The Missing Pathway: People to Play With

I was speaking with someone I used to play tennis with, and he told me something that stayed with me. When he was around fifteen, he was one of the talented kids in Caminha. He could play. But when he went to compete against players from Viana, he felt something many tennis people will recognise.

It was not only that they hit the ball better, although maybe some of them did. It was that they seemed to come from another tennis world, one with more playing, more competing, more rhythm, more comparison, and more people coming back again.

That kind of environment can be inspiring, but for a young player it can also be heavy. The gap does not feel like a simple technical gap anymore. It starts to feel like an ecosystem gap.

Then he said something about padel.

“It would be amazing if tennis was more like padel. Someone puts in a group: level 5, 6 to 7, who wants to play? People show up, play, and then maybe have a beer.”

I keep coming back to that sentence, because it is so ordinary and so important. Maybe tennis does not only need better lessons. Maybe, in many places, it needs easier ways for people to find each other.

The invisible advantage is density

When we talk about player development, we often talk about coaching quality, technical information, and who learned what earlier. All of that can matter. But sometimes one of the biggest advantages is quieter and more basic: there are more people to play with.

More players usually means more matches, and more matches means more problems to solve. There are older players to watch, rivals, doubles partners, random games, and more chances to lose, compare, compete, laugh, and try again. A player in a dense tennis environment is not only receiving instruction. They are living nearer to the game.

That is very different from a player who has a weekly lesson, maybe one match if they are lucky, and then spends the rest of the week trying to find someone available. Sometimes one player simply had more tennis life around them.

Tennis makes playing too formal

Tennis can be strangely difficult to play. You need a court, balls, someone at a similar level, a time that works, and enough confidence not to feel you are wasting the other person’s time.

It makes me wonder: what is missing from tennis that would make playing for an hour feel as simple as gathering a few people for a run, going to the gym together, or meeting for almost any other activity?

Those activities still require time and coordination, of course. But the invitation feels ordinary. You do not normally need to establish everyone’s exact level, find the perfect match, or worry that one person will prevent the others from enjoying themselves. In tennis, all of that can feel as if it needs to be solved before anyone steps onto the court.

In many places, it is easier to find a coach than to find three people for doubles, and that makes me pause.

Lessons are useful. Coaching matters. But if a sport becomes easier to consume as instruction than to enter as play, it is worth asking what people are missing before they even get to the court.

Padel has made this question harder to ignore, because it often feels socially easier. Four people share the court, the serve is less intimidating, the rally starts more often, and mixed levels can survive longer. The culture also makes the invitation simple.

“We need one more.”

Padel understood the invitation

Padel is not only growing because the technique can be easier to access. It also grows because the experience is easy to understand: play, compete, rotate, laugh, meet people, maybe stay after. Tennis often sells improvement. Padel often sells participation.

Tennis asks:

“What level are you?”

Padel often asks:

“Who wants to play from 6 to 7?”

That small difference changes the feeling. One question can make you feel evaluated before you arrive. The other can make you feel invited.

Of course level still matters. If the gap is too large, the game can become frustrating for everyone. But tennis sometimes treats level difference as if it makes play almost impossible, when often we may simply be using the wrong format.

Different levels may need different formats

The problem may not be that different levels cannot play together. The problem may be that tennis keeps asking different levels to play the same version: normal singles, normal scoring, normal balls, normal expectations.

But tennis has so many ways to change the task, if we are willing to be a little more playful and a little less formal.

You can play doubles, balance teams, use handicaps, start the stronger player 0-15 or 0-30, give them only one serve, use half court, allow two bounces, use orange or green balls, or play short games where both players have something to solve.

Golf understood something important here. Its handicap system is built around the idea that different abilities can still compete fairly. Tennis does not need to copy golf exactly, but it could borrow the mindset: we do not always need equal ability. We may need better formats.

A pathway is not only a road to elite sport

When we hear the word pathway, we often imagine something serious and narrow: coach, academy, tournament, ranking, selection, performance. These things matter for some players, but for most people a pathway is simpler: the set of people and places that make it easy to play again tomorrow.

That could mean:

  • WhatsApp groups by loose level;
  • “we need one more” culture;
  • mixed-level events;
  • social time after play;
  • older and younger players sharing the same club life;
  • less shame around being worse;
  • formats where everyone can contribute.

I would not separate this too quickly from development. It may be one of the places where development actually happens.

A child who plays more because the club feels alive has more chances to learn. An adult who keeps coming back because they found people has more chances to improve. The community is not just decoration around the coaching. It is part of the learning environment.

What my friend may have needed

When I think back to that conversation, I do not hear only a story about Caminha and Viana. I hear a bigger tennis question.

Maybe what he needed at fifteen was not only one more technical correction. Maybe he needed some of what those players from Viana seemed to have: a world where tennis was happening around them more often, with people to play with, small rivalries, easy invitations, and a reason to go to the club even when there was no formal lesson.

Tennis often asks how to produce better players.

Padel seems to ask a more immediate question:

“How do we make it easier for people to play today?”

Maybe tennis needs to ask that question more often too.

Because a pathway is not only a route to becoming elite. Sometimes it is simply the community that makes you want to pick up the racket again tomorrow.

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