Paris Saint-Germain owner Nasser Al Khelaifi, meanwhile, is such a fan that his Qatar Sports Investments company took control of padel’s professional ranks last month.
Its roots are Hispanic, having been invented in 1969 by Enrique Corcuera, a Mexican businessman who did not have enough space at his holiday home in Acapulco to build a tennis court. Instead he fashioned a space that was 25 per cent smaller, with the walls becoming a significant part of the ebb and flow of the game, in the same way as squash.
In Italy alone, the number of padel courts in the country has increased 500 per cent since 2020, up to almost 5,000.The one country that does not yet seem to have fallen for padel — which is widely described as the world’s fastest-growing sport — is the United States.