The club
Four courts, one very chatty clubhouse.
Swan Padel Club is about four hundred people in Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick who mostly didn’t think of themselves as sporty, and now rearrange their Wednesdays.
We’re named for the birds on the Avon rather than anything grander, and we’re still slightly surprised by how big this got.
How it started
Nobody planned a padel club.
It started as a group chat of people who’d played once on holiday and couldn’t find anywhere to play at home. Everything since has been us reacting to how many people turned up.
2021
A WhatsApp group with no courts
Six of us came back from half-term holidays having discovered padel, found the nearest court was in Birmingham, and started a group chat that was mostly complaining.
2022
Two courts and a portakabin
We took on a scrubby bit of ground near the river. The tea came from a flask on the bonnet of somebody’s Astra. Forty-one people played that first month.
2023
The Wednesday Wobble starts
A mixed-ability social for people who didn’t want to book a court with three friends they didn’t yet have. It quietly became the reason most members joined.
2024
Four courts, and a room to sit in
Two more courts, covered this time, and a clubhouse we deliberately built bigger than the numbers justified. Half the point of the evening happens after the match.
How we run it
Every club says it’s friendly.
So here are the three things we actually do differently, each of which you could catch us failing at.
- Instead of a trial lessonYou play a match on night one
- Drills in a line are how people decide a sport isn’t for them. You’ll be keeping score within the hour, badly, with everyone else who is also keeping score badly.
- Instead of a members-only feelThe good court is for whoever booked it
- Court one isn’t reserved for the club’s best players, and no session is quietly for regulars. If it’s on the timetable, you can be on it.
- Instead of kit anxietyRackets live by the door
- Take one, it’s free, it always will be. Trainers and whatever you already own is the entire dress code, and nobody has ever commented on anyone’s shorts.
Come and be bad at it with us.
First Serve runs on the first Tuesday of every month. It's free, there's nothing to bring, and roughly half the room will also be holding a racket for the first time.