When Padel Becomes a Personality Trait and Confessions From the Glass Court
Written by Dr. Karen Farhat, Body and Mind Consultancy
Dr. Karen Farhat is an integrative psychotherapist and intercultural expert, and founder of Body & Mind Consultancy. Her work explores intercultural psychology, identity, emotional well-being, and the psychology of belonging in an increasingly interconnected world.
A satirical confession about addiction, aristocracy, and the gladiator arena hiding inside your local sports club. It started innocently. A friend proposed, “Come play padel. It’s fun. Very social. Easy to pick up.” Fun. Social. Easy. Three lies hidden in beautiful wrapping paper.
The gateway
The first hit is free, or close to it. Someone lends you a racket. You chase a ball around a glass box. You laugh at yourself. You sweat. You think: This is nice. I should do this more often. Good exercise. Fresh air. Friendly people.
You have no idea what you’ve just walked into.
Within weeks, you own two rackets. Then three. You tell yourself they’re “for different conditions.” You don’t know what that means. Neither does your bank account.
The descent
Yes, you get hooked, and then sleep sometimes becomes a dark, foreboding option. Not because you’re playing, but because you’re replaying it again and again. That volley you missed terribly. That lob that went long and you couldn’t catch! Why? Because you were too slow. That moment you moved left when every atom in the universe was screaming, move right.
You lie awake at 2 a.m., tossing and turning, prosecuting yourself for a shot you missed at 7 p.m. The jury is the ceiling. The verdict is always guilty.
YouTube tutorials at midnight. Grip adjustments and small practice movements as you walk through your living room. Footwork drills to check if you’ve still got it. You watch professionals in slow motion and think: Yes, this is what I was missing. You weren’t missing anything. You were just bad. You’re still bad. But now you’re bad with theoretical knowledge, which is worse.
The aristocracy of the court
Here’s what no one tells you: Padel has a caste system.
Your score is your title. Your Lordship 4.5. Her Ladyship 3.2. God help you if you’re a 1-point-something, because the nobility does not mingle with the peasants.
You see it in the WhatsApp groups. The glances when you walk into the club. The furtive whispers. Who’s that? What’s their level? Should we acknowledge them? Are they “worth it”?
Someone asks about you. You see the look exchanged between those who’ve seen you play. The slight grimace. The diplomatic pause before: “They’re enthusiastic.”
Enthusiastic. The padel word for “peasant.”
If your number is low, you’re not just bad at a sport. You’re socially invisible. People who laughed with you at dinner won’t make eye contact on the court. Players you thought were friends suddenly have “scheduling conflicts” that last for months.
If you’re bigger? If your body doesn’t fit the mould? They’ve already decided your ranking before you’ve hit a ball. The judgment comes preloaded. You have to win twice as hard just to be seen as half as good.
The targeting
Here’s where the gladiators enter.
A doubles game is a democracy for exactly thirty seconds, until someone identifies the weak link. Then it becomes an execution.
Every ball comes to you, every smash aimed at your feet. Your partner’s silence grows louder with each point you lose. You’re not playing together anymore. You’re just the wounded animal the lions have separated from the herd.
The viewers, sorry, the people “waiting for the next court,” aren’t watching the game. They’re watching you, calculating, judging, and filing away little mental notes for the WhatsApp tribunal later. They sum up your value as an asset or a liability.
Am I playing for the Olympics? you think. Is there prize money I don’t know about? Did I miss a memo about life-or-death stakes?
The partner problem
Win, and you’re a great team. Lose, and you’re a defendant.
Then comes the silence after a lost game. Suddenly, the message never appears. The next invitation goes to someone else, and you feel it in your gut. Your partner doesn’t break up with you. No, they just stop choosing you.
They don’t want to play with you anymore, as if you are a 6-year-old.
You find out through the algorithm. Through the booking app. Through the group chat you’re suddenly seeing less of.
Or worse: They stay, but they stop speaking. A “tsk” after your bad shot. Or a “puhhh.” Do you know how intimidating that tiny sound can feel? A grimace you catch in your peripheral vision. The energy shifts. You can feel the disappointment radiating off them like heat from asphalt. They’re physically present and emotionally in divorce proceedings.
You start apologising pre-emptively. “Sorry,” you say before the point even starts. You’re sorry for existing on their side of the net.
The primal sounds
The women, I say this as an observation, not an accusation, can be even more terrifying. The men shout. The men swear. The men blame. The men are obvious.
But the women? The women have sounds. A sharp exhale. A click of the tongue. A “tsk” that could shatter the glass walls it bounces off. Or an icy comment that drips with menacing undertones, said in a “feminine voice.”
No words needed. The grimace says everything. The energy shifts like the weather. One moment, you’re partners. The next, you’re standing in an arctic front, wondering what you did.
These are not learned behaviours. These are ancient. Primal. Something unlocked from deep in the brainstem, where competition lived before language existed.
Let the games begin
Then come the tournaments. The Americano. The Mexicano. The Any-Other-Ano. Let the games begin.
You could play the Game of Thrones theme as people walk onto the court, and it wouldn’t feel out of place. Alliances form. Alliances shatter. Your partner from Round 1 is your opponent in Round 3, and suddenly you’re both pretending the last hour didn’t happen.
I don’t know who invented the rankings, but they shift dramatically in real time. You watch yourself fall on the leaderboard, it’s all you can think of, like a stock price during a market crash. Someone you beat twenty minutes ago is now above you because mathematics is also your enemy. They clap. But do they mean it, or are they trying to make you feel better?
The Americano is particularly cruel. Rotating partners means rotating judgments. Everyone plays with everyone, which means everyone has an opinion about everyone. By the end, the WhatsApp groups are burning with hot takes. Reputations are made and destroyed over three hours on a Sunday.
The addiction
Here’s the confession: I know all of this. I see it clearly. The absurdity. The social theatre. The sleep deprivation. The money spent on rackets I don’t need and coaching I forget immediately. The heart palpitations, the high when you win and your ranking goes up, and the low when you lose and the dreaded lower ranking is posted. Your life depends on that moment. It’s a short-lived second that determines the rest of your day or week.
I check the booking app like it’s a slot machine. I feel genuine stress when I hear about good players joining my club. I have opinions about overgrips. Strong opinions. Opinions I would defend with my life.
Fun? I don’t remember what fun feels like. This is something else. This is survival of the fittest. This is proving something to people I didn’t know existed two years ago and whose opinions should not matter, yet somehow do. Everything you have accomplished or studied for in life doesn’t matter compared to that “padel game.”
The underworld
Padel reveals people. Really, it does.
The charming dinner guest who screams at line calls. The generous friend who suddenly can’t see that the ball was in, argues with you, and points again and again to force their opinion. The colleague who talks about teamwork at the office and then blames their partner for everything on the court.
The sport doesn’t create these people. It just removes the mask. Under pressure, with a score on the line and people watching, you see who someone really is: friend or foe.
Maybe that’s why it’s addictive. Not the game itself. But the unmasking. An anthropological study happening in real time inside a glass box.
Or maybe I’m just justifying my own descent.
No resolution
I should end this with wisdom. With a lesson learned. With “I quit and found peace” or “I accepted my level, and now I play for fun.” But I’d be lying.
Truthfully, I have three WhatsApp groups open. There’s a game tomorrow that I’m already nervous about, and I’m thinking about whether I should back off, but that’s a “sin” in padel and another story for another day.
I bought a new racket last week because someone said it had “better control” and that they started playing better. I believed them because I’ll believe anything now.
The aristocracy still doesn’t see me. My score is my shame. I replay my mistakes at night and optimise my grip in the morning.
This is the underworld. This is Hades’ world. This is what the beautiful ad didn’t mention. If you’ll excuse me, someone just posted a court slot for Thursday, and I need to book it before the nobles do.
They said it was just a sport. They lied.
Read more from Dr. Karen Farhat
Dr. Karen Farhat, Body and Mind Consultancy
Dr. Karen Farhat is an integrative psychotherapist, relationship expert, and intercultural specialist, and the founder of Body & Mind Consultancy, an online and in-person practice serving clients in Cyprus and worldwide. She is recognised as a pioneering voice in integrative psychotherapy and works with expats, people living between countries and cultures, and intercultural couples on identity, emotional wellbeing, relationships, and the psychology of belonging across cultures. In 2025, she received a Global Recognition Award for mentoring and leadership in mental health and wellbeing and a Bronze Stevie Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year, recognising her impact as a purpose-driven founder in the wellbeing space.
