NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A new sport is coming to Nashville!
Sensa Padel Nashville opened up Friday morning. It's located in Germantown's Neuhoff District, at 1321 Adams Street. Watch some locals play in the above video.
General manager Scott Mitchell says padel is the fastest-growing sport in the world.
If you're not familiar, he says it's like a mix between tennis and squash or racquetball.
"We're the first one in Tennessee, first one in Nashville," he said, explaining it's been very popular in Europe for a while now.
Pablo Martín is from Madrid, where he grew up playing the sport.
"We have more than 20,000 courts in Spain," he said. "Having it as a reality here in Nashville feels awesome."
Now, Martín is the Director of Partnerships at Sensa Padel and had a hand in making it a reality.
"The process was tedious and was hard, to find those people who knew about padel, but you would be surprised how many people knew about padel," he said.
It's more fast-paced than pickleball and very easy to pick up.
"It's a very active sport, a very social sport, so even if you've never played a sport and you want to be a part of the community, I think it's awesome," said Martín.
"Don't be intimated," added Mitchell. "It's a ton of fun, it's very active...if you've played any of the racquet sports, you're going to pick this up real quick."
Mitchell says courts will be free this weekend and next week. After that, they will charge per court. You can sign up for a court on their website.
For people of my generation, in our younger days we spent part of our weekends watching music shows like American Bandstand and Soul Train. That was before the age of music videos. Several years before Soul Train was syndicated out of Chicago, another syndicated R&B show was taped in Nashville at NewsChannel 5. Night Train aired in the 60s and included what may have been the first TV appearance for legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Forrest Sanders has another great look back at station history.
-Lelan Statom