Acapulco smelled of salt, coconut and suntan lotion. It was 1969: the sun was setting over the bay, and Las Brisas embodied the carefree luxury of a port frequented by stars, businesspeople and aristocrats. In the backyard of one of those residences, Mexican businessman Enrique Corcuera built a court too small to be a tennis court and too original to remain at home. Mexico had just invented padel.
It was not born within a federation or inside a major stadium; it emerged as a domestic solution to a lack of space and ultimately became a sport played by more than 35 million people in over 150 countries, according to the latest data from the International Padel Federation.
Corcuera was a tennis enthusiast, but the grounds of his home did not allow for the construction of a regulation-size court. The official account states that he designed a court 20 meters long by 10 meters wide, placed a net in the center and surrounded it with three-meter walls.
What would have appeared to be an obstacle on a tennis court became the soul of the new game. The ball could strike the wall, return to the court and extend the point. The wall ceased to be a boundary: it began to play.
The sport had predecessors. The United Kingdom’s Lawn Tennis Association documents paddle games played aboard British ships during the 19th century and the development of platform tennis in the United States beginning in the 1910s.
However, those disciplines were not the padel played today: the international federation recognizes the enclosed court in Acapulco as the first in the sport’s history.
Viviana Corcuera also left her mark on that court bathed in Pacific sunlight. The International Padel Federation credits her with writing the first rulebook, which she prepared as a birthday gift for her husband. The improvisation then acquired dimensions, rules and an identity of its own.
In June 2022, the Senate of the Republic granted a posthumous recognition to Enrique Corcuera, who died in 1999, and honored Viviana Corcuera during her lifetime for the creation and promotion of the Mexican sport.
It is no small detail that padel was born there. Research from Columbia University describes mid-20th-century Acapulco as one of the world’s most glamorous destinations. Hotels and residences looked out over the Pacific as the port became a meeting point for international tourism.
Amid terraces open to the sea, suntanned bodies and gatherings that brought different nationalities together, that court began to arouse curiosity. Acapulco’s cosmopolitan atmosphere gave the new game its first route beyond Mexico.
During a visit to the Corcuera home, businessman and aristocrat Alfonso de Hohenlohe discovered the sport. He took the idea to Spain’s Costa del Sol and, in 1974, built the country’s first two courts at the Marbella Club.
The hotel’s historical archive recalls that workers transformed a tennis court with concrete walls and wire mesh. Padel exchanged Acapulco’s tropical fragrance for the Mediterranean breeze and began to spread among the club’s guests.
One year later, Argentine Julio Menditeguy discovered it in Marbella and took it to his country. Argentina took padel out of exclusive clubs, turned it into a popular phenomenon and developed a competitive culture that, together with Spain, would define the sport for decades.
By the 1980s, that Mexican game had already reached Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, France, the United States and Canada. In 1988, the Argentine Padel Association was established, considered by the international federation to be the sport’s first national organization, and Mar del Plata hosted the first international competition between Spain and Argentina.
The court also changed. In 1989, the Crystal Palace appeared, a removable and transportable structure with glass walls created by Argentine coach Jorge Galeotti. Spectators were able to watch the matches more clearly, and padel was ready to be installed in clubs, public squares and major venues.
On July 12, 1991, the associations of Argentina, Spain and Uruguay founded the International Padel Federation in Madrid. The first World Championship was held one year later in Madrid and Seville, and in 1997 the rules and the official name “padel” were standardized.
Professionalization advanced with the Padel Pro Tour, launched in 2005; the World Padel Tour, held between 2013 and 2023; and Premier Padel, created in 2022 as the official professional circuit under the direction of the international federation.
The 2025 World Padel Report makes it possible to measure the journey of that ball that first began rebounding off a wall in Acapulco: more than 35 million players, 24,600 clubs and 77,300 courts across 150 countries and 20 dependent territories.
In 2025 alone, 14,355 courts were built, while the number of tournaments organized by the federation increased from 182 to 290. By 2026, the organization already represented 100 national federations.
Mexico is also experiencing rapid growth. An assessment published by the federation in March 2024 counted more than 300,000 amateur players, 1,500 courts and 320 clubs, and noted that organized play had expanded from five states in 2018 to 29.
The circle symbolically closed on November 28, 2025, when the International Padel Federation held its General Assembly in Acapulco and presented its annual report there. The sport was returning to the city where it had begun 56 years earlier.
Spain and Argentina built much of its competitive history and gave it a professional dimension, but its birth certificate still carries the scent of coconut, suntan lotion and the sea: Acapulco, Mexico, 1969.
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