Five Years Up Front

In June I played against Darren Morris, the manager of East Glos, in an iPadel league fixture. I was playing for my club in Bristol, away. The wind was up. Balls we knew were going out came back in on it, and we changed our games to suit. Every court was full, with different groups playing.

My partner and I lost both our rubbers, one of them to Darren's pair, and both were close. The tie finished 2-2 overall. Afterwards Darren invited us to sit down with him for a coffee.

I had been to the club once before, a few winters ago, for a winter-league match in bright sun, when changing ends every two games meant taking turns with it in our eyes. Both times I felt at home. That is an odd thing to feel at somebody else's club.

From the car park, what you see is tennis, and a great deal of it. You go past the clubhouse and reception and follow a path through the tennis courts to a hedge. You keep to its right-hand side, with more tennis to your left, until a little doorway lets you through. There are seven padel courts on the other side, all floodlit, at a club that has had tennis since 1885.

Darren has managed East Glos for twelve years. When he arrived there were 1,300 members, and there "was quite a division between the squash and tennis communities, although we did offer a dual membership," he says.

Padel came in from both sides. In his account, a group of twenty squash players organised a padel trip to Toulouse in 2019, and several members of the tennis committee had played it on holiday, "and it just sort of rolled on from then."

"In 2019/2020 we had to educate the members about padel as they didn't know what padel was," he says. In January 2020, 153 members attended an extraordinary general meeting, the club's history records, and the meeting approved it.

The courts opened in April 2021, the first new sport launched at the club since squash in 1972. One disused grass court became three floodlit padel courts, at a cost of £250,000, half of it an interest-free loan from the LTA. The separate tennis and squash subscriptions gave way to a single rackets membership. All members were to be able to reach padel, Darren says, "therefore we introduced one Rackets membership, which I think was the best thing that we did, being one Club."

Members then added the new sport. "The majority of players added padel to their weekly sessions rather than replacing tennis or squash," he says.

That fitted what I had seen in June. Coming back from the changing rooms I passed the squash courts, which I had never seen, and out on the tennis courts I recognised a few people I knew from padel. It was only a few faces, but they were people who played both.

Padel also brought in new members. The LTA's 2021 case study describes a club that until recently had offered non-members few ways in, and a committee that wanted it to matter to players who had not yet joined. In the four months after the padel courts opened, by the LTA's count, more than 200 new members joined, and 250 members came to taster sessions. Monthly social tournaments followed, mixed, ladies' and men's, with more than 80 players.

The growth carried on. Membership rose by about 300 in the year to October 2025, the LTA recorded, driven primarily by padel demand and sustained enthusiasm for tennis. Five of the club's junior padel players have moved on to GB training pathways.

On court bookings the two sports sit level. About 700 people play tennis regularly, Darren says, and about the same number play padel. The treasurer's end-of-year report for 2025, as the club's published history records it, put membership at 2,500. In April the LTA named East Glos its Club of the Year for 2026.

One membership covers six sports. With the courts all outdoors for now, Darren says, the club encourages members to try racketball and table tennis when it rains. The members run, he says, from four-year-olds to players in their nineties.

By 2024 the first three courts were at "100% occupancy," he says. They had gone on the hardest bit of land to get to and build on, and using it first mattered for what came after. In March 2024 an EGM carried proposals for three more doubles courts, a singles court and covers over the original three.

The four new courts and a social area opened in July 2025, at a cost of £400,000, funded by the club itself. Part of it came from members, early. The club offered a five-year membership, paid up front and ring-fenced for the project, and those who took it would be spared the annual inflation rise on subscriptions. Some members signed up. The offer raised £126,000, the club's published history records. That is close to a third of the bill. They also got, in his words, "this sense of well-being of supporting the club."

"Without that, we wouldn't have been able to do that last project, build those additional four courts," he says.

Members pay a court fee on top of their subscription, £4 an hour for a doubles court and £2 for singles, and non-members can play too. Pay and play began, Darren says, as part of the arrangement for the LTA loan on the first courts. Once the loan was repaid, the club kept it "to ensure we are open to all and introduce potential new members to the Club to see the facilities available."

The club sits at the edge of a conservation area, with houses to the east and across the Old Bath Road. The second phase went to the borough's planning committee in December 2024. The application had drawn 209 representations, 95 of them objections and 113 in support.

The club's chair, Andrea Butland, spoke for the application at the meeting. "East Glos is a community amateur sports club, non-profit making and we take the community bit very seriously," Butland told the committee. The committee approved it by five votes to four, with one abstention.

The council's environmental health team raised no objection on noise. There were, Darren says, challenges with noise when the new courts opened. The club has a soil bund to keep sound from the nearest houses, and an acoustic barrier. "Throughout the whole planning process and with the introduction of padel we've tried to be good neighbours," he says. When we spoke at the end of September it had all been quiet, touch wood, for eight or nine months.

Seven courts bring their own bill. Six doubles courts and a singles court can hold 26 players at once, and they need somewhere to park, to change and, afterwards, to sit. So before anything large is built, Darren says, the infrastructure comes first. This year's work is on the rest of the club: four of the tennis courts, and LED lights.

The original three courts are still uncovered. The club has planning permission to cover them, Darren says, and will be investigating the possibility of completing that in the near future.

Most days, he says, he looks out on "a thriving rackets Club with members enjoying their sports with friends and socialising after."