From Acapulco to Marbella: How Padel Came to the Costa del Sol

Today it is hard to imagine the Costa del Sol without padel courts. They are at the clubs, the hotels, the residential estates and the sports centre of every village. Yet the sport that fills diaries across Spain has a very recent and very precise history, with names and an exact address in Marbella. This is how a garden idea became a social phenomenon.

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1969: a walled court in Acapulco

Padel goes back to 1969, to Las Brisas in Acapulco. There the Mexican businessman Enrique Corcuera had a house with limited space and wanted a court to play on with his family. The result was smaller than a tennis court, 20 by 10 metres, enclosed by walls with a net in the middle. The walls, at first simply a response to the space available, became the essence of the game: the ball could stay in play after bouncing off them.

According to the International Padel Federation, the first rules were written by his wife, Viviana Corcuera. It was a game made for enjoyment, easy to learn and very social, and those three qualities still explain its success.

Alfonso de Hohenlohe and the Marbella Club

Among the guests at the Acapulco house was Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe, the man who had made Marbella an international destination by founding the Marbella Club. He liked the game so much that he decided to bring it to Spain. In 1974 he built the country’s first two courts at the Marbella Club. Unlike the original court, their sides were closed with wire mesh, a solution padel still uses today.

Marbella was then a meeting point for aristocrats, artists and travellers from all over the world, and padel fitted that way of life perfectly: it was played in pairs, learned in an afternoon and always ended with a conversation on the terrace.

Spain’s first two padel courts were built in 1974 at the Marbella Club, at the initiative of Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe.

Argentina, the great laboratory

At almost the same time an Argentine friend of Hohenlohe, Julio Menditeguy, took the game to his own country. Argentina became padel’s great laboratory in the 1980s and 1990s: thousands of courts, a generation of hugely talented players and a technique that was later exported to Spain. Many of the coaches teaching on the Costa del Sol today learned in that school.

From summer craze to mass sport

In Spain padel went from an exclusive club curiosity to a popular sport. Glass walls replaced concrete, indoor centres appeared and clubs extended their hours. The professional game gained visibility with the World Padel Tour, which ran from 2013 to 2023, and since 2024 the main international circuit has been Premier Padel, organised with the International Padel Federation.

The Costa del Sol watched that transformation from the front row. The climate allows outdoor play almost all year, the international population brought players of every level, and hotels discovered that a good court was as strong an argument as a spa.

The game in one minute

• The court: 20 by 10 metres, glass walls at the ends and mesh along the sides.
• Always in pairs: padel is played almost exclusively as doubles, which makes it very social.
• The serve: underarm, below the waist, after bouncing the ball, and diagonally.
• The walls: the ball may rebound off them after bouncing on the ground, which makes rallies longer.

Where to play today

Marbella remains the symbolic capital of padel in Spain, with clubs that combine first class facilities, academies and a strong social scene. Many of the resorts along the Golden Mile have their own courts, and the Spanish edition of this magazine lists the best clubs in its padel section.

More than fifty years after that court in Acapulco the spirit is unchanged: four friends, a ball and an afternoon ahead. That the first Spanish chapter was written in Marbella is no coincidence. Few places understand so well the art of turning sport into social life.