The Grand Sports Club is one of only eight facilities in the U.S. conducive for training athletes in padel, one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.
Located just outside The Woodlands on a 10-acre property at 6130 Auburn Lakes Drive, Spring, the facility first opened as The Club in 2012 as one of two padel facilities in Texas. The first was The Houstonian Hotel, Club & Spa in Houston.
General Manager Alexandra Marquez and her business partners assumed ownership of the club in March and have since changed the name to The Grand Sports Club. They have added two more padel courts to the facility for a total of five—making it the largest padel program facility in the country.
“It’s very much a family sport, and the kids really like it because it’s less structured than tennis,” Marquez said. “It’s very social, it’s very fun and it helps the kids stay active because they train a lot, but they’re having fun so they don’t think about it.”
A combination of tennis, racquetball and squash, padel originated in Mexico and was first introduced to the U.S. in 1993 after gaining popularity in several Latin American countries.
Padel is played by four players in teams of two and is scored like tennis. The padel court is similar to a tennis court except it is surrounded by walls, which can be played off of. Players serve underhanded using a racquet unique to the sport.
Under the coaching of professional padel players Belen Salcedo and Claudio Trevisan, The Grand Sports Club has 40 boys and girls training five hours a day year-round who qualify to compete in the World Junior Championships and the Pan-American Games each year.
Marquez’s daughter Ana Moreno, 14, has played padel along with her brother Andres Moreno, 16, at the club for the past three years. Both players have qualified for and competed in the international competitions in the past.
“[At the Pan-American games], I like how there’s a bunch of different kids from all over the world and we all have one common interest,” Ana said. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from or what language you speak because we all come together through padel.”
Padel players from around the U.S. will try out for this year’s Pan-American Games at the Grand Sports Complex in September. Upon qualifying, the players will represent the U.S. against 11 countries at the competition in November.
In addition to the junior program, The Grand Sports Club also has about 40 adult players who train to compete in their own world championship.
“We have already been approached by padel players from other areas of Texas who want to start a padel club,” Marquez said. “We like being exclusive, but our goal is to make this sport grow so we have a bigger selection of athletes training and competing. It doesn’t matter what size the club is, as long as they play the sport.”
How to play padel:
Padel is played by four players in teams of two.
- Players serve the ball underhanded with the ball at or below waist level at the moment of striking.
- If the ball bounces off the walls, players may continue playing that volley.
- Padel is scored by marker calling: no points is “love,” first point won is “15,” second point won is “30,” third point won is “40” and the fourth point won is “game.”
- If each pair has won three points, a “duce” is called and the pairs continue to play until one pair has won two consecutive points needed to win the game.
- The first pair to win six games, with a minimum advantage of two, will win the set.
- A match is the best of three sets; two out of three sets need to be won in order to win the match.
Sources: Federacion Internacional de Padel, U.S. Padel Association/Community Impact Newspaper
