Who are Martina Calvo and Claudia Fernández? Meet the youngest champions in padel history
They won the London P1 in only their second tournament together — and made Martina Calvo, 18, the youngest champion in professional padel history. Here's who they are.
By Padel Roundup ·
When the London P1 final ended on that Sunday evening at Olympia, the first professional padel tournament ever staged in Britain had its defining image: an 18-year-old from Pamplona, hands on her head, having just become the youngest champion in the history of the professional game. Most of the 4,000 people in the Grand Hall had never heard of Martina Calvo a week earlier. Quite a few had only a hazy idea of who her partner was.
That’s worth fixing, because British padel fans are going to be watching these two for the next fifteen years. Here’s who they actually are — and why the pairing might be even better than the fairytale suggests.
A record that keeps getting younger
Start with the record itself, because it has a lovely wrinkle. At 18 years, one month and four days, Calvo broke the mark for the youngest winner of a title on padel’s top professional circuit — set by Andrea Ustero in Bordeaux the year before — by all of 20 days.
And before Ustero? The record belonged to Claudia Fernández, who won the Chile P1 in 2024 at 18 years and three months. The youngest-champion record has now been broken twice in two years, and its previous holder was standing on the same side of the net when it fell. Fernández is, at 20, already the elder stateswoman of a generation that is arriving faster than the women’s tour can absorb it.
If you want a single fact that explains where professional padel is heading, that’s the one. The sport’s explosive global growth means the first generation raised on proper courts, proper coaching and proper junior circuits is hitting the tour now — and it is not waiting its turn.
Martina Calvo: the quiet one from Pamplona
Calvo’s background is charmingly un-prodigy-like. Born in July 2008 in Pamplona, she grew up in a padel-mad family and was on court by the age of four. She also played football — right midfield — but by her own account the fit was never right: “I didn’t really like celebrating goals,” she told Padel Magazine, which may be the most self-effacing reason ever given for leaving a sport. Padel, where the celebration is a fist-bump with one other person, suited her temperament better.
She came up through the academy of Pablo Semprún, who still coaches her today alongside Iñigo López, and her junior career was notable for its patience rather than its fireworks — she has spoken about deliberately working through the youth categories rather than being rushed upwards. The results came anyway: at 16 she became the youngest player to reach a Premier Padel quarter-final, in Brussels in 2025, and she began the 2026 season ranked inside the world’s top 15 while still, remarkably, finishing secondary school.
On court, the composure is the thing everyone mentions. She plays the left side — traditionally the aggressor’s wing in padel — with a calm that borders on eerie for a teenager. In London she spent a week trading blows with players she grew up watching and never once looked like the youngest person on court. “I have fulfilled a dream,” she said afterwards. “I have watched so many finals on television and always wondered what it would feel like to play one.” Now she knows: it feels like winning.
Claudia Fernández: a veteran at 20
If Calvo is the new face, Fernández is the one British fans should feel slightly embarrassed about not knowing already. Born in Madrid in February 2006, she turned professional at 16 and has packed a full career into four seasons.
The breakthrough came in 2024, when the great Gemma Triay — one of the best players of her era — picked the then-17-year-old as a partner. It looked like a gamble; it turned out to be one of the most successful pairings of the season, with the Chile P1 title making Fernández the youngest professional champion in history at the time. In 2025 she teamed up with Bea González in an all-young Spanish pairing that won a stack of titles, including the Acapulco Major and, most impressively, the season-ending Premier Padel Finals, beating the world No.1 pair to do it. Along the way she became the youngest player ever to reach ten professional titles, aged 19.
She has now won well over a dozen titles, has been as high as world No.3, and plays the right side with the steadiness of someone a decade older. Coached by Gaby Reca and Martín Dantonio, she is the structural core of this new pairing: the one who has been in the big finals before, the one who knows what losing them feels like, and the one who — as the record books now show — knows exactly what it’s like to be the teenage phenomenon, because she was the original.
A partnership born from the reshuffle
How did they end up together? Through the tour’s favourite pastime: the pairings market. Fernández and González split after their title-laden 2025 — González left to partner former world No.1 Paula Josemaría — and Fernández began 2026 with Portugal’s Sofía Araújo, while Calvo started the season alongside the vastly experienced Marta Ortega. Neither project quite caught fire. By midsummer the deckchairs shifted again: Ortega and Araújo reunited, and Fernández called Calvo.
Their first tournament together was the Pretoria P1 in late July. They reached the final and lost to Triay and Delfina Brea, the world’s best pair. A week later in London, they met the same opponents in the same round and won, 7-5, 6-3 in an hour and three-quarters — leading 3-0 early, taking the first set from 5-5, then racing to 5-0 in the second. Two tournaments, two finals, one title, and a head-to-head record against the world No.1s that already reads 1-1. As debuts go, it is almost without precedent.
The shape of the pairing helps explain the speed. Calvo attacks from the left, Fernández organises from the right, and both are products of the same modern Spanish school: raised on the glass, comfortable at pace, tactically drilled from childhood. There is no awkward conversion project here, no veteran adjusting to a new generation’s game — just two players of the same generation, speaking the same padel language, one of whom happens to have four years of elite scar tissue already.
Why this matters for British fans
Partly because you saw it first. London’s Olympia was the site of the record, and with the venue contracted to host the P1 for five years, Calvo and Fernández will be back next August — quite possibly as the top seeds rather than the fourth.
But mostly because women’s padel has spent two seasons looking for a pair who can consistently trouble Triay and Brea, and the answer may have just introduced itself in West London. The men’s game is locked in a two-pair duopoly; the women’s tour, suddenly, has a genuine generational plot line — the best pair in the world being hunted by two players aged 20 and 18 who have been together for a month.
Padel’s history is full of partnerships that burned bright for a fortnight and dissolved by Christmas, so the usual caveats apply. But the fundamentals here are unusually sound: complementary sides, shared schooling, a decade and a half of runway, and — in Fernández — a 20-year-old who has already lived every stage of the journey her partner is just beginning. If you’re new to padel and want a pair to follow, you could not pick a better moment to start.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Martina Calvo?
Martina Calvo Santamaría is a Spanish padel player from Pamplona, born on 5 July 2008. She plays the left side of the court and became the youngest champion in professional padel history at the 2026 London Premier Padel P1, aged 18 years, one month and four days.
Who is Claudia Fernández?
Claudia Fernández Sánchez is a Spanish padel player from Madrid, born in February 2006. Despite being only 20, she has won more than a dozen professional titles, reached a career-high ranking of world No.3, and won the season-ending Premier Padel Finals in 2025 with Bea González.
How long have Calvo and Fernández played together?
Barely a month. They debuted as a pair at the Pretoria P1 in late July 2026, reached the final and lost to Gemma Triay and Delfina Brea, then beat the same pair 7-5, 6-3 a week later to win the London P1 — their first title together.
Who is the youngest padel champion in history?
Martina Calvo, who was 18 years, one month and four days old when she won the London P1 in August 2026. She broke Andrea Ustero's record by 20 days. Before Ustero, the record belonged to Claudia Fernández — Calvo's own partner — who won the Chile P1 in 2024 at 18 years and three months.
Will Calvo and Fernández play in the UK again?
Almost certainly. Olympia is contracted to host the London Premier Padel P1 for five years, so the tour returns to London in 2027 — and on current form, Calvo and Fernández will arrive as one of the pairs to beat.