From tennis to padel: what transfers, what to unlearn
Tennis players pick up padel faster than anyone — then plateau harder than anyone. What your tennis game gives you, the habits to unlearn, and how to make the switch properly.
By Padel Roundup ·
Every padel club in Britain has seen the same new arrival: the tennis player. They walk on court with a decade of muscle memory, volley beautifully, smash anything loose, win their first few social matches — and then, somewhere around week six, run into a wall. Usually the back one.
Tennis players are simultaneously padel’s best-prepared beginners and its most stubborn intermediates. The sports look so similar — a net, a yellow ball, the same 15-30-40 scoring — that it’s tempting to treat padel as small tennis in a glass box. It isn’t. It’s a different game that happens to rhyme. Given a million people in Britain now play padel and a great many of them came across from tennis — Andy Murray liked the sport enough to invest in UK court operator Game4Padel, and Juan Martín del Potro went from a US Open title to advising a Miami padel club — the transition deserves a proper guide. Here’s what your tennis game gives you for free, what it charges you for, and how to make the switch without the plateau.
What transfers beautifully
Your volleys. Padel is a doubles game decided at the net, and a tennis player’s compact, firm volley is close to ready-made. While the true beginners next to you are learning what a volley even is, you’ll be putting yours in awkward places from day one. This is the single biggest head start you have.
Your overhead — with an asterisk. You can already hit a smash, which puts you months ahead. The asterisk is that padel will eventually ask you not to hit it flat-out most of the time, for reasons we’ll get to.
Your ball-reading. Years of judging pace, spin and depth transfer wholesale. You’ll be in roughly the right place at roughly the right time from your first session — priceless in a sport where positioning outranks power.
Your scoring brain and match temperament. Padel scores exactly like tennis, give or take the golden point at deuce. Knowing how to play a big point, close out a set, or steady yourself at 30-40 is real, transferable craft that no amount of wall practice teaches.
Your footwork foundations. Split-steps, recovery steps, moving as a unit with a doubles partner — all of it applies. The distances are just shorter, which your legs will thank you for.
What you’ll need to unlearn
Now the invoice.
The big swing. The tennis groundstroke — long take-back, full follow-through — is the first habit padel punishes. The court is barely more than half the size, the ball comes back quicker than you expect, and behind you there’s a glass wall your racket will eventually meet mid-backswing. Padel strokes are compact: short take-back, firm contact, controlled finish. Think of every groundstroke as a volley that happens to bounce first.
The power reflex. Tennis rewards hitting through people. Padel, played properly, is closer to squash crossed with chess: the walls mean that pace you send over usually comes back, often at your feet with interest. The players who beat you at your new club won’t out-hit you — they’ll out-wait you, moving you around until you donate the error. Coaches who specialise in converting tennis players say the same thing almost word for word: the game is about manoeuvring opponents into mistakes, not ending points by force. Patience isn’t a temperament in padel; it’s the actual strategy.
The western grip. Modern tennis forehands live in semi-western and western grips built for heavy topspin on high-bouncing balls. Padel balls sit lower, the solid racket generates spin differently, and half the game is played on the volley or off the glass. The answer is the continental “chopper” grip — the one you already use to serve and volley — for essentially everything. If your tennis forehand grip is extreme, expect a few humbling weeks while your hand relearns its home position.
The instinct that “past me” means “gone”. This is the deep one. A decade of tennis has taught your nervous system that a ball beaten past you is a lost point, so you lunge, stretch and swing early at everything. In padel, a ball going past you is frequently good news: let it travel, let it hit the back glass, and it comes back out to you with more time than you had before. Learning to turn, track the ball off the wall and play it calmly is the defining skill of the sport — and the single area where a total beginner, with no instincts to override, sometimes progresses faster than a county-level tennis player. Our wall drills guide is built for exactly this.
Smashing everything. In tennis, an overhead is a finishing shot. In padel, a flat smash from the wrong position comes off the back glass and rebounds to your opponents — or sails out via the fence and loses you the point outright. The pros mostly hit the bandeja, a controlled, sliced overhead whose job isn’t to win the point but to keep you and your partner parked at the net. Accepting that most of your overheads are for holding territory rather than ending rallies is the moment tennis players stop plateauing.
The tactical rewiring
Padel’s geometry produces one commandment: the net wins. The pair at the net takes most points; the pair at the back survives. So the whole tactical game is a fight over the front half of the court, and the weapon in that fight isn’t the drive you spent twenty years grooving — it’s the lob. A deep lob forces the net pair back and lets you take their ground; a good bandeja resists the eviction. Rallies in padel are long negotiations over territory, punctuated by the occasional act of violence, where tennis rallies are usually the reverse.
Two smaller adjustments. The serve is underarm, struck at or below waist height after a bounce — deflating if your first serve was your pride, though slice and placement still matter and the serving pair gets to attack the net behind it. And padel is doubles, full stop, at nearly every club: you’ll play as a unit, move as a unit, and discover that a well-drilled average pair beats two talented individuals almost every time.
Kit: what changes, what doesn’t
Your tennis racket stays at home — padel rackets are stringless, foam-cored and perforated, and choosing one is its own small science. For converts, the standard advice is to resist the temptation of head-heavy, diamond-shaped power rackets that flatter your smash: a round or teardrop shape with a forgiving sweet spot will serve the game you’re actually learning. Padel balls look identical to tennis balls but carry slightly less pressure, sitting a touch lower off the court — one more nudge away from the topspin game.
Tennis shoes will get you through your first sessions, but most UK courts are sand-dressed artificial turf, and padel-specific shoes grip it noticeably better. Everything else — kit bag, overgrips, competitive streak — transfers as-is.
A four-week conversion plan
Week one: grip and swing. Continental grip for everything, compact strokes, no exceptions. Play social matches and resist every big swing. You’ll feel underpowered; that’s the point.
Week two: befriend the glass. Book a court with a partner and spend half the session on back-wall rebounds — feed, let it pass, turn, play it off the glass. Boring, transformative.
Week three: lob on purpose. Set a rule for your social matches: from the back of the court, every third shot is a lob. You’ll lose a few points and win the habit that matters most.
Week four: tame the overhead. Learn the bandeja’s basic shape — side-on, contact slightly in front, sliced, aimed deep — and treat the flat smash as a treat you’ve earned, not a default.
Do that, and the plateau most tennis converts hit at week six simply never arrives. And avoid the traps in our ten beginner mistakes guide — tennis players commit at least seven of them, usually with more conviction.
The honest summary
Tennis gives you a first-class ticket into padel: you’ll rally immediately, volley well and enjoy your first month more than almost any other newcomer. But the players who convert best are the ones who arrive humble — who accept that the walls, the lob and the patient net game are a new sport to be learned rather than a variant to be conquered. Bring your volleys and your competitive scars. Leave the western grip, the 120mph mentality and the assumption that past you means gone. The glass has news for you, and once you learn to listen for it, you may find — as a suspicious number of former tennis players do — that you don’t much feel like going back.
Frequently asked questions
Is padel easier than tennis?
It is easier to start. The underarm serve, smaller court and solid racket mean a tennis player can enjoy rallies within minutes. It is not easier to master — the walls, the overhead variety and the patient doubles tactics form a deep game of their own.
What grip should tennis players use in padel?
Continental — the classic "chopper" or volley grip — for almost everything. Semi-western and western forehand grips, common in modern tennis, cause problems in padel because the ball sits lower and the game rewards control and slice over heavy topspin.
What is the hardest thing about switching from tennis to padel?
The walls. Every tennis instinct says a ball flying past you is gone, so new converts panic and swing early. In padel you often let it go, let it rebound off the glass, and play it with more time than you had before. Rewiring that instinct takes weeks.
Can you use a tennis racket to play padel?
No. Padel requires a stringless, foam-cored racket with a perforated face, and padel balls carry slightly less pressure than tennis balls. Tennis shoes are a workable start, though padel-specific shoes grip the sand-dressed turf better.
Do tennis skills help in padel?
Enormously. Volleys, overheads, split-steps, reading the ball and match temperament all transfer directly. Tennis players usually reach a decent social standard faster than newcomers from any other sport — the risk is plateauing on those borrowed skills instead of learning the wall game.