JUST PADEL

This is the real history of padel that many people don't know. 🇺🇸
In 1898, the American Reverend Frank Beal, from Michigan, made modifications to a tennis court in order to teach young children to play, reduce the dimensions by half, in addition to replacing the ball with a foam rubber ball and the racket with a wooden paddle.
Years later, when Frank Beal moved to Manhattan as an Episcopal minister, this sport began to spread to the entire population, especially in the poorest areas with scarce land, since tennis was only within reach of the wealthier classes. Thus, Frank Beal convinced the municipal parks and recreation department, which under his instructions decided to design several courts for this new sport, called "Paddle Tennis", spreading throughout the metropolitan regions of New York.
In 1922 the first Paddle Tennis tournament was played, with the rules that, a year later, would be approved by the United States Paddle Tennis Association (USPTA). It became one of the most popular recreational activities in many cities.
While Paddle Tennis was expanding, in 1928, platform tennis was born. This took place in the Scardale neighborhood (New York), an area with excellent purchasing power, a social enclave entirely opposite for its neighbor, Paddle Tennis.
The adaptations arose with the idea of being able to practice tennis in the winter season, so they created a wooden platform that would allow to remlve easily the snow.
Subsequently, they incorporated an enclosure on the court with a fence to prevent the balls from going outside the court's limits. Likewise, the creators of "Platform Tennis", decided to practice the sport in pairs, allowing the bouncing of the ball after the bounce on the wire fence, as well as other changes which served as a reference in the beginnings of padel.
Despite the dificultness in expanding, the evolutions carried out, such as the substitution of the wire mesh for a metallic structure and the addition of sand allowed its consolidation. Thus, from the 1930s onwards, this sport became popular in the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Washington D.C., serving as a substitute for tennis during winter seasons.