of playing tennis have now broken from that routine and are getting out on the padel court at a pretty regular rate, which is fun for us to see. So, we’re definitely going to keep this [court] and then we’re looking at building another one,” he adds.
While it remains to be seen if padel will ever be able to overtake tennis (or even pickleball) as the Charleston region’s most played racket sport, early indications suggest that the world’s fastest growing sport may soon have a very strong presence in the Lowcountry, indeed.
Of the sport’s future here, Moran concludes, “We’re big believers in padel. We’re training and doing things for the the future. We’re excited about it and I’m hoping some of my neighboring clubs will follow suit and build something similar and then we can really get this sport going here in Charleston.”
