Pitter-padder of little tennis
The fragrance of hair mousse hung in the playground air. Michael Jackson’s Beat It blared from the ghetto blaster, the sports shed door opened, and out came the gear: two bats, a tennis ball, and a net (optional).
It was the 1980s, but decades on Paul Grubi remembers padder tennis well.
For Grubi – who learned his paddle tennis craft in the early 1980s in the playground of Cardinal McKeefry Catholic Primary School in Wilton, Wellington – it was a pathway into a US college tennis scholarship.
But sometime around the turn of the decade, as Michael Jackson made way for Nirvana, padder tennis simply slipped off the radar.
Grubi is on a mission to bring it back. He has set up Padder Tennis New Zealand Inc. It is so official he even has a Padder Tennis NZ Facebook page.
Today and tomorrow from 11am to 5pm he and business partner Chris Sole will be running three padder tennis courts in Odlins Plaza on the Wellington waterfront where anyone can give it a try.
Grubi has been touring Wellington schools in an attempt to reintroduce the sport and already has it in place in four. A padder tennis club is already set up at Victoria University.
There is talk of a region-wide tournament.
He admitted it was all a bit of fun but there was a serious side: The sport is a workout and it developed coordination. In Grubi’s case it lead to a college scholarship and 25-year career coaching tennis.
The 1980s school rules and gear varied from place to place. Some schools may have used a bench as a net, and others a proper net. Bats ranged from wood to plastic.
But the new iteration of the sport comes with consistency, as prescribed by Padder Tennis NZ:
* Ball: Green Dot tennis ball, 25 per cent less compression than a regulation tennis ball; * Court: 15m x 6m, same lines as a table tennis table; * Racquet: Carbon fibre, 34-38mm width, 340g weight, 45cm length; * Net: 6m wide, 80cm height; * Rules: Same as table tennis, except one underhand serve, singles and doubles; * Scoring: First to 21 is a set, 5 serves each, best of 3 sets is an official tournament match. Fun sets to 11 in social settings; * Surface: School playgrounds, asphalt, rubber based surfaces, artificial turf, indoor courts.