The Circuit

The lead note

Alejandra Salazar's player profile on the International Padel Federation's website carries a block of numbers for the Premier Padel era: 158 matches, 95 wins, 63 losses, a career-best ranking of 12, and no titles. She has said so herself. To COPE, in June: "Todavía no he levantado un título en Premier Padel." The English is ours. I still have not lifted a Premier Padel title.

The counting everywhere else is harder and worth doing slowly, because the figures belong to different people. The organiser of the Madrid tournament, writing on 12 August, gives her 62 official titles, seven world championships in 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2024, and four spells at world number one in 2009, 2016, 2021 and 2022. Padel Addict, in November 2024, gives her 52 World Padel Tour titles and more of them than any other player; that tour no longer exists and its results archive is not reachable, so the 52 is what the Spanish padel press reports rather than something we have checked. The one national figure we can trace to a federation is the Real Federacion Espanola de Padel's own report of 29 November 2020, which records her eighth Campeonato de Espana, won with Ariana Sanchez. Whether a ninth followed in the five seasons since, we have not established.

She is 40, born in Madrid on 31 December 1985. The FIP's ranking page had her fourteenth this morning, on 4,479 points. EFE had her thirteenth on 1 September, which was correct that day.

She has said she is stopping at the end of this season. She said it first in July 2025, in an interview with MARCA that Padel Addict and canaltenis reported at the time, and gave as her reason operations on both knees and on an elbow. We have seen that explanation only at second hand and in translation, so it is set down here in our own words rather than inside quotation marks. She restated the decision to COPE in June: "It is time to retire, and I feel privileged to be able to decide when."

What the FIP published from Madrid sits alongside that rather than against it. Its report on the finals says the city said goodbye to the champion who played a tournament in her home city for the last time in her career. Its report of 5 September is more explicit still: her career is not over, and until the end of the season she will go on fighting in every match. Madrid was the last tournament she will play at home. It was not her last tournament.

She won a match in it that this column is in a position to weigh. On 30 August, in the FIP Gold final at Belgrade, Lorena Rufo and Victoria Iglesias beat Salazar and Aranzazu Osoro 4-6, 6-3, 6-1, which we reported last week. On 3 September, in the Madrid round of 16, Salazar and Osoro beat Rufo and Iglesias 7-6, 6-7, 6-2. Both results are the FIP's. Putting the two of them next to each other is ours.

The FIP's account of that day opens by saying that rarely had so many surprises been seen in the round of 16 of a Premier Padel tournament, and three seeded men's pairs went out on it. In the quarter-final Delfi Brea and Gemma Triay beat Salazar and Osoro 6-3, 6-3, and that was her last match in the city. Afterwards she said: "I wanted to say goodbye like this, against the world number ones, after playing a high-level match and enjoying it. I am proud of everything I have done." The world number ones is her description of the pair who had just beaten her, not ours.

The tribute came on Sunday 6 September, on Pista Central at the Movistar Arena, in the slot the organiser had published on 12 August: between the women's final from 16h and the men's, not before 17.30h. EFE put the crowd at around 15,000. COPE's account has her entering along a corridor formed by family, friends, fellow players and institutional representatives, to a piano and to a video montage of titles, victories and injuries. Alejandro Blanco, president of the Spanish Olympic Committee, was there, and EFE reports that he brought flowers. So were Javier Rodriguez of the Real Federacion Espanola de Padel, Jose Luis Amoroto of the Madrid federation, Alberto Tome, the region's director of sport, and Joan Cusco, who promotes the tournament. Julia Medina and Jaime Terron of Banda LaRepera played. Her family gave her a framed work by the artist Ester Moya. Triay and Salazar embraced at the centre of the court.

EFE reports that the arena lit itself with phone torches while she spoke, and quotes her: "With all the passion I put into it, I am immensely proud." And: "I have enjoyed this road like a small girl. That is all I ever wanted to be: a girl who took delight in playing."

Triay, to Padel Addict on 4 September: "I think every right-side player, women and men, learned by watching how Ale Salazar plays, and that seems to me irreplaceable."

Two things are left on her calendar and one of them is not hers to decide. The FIP World Cup is played in Doha from 2 to 7 November. Speaking to EFE on 1 September she framed it herself, as a choice between that and the Barcelona finals in December: "Representing your country is the most beautiful thing there is, so if I had to choose between Barcelona and the World Cup, I would say winning one more World Cup, to close out my career." One more, and under a choice she was invited to make. No squad for Doha has been announced by any federation, and no source we have read places her in one.

She already has work that is not playing. The agency is called GOAT Sports Management, and in April she told Padel Addict that they were three years into it, supporting players and handling everything the world around them involves so that the players can concentrate on training. Barcelona comes in December. EFE puts it about two weeks before her forty-first birthday.

This week in the game

The women's final was played first. Delfi Brea and Gemma Triay, the top seeds, beat Paula Josemaria and Bea Gonzalez 6-7, 6-3, 6-3 at the Movistar Arena on Sunday 6 September. They lost the first set in a tie-break and trailed in the second before taking four games in a row. The FIP has it as their sixth title of the season.

Triay, afterwards: "Winning here in Spain, in front of our families, is special. We had our ups and downs in the first set, but we are prepared to fight. I am really happy and proud." Brea: "The hardest thing during a competition is not having good feel and fighting to change it, and that is what we did. We are lucky to be surrounded by a team like this one: it is a privilege."

Fede Chingotto and Ale Galan, the second seeds, took the men's title from Coki Nieto and Mike Yanguas 6-4, 5-7, 6-4. Nieto and Yanguas broke twice in succession from 5-4 down to take the second set 7-5. The FIP has it as Chingotto and Galan's seventh title of the season, one behind Arturo Coello and Agustin Tapia. Galan, who is from Madrid: "It is wonderful to win at home. It holds for Fede in Buenos Aires and it holds for me in Madrid. The support of the crowd always leaves me without words."

Nieto and Yanguas have now lost finals in consecutive weeks, this one and the FIP Gold at Belgrade on 30 August, which we reported. They reached this one by beating Coello and Tapia, the top seeds, 7-5, 7-6 in the quarter-final. The FIP also records that in 2025 the pair played twelve semi-finals and lost all twelve.

One other men's quarter-final is not reported here. We have not been able to establish a score we can print from the releases we have read, and we have not asked FIP.

In the semi-finals on 5 September, Josemaria and Gonzalez beat Claudia Fernandez and Martina Calvo 6-4, 2-6, 7-5. They were 0-5 down in the third set, then 3-5 down with three match points against them, and won seven games in a row from there. The 0-5 and the 7-5 are that third set and not the match.

Two of last week's names went out early. Franco Stupaczuk and Jon Sanz, who won Belgrade seven days before and were seeded four here, lost in the round of 16 to Jose Jimenez and Alex Arroyo, 7-6, 6-4. Juan Lebron and Leo Augsburger, the third seeds, lost to Gonza Alfonso and Tino Libaak, 7-6, 7-5.

No other Cupra FIP Tour final is reported in this edition. We have not established one this week from the releases we have read.

The week ahead

The Paris Major is at Roland Garros, and it carries two windows in the shape the Madrid P1 carried a week ago. The FIP's event page runs the event from 6 to 13 September, with qualifying on Sunday 6 and Monday 7 September and the main draw from Monday 7 to Sunday 13 September. The main draw opens today. The women's draw is 40 pairs, the men's 48, and the tournament is played on six outdoor courts. The FIP's draws piece of 6 September has the top four women's pairs entering at the round of 16, and gives Coello and Tapia as the men's top seeds.

The FIP Senior World Cup is played in Buenos Aires. The FIP's own event page and its championships calendar both give 11 to 19 September. LTA Padel gave 14 to 19 September when it named its British squads on 28 August. Both are printed here as their sources give them.

Europe qualifies for the FIP World Cup in Madrid from 22 to 26 September. The World Cup itself is played in Doha from 2 to 7 November.

The LTA Padel National Championships return to Rocket Padel in Bristol from 1 to 4 October, with free admission. Entries close on Monday 21 September.

From the club

Issue Two has been live since 3 August. Episode Two of The Sessions, with Jethro Binns of Padel Levels, went up on 11 August. Issue Three publishes today.

See you at the club.

How this was compiled. The Madrid P1 results are from the International Padel Federation's own releases, Spanish originals read first and preferred throughout, with our own English where a quotation is rendered: the finals report of 6 September and its English twin · Day 3, 3 September · Day 4, the quarter-finals, published 5 September · Day 5, 5 September · and the event page. The Belgrade final of 30 August is from FIP's report and from our own edition of 1 September. Salazar's career figures are attributed in the copy to the party that published them: her Premier Padel record and her ranking to the FIP's own player profile and its ranking page, both read 7 September; the 62 titles, the seven world championships and the four spells at number one to the Madrid tournament's own announcement of 12 August 2026; the 52 World Padel Tour titles to Padel Addict, 9 November 2024; her eighth Campeonato de Espana to the Real Federacion Espanola de Padel, 29 November 2020. Her own words are from COPE, 26 June and 6 September 2026; from EFE, 1 and 6 September 2026; from Padel Addict, 10 April and 4 September 2026; and, for the announcement of July 2025, from Padel Addict and canaltenis reporting an interview with MARCA that we have not read at source, which is why that explanation is given here in our words and not hers. The Paris Major dates and draw sizes are from FIP's event page and its draws piece of 6 September. The autumn calendar is from FIP's pages for the Senior World Cup, the Europe qualifier and the World Cup, and from its championships calendar; the second Senior World Cup date range is LTA Padel's, from its squad announcement of 28 August. Bristol is from LTA Padel. All FIP and LTA pages read on 7 September 2026.