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I am a tennis player. The classic, passionate, crazy tennis player. I play it, talk about it and watch it, very often – too often – since I was a little girl. I’m a huge sports fan in general, all sports, but tennis does not leave much room for being upstaged.
And yet, and yet! Eight years ago, I discovered padel, and it was… love at first sight!
Actually, no, that’s completely wrong. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I more or less hated this sport straight away. Too similar to tennis on the surface, yet so different in the end that I couldn’t find my bearings. Impossible to play off the glass, I mishit three-quarters of my smashes, I didn’t know how to control my lobs properly… Zero enjoyment.
But there is something about padel that made me want to dig deeper, to fight against my tennis-player instincts. I sensed the game’s enormous potential, the conviviality of playing with four people, the unlikely points you find nowhere else. And besides, I couldn’t let myself be tamed by that cursed hole-filled racket; giving up in the face of difficulty is not in the family genes.
It took a little time, I didn’t have many opportunities to play, but I tried to maintain some consistency and started to get my first good feelings. Here and there, there were the first symptoms of acute padelitis. The pride of a defence off the glass, the satisfaction of a bandeja that lands just right, the joy of a volée stuck to the fence. Simple little pleasures, I tell you. In short, padel addiction had definitely begun.
I also started refining those sensations. As in tennis, I chose my weapons according to my style of play, tried rackets, and understood what I preferred in terms of equipment to have as much fun as possible. And to win, of course. Because, although people say that padel is above all about fun, it is even more fun to make the most of yourself to beat your opponents.
Believe it or not, I have played on many courts, in quite a few countries, in very different conditions. Indoor, outdoor, carpets in every possible colour, slow, fast, sand-free, with sand, panoramic, classic. This has allowed me to get to know the padel player sleeping inside me better, despite the 26 years of tennis practice that I sometimes drag around like a ball and chain.
My partner, Michael, is also very involved in the padel world (creator of Twenty By Ten, a very nice padel clothing brand, objectively speaking), so I mainly play mixed doubles, which has made me a right-side player by definition.
I think I could also enjoy playing on the left, trying to hit a few par 3, but I suppose the little rascal in me is happy on the right. For a long time, I played with the Bullpadel Vertex Woman racket; I loved the control it gave me and the comfort on impact.
But recently, I fell in love with the new Head Graphene 360+ Alpha Pro. More explosive, it gives me a little extra power which, even for right-side players like us, is no luxury.
The second essential thing for me is shoes. Whatever the sport, I always expect the same qualities from a shoe: flexibility and lightness. Qualities I found in the Babolat Jet Ritma (Babolat Jet Premura for men), with a special mention for my tennis equipment supplier, which took on the challenge of making good padel gear and, I think, succeeded.
But between us, my personal favourite remains above all the padel matches I regularly play at the magnificent Esprit Padel complex in Saint-Priest, with its founder, and incidentally my brother, Sébastien. When we talk about perfect conditions, I think we are not far from the very best available. And there, I am even ready to lose while having fun. That says it all.
Alizé Cornet, professional tennis player
