Features

The vibrant and idiosyncratic still lifes—often composed on hotel stationary—are the work of artist Michael McGregor, whose roots in a “huge tennis family” inform one of his favorite themes.

A by-no-means-exhaustive list of the names and neologisms that define a new(ish) sport

Many sports like to claim that they’re the fastest-growing, and they often have a legitimate claim to the title, depending on how you measure it. But, by almost any yardstick, pàdel really is the world’s fastest-growing sport.

The hottest clubs around the world don’t feature EDM dance floors or after-hours speakeasies. They’re racquet-centric, they’re wellness-affiliated, and they’re taking advantage of the fastest-growing sport on the planet. Welcome to the global network of pàdel.

Pàdel is about people. Whether you play competitively and want to win, or play socially and need a reason to wear that outfit, it revolves around coming together as a team to make all the different reasons come to life.

Building a community, one pàdel club at a time, is what the Londoners behind Gayns are up to. From drills to pàdel explainers, kinship comes first.

Spanish player Martita Ortega—known as La Doctora on the professional pàdel circuit for her dazzling game as well as her active medical practice—is a breakout star in the PPL. Her on-court prowess has taken her to the heights of the game: in 2019, Martita became the youngest player ever to achieve a number-one world ranking, and her high-energy pàdel play has netted her more than 10 international titles. Racquet sat down with the Madrileño at the beginning and end of the PPL season to find out more. 

At Wilson’s SoHo flagship, …Anyone for Tennis? hosted Off the Wall, a panel bringing together fashion, media, and music to reframe tennis as a shared language of culture and play.

Agnès Ricart is a multimedia artist from Spain who—close Racquet readers will confirm—has been a staple in our visual vocabulary for the better part of a decade. Alongside classic Racquet illustrations such as Medvedev flipping the bird at the collected crowd at the US Open, Naomi Osaka's masked protest during COVID and even a protester using a tennis racquet to clear a cannister of tear gas. Her work is vivid and cheeky, and can be seen across the world from The Guardian to Die Ziet to the Economist. We asked her to bring to life an ode to the tennis ball in our latest issue, and to sit down for a Q&A about her artistic practice.