Tennis & Padel

Padel has overtaken tennis on the Canary Islands, and as a visitor you can be on a court within an hour of deciding you want to play — usually by booking through the same phone app the locals use, for a court fee of somewhere between roughly €12 and €25 for ninety minutes, split between four players. Tennis is still widely available, particularly at the larger resort hotels and municipal complexes, but padel is what fills the courts every evening from six o'clock onwards.

If you have never seen padel, it is easiest to think of it as squash and tennis crossed. It is played almost always in doubles, on an enclosed court twenty metres by ten — under a third of the area of a tennis court — with glass walls at the ends and mesh down the sides. The ball may be played off the walls after it bounces, the racket is a solid perforated bat with no strings, the serve is underarm and must bounce before you hit it, and the scoring is exactly tennis scoring. The result is long rallies, very little power and a game that a complete beginner can enjoy in the first ten minutes, which is the whole reason for its success.

That accessibility matters on holiday. A mixed group of four with wildly different abilities can have a genuinely competitive game of padel, which almost never happens in tennis. Add floodlit courts in warm evening air and it becomes the obvious thing to do at seven o'clock when the beach has emptied.

How padel took over

The game was invented in Acapulco at the end of the 1960s by a Mexican businessman who wanted a court that fitted the space he had, walled it in to stop balls escaping, and kept the rules simple. It reached Spain in the mid-1970s through the Marbella set, spread through Argentina, and then sat quietly for thirty years before exploding. Spain now counts its courts in the tens of thousands and padel is, by participation, one of the country's largest sports.

The islands followed, and then some. Clubs have appeared on industrial estates, on hotel roofs, beside football pitches and inside old warehouses, and most municipalities now run public courts. Part of the reason is the weather: a padel court needs no roof here, the surface dries in minutes after the rare shower, and a sport that is played outdoors year-round in the evening cool suits an island climate perfectly. Part is social — it is played in fours, it is short, and it ends in a drink.

Getting on a court as a visitor

There are three routes, and they suit different trips.

Your hotel. Most four-star and above resort hotels in Costa Adeje, Playa del Inglés, Meloneras, Puerto del Carmen and Corralejo now have at least one padel court, and many have tennis courts too. Guests often get an hour free or at a token price, and some all-inclusive packages include court time in the board basis. Rackets are usually available at reception. The catch is that one court per hotel means booking the moment the sheet opens each morning.

A private club. Every sizeable town has one or more padel clubs, and almost all of them take non-member bookings. This is where the better courts and the coaching are. You pay by the court rather than by the person, so the cost per head depends on whether you fill it.

Municipal courts. Town councils run sports centres with padel and tennis courts at subsidised prices, often the cheapest option by some distance. They are busiest on weekday evenings and typically require booking through the council's own website or in person at the desk.

The booking trick that changes everything

Here is the piece of local knowledge worth carrying. Nearly all Spanish clubs, including the island ones, take their bookings through one dominant sports-booking app rather than by telephone, and the app does something more useful than reserve a court: it lists open matches. These are games where two or three players have booked a court and are looking for the missing players, filtered by a numerical level rating that everyone in the system carries.

A visiting couple can therefore join a pair of strangers at their own standard, for a quarter of the court fee, without knowing anybody on the island — and you will get a better game than you would against your own partner. Set your level honestly when you register; padel players are unforgiving about someone who marks themselves a 3.0 and plays like a 1.5. It is also, incidentally, one of the easiest ways to actually meet Canarians on a beach holiday, which most visitors never manage. A handful of basic Spanish phrases will be plenty; the vocabulary of the court is small and half of it is gestures.

What it costs

Prices vary by island, club and time of day, and the figures below are typical 2026 ranges rather than quotations — evening slots cost more than mid-morning ones almost everywhere, and prices in the tourist resorts run above those in the towns.

Against the general run of prices on the islands, and certainly against a round of golf, an evening of padel is one of the cheapest organised things you can do here.

Rackets, balls and what to pack

You do not need to bring anything. Hire rackets are perfectly adequate for a holiday game, and most players who take the sport seriously at home would rather not risk a carbon racket in the hold anyway. If you do bring your own, note that the dry heat is hard on grips and the sun is hard on foam cores — do not leave a racket in a hot car boot, which will soften it permanently.

Bring court shoes rather than running shoes. Padel involves quick lateral steps and the surface is artificial grass dressed with sand, which is slippery under a running sole. Otherwise: a hat, more water than you think, and a shirt you do not mind sweating through, because an enclosed court with glass walls holds heat.

Tennis on the islands

Tennis is in no danger of disappearing, but it has become the minority sport. The best facilities sit within the large hotel complexes of southern Tenerife and southern Gran Canaria, several of which run coaching weeks and academy programmes and attract touring professionals for winter training — the climate makes the islands a sensible December alternative to Florida. Tenerife has hosted professional women's tournaments in recent years, and international junior events appear on the calendar regularly.

For a casual game, ask at your hotel first and at the municipal sports centre second. Clay courts are rare; almost everything is hard court or synthetic. The main practical difference from padel is that you need a partner of roughly your own standard, and that the wind matters far more.

The wind, and when to play

This is the detail that catches visitors out, particularly on the eastern islands. The trade wind blows across Fuerteventura and Lanzarote almost every afternoon in summer, and an exposed tennis court in fifteen knots is barely playable — a tossed ball will not come back down where you put it. Padel suffers much less because the court is enclosed and the ball is played short, which is another quiet reason for its dominance here.

Play early or late, and check whether the courts have any windbreak before you book an afternoon slot. Between about noon and four in summer the combination of heat and ultraviolet is genuinely unpleasant on an open court; the island wind patterns and the strength of the sun at this latitude are both worth understanding before you commit to a week of daytime matches.

If you would rather watch

Club competitions run most weekends and are free to watch; the standard at the top of the island leagues is high enough to be worth an hour. The professional padel tour visits Spain frequently though rarely the islands, so the live sport on offer here is local. For something you genuinely cannot see anywhere else, the islands have their own centuries-old wrestling and stick-fighting traditions, and a terrero bout is an odder and more memorable evening than any racket sport — our piece on traditional Canarian sports explains what you are looking at.

The bottom line

If there is a court at your hotel, book it on the first morning and play in the evening; if not, download the booking app before you fly, register a level, and join an open match. It costs very little, it fills the awkward hour between the beach and dinner, and it is the one activity on these islands where you will end up playing alongside people who actually live here.

Tennis players should choose a hotel for its courts specifically, and should favour the sheltered south-west coasts of Tenerife and Gran Canaria over the windier eastern islands. Anyone building a whole trip around sport will find the islands generous: courts, trails, island races, water, and a spa for the day after.