In August this year, Mumbai's NSCI Dome sold out for a padel exhibition featuring the sport's reigning World No. 1 pair, Arturo Coello and Agustin Tapia, in front of a large ardent audience, many of whom had never picked up a padel racket themselves. That is roughly where padel stands in India right now: a sport with genuine star power and a fast-growing following, but still a bit of a mystery to most people who have not yet stepped onto a court. If that is you, and you are thinking about your first game, here is everything worth knowing before you book one.
What Padel Actually Is
Padel is played in doubles, always four players, inside an enclosed court which is 20m x 10m = 200m², walled in by glass and mesh. It sits somewhere between tennis and squash: you serve and score like tennis, with the key difference being that a tennis serve is a powerful, overhead shot meant to win points directly, while a padel serve is a soft, underhand start meant only to begin the point safely. The ball is also allowed to bounce off the walls before it goes out, the way it would in squash. That single rule changes everything about how a point is won: rallies run longer, and positioning matters more than power.
It is also, by design, one of the more social racket sports you can pick up. Matches are almost always mixed doubles or friend groups rather than solo competition, and because padel rewards placement and patience over raw power, players of very different fitness levels, genders and experience can genuinely compete in the same game. It is a big part of why the sport's growth in India has leaned so heavily on friend groups and couples trying it together rather than solo enthusiasts.
The Rules You Need on Day One
- Every point starts with an underhand serve, hit diagonally after the ball bounces once inside the service box.
- The ball can be played off the back and side walls before it is out of play, so use them instead of fighting them.
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Scoring follows tennis: 15, 30, 40, game. At 40-all, clubs use different formats (advantage, golden point or star point), so agree on one before you start
- Hitting the ball out of the court without letting it bounce first is a common beginner mistake and a lost point.
None of this takes long to pick up. Most beginners are playing a real point within the first fifteen minutes on court.
Your Racket Is Not a Tennis Racket
A padel racket has no strings. It is a solid, perforated face, with small holes cut across the surface to reduce air resistance, paired with a foam or rubber core that decides how much power versus control you get. The material of that face matters too. Carbon fibre is stiff and responsive, which gives you more power, precision and spin. Fibreglass is softer and more flexible, so it is more forgiving on off-centre hits and gentler on the arm, which suits players still finding their swing.
Shapes range from round (more control, more forgiving) to teardrop and diamond (more power, less forgiving), and weight matters a lot more here than in tennis because you are swinging with your wrist, not your whole arm
For your first proper session, most padel clubs will hand you a rental racket, so there is no need to buy anything just to try the sport once with a friend. When you are ready to own one, you do not have to settle. FirstEdge Sports' entry-level Kinex Carbon Fibre Padel Racket gives you carbon fibre construction from day one, at a price that does not ask you to commit before you know padel is for you. If you already know you want to take it seriously, the Equinex 3K Carbon Fibre Padel Racket is the step up: light enough to control through a full session, with the spin generation that 3K carbon fibre construction is known for, at a mid-level price point that will not leave you outgrowing it in a month. You can see both, along with our most premium option for players who progress fast, in the padel racket range.
What Your First Session Will Actually Feel Like
Expect a slightly awkward first twenty minutes. The walls behave differently to what your instincts expect, and most beginners either avoid them entirely or misjudge the rebound at first. Once it clicks, usually within the same session, rallies start to feel closer to a game of chess than a straight power contest. By the end of an hour, most first-timers are comfortably playing a full set.
With world-class padel now being taken seriously enough to sell out a stadium in Mumbai, this is a good moment to get on court while it is still easy to find other beginners to learn alongside. Book a session, borrow a racket for the first go, and worry about buying your own once you know padel is one you want to stick with.
