From the Editor

Credentials

This month we start reporting from inside the game, with the press passes to prove it.

The Terrace

The Bottle My Friend Translated

A £13 Sicilian red chosen for a Sicilian friend, who turned the bottle to the light and told the story of the town buried in Burri's white concrete.

The Court

The Racket Roulette

An intermediate player, briefly without his racket, sets out to discover whether he knows the first thing about choosing one. Four rackets on a hire wall, one he already owns, and a morning with someone who fits them for a living. A piece about the process, not the verdict, because there wasn't one.

The Court

The 7 P's of the Southside

Padel, Pickleball, Pilates, Pastries, Patience, People and Pato: the seven P's of a Castlemilk club built for its members, by a man from Mexico City, where the numbers said not to.

The Archive

The year it became an institution

There is a difference between a game people play and a sport a body governs. For padel, by most accounts, the second began in 1991.

The Coastline

Bilbao Knows How to Wait

We went to Bilbao in the last week of January without a real plan to play padel. We never did, and that turned out to be the point of the trip.

The Body

The Groundwork

The body is the thing you bring to the court, and it plays better for a little work done away from the game. A personal trainer at my club talked me through how to prepare it, and why the preparation is the sport's quiet foundation: the groundwork, done long before anything aches.

The Sessions

The B Side

George Modler at the Padel World Summit.