It is a large white cube that now sits at the heart of the Dijon tennis club: inside, two padel courts, this sport born in the 2000s, and which has experienced a boom in recent years in France, with 70,000 practitioners. according to the French Tennis Federation. A practice hitherto non-existent in Dijon, for lack of land.
– Arnaud Racape
“The idea of the project was born in 2018”emphasizes Thomas Brissaud, its founder and manager. “Basically I was a padel player, and I realized that there was a lack of structures in the region, and in particular in the Dijon metropolis.” It took four years and 500,000 euros for the tennis instructor to come full circle: “I presented the whole project to the leaders of the Dijon Tennis Club, the president was immediately thrilled, and then in terms of funding, there is participation from institutional partners, the city of Dijon, the Bourgogne-Franche- County, the federation, and in addition, there is my participation as an investor and the Dijon tennis club. We are on a project at 500,000 euros excluding taxes.
– Arnaud Racape
Fully digital course
April 17, 2022: the site is inaugurated, so here is Thomas Brissaud at the head of the Padel Park, a fully connected site, a first in France, it seems: “The principle is simple: we reserve our game online, we pay online, and behind it we have a scan code which is sent to our phone to access the building. Afterwards, the connected screens will tell us if our game is being played on the field on the left or the field on the right. There are plenty of tools, screens, cameras, touch tablets will allow teams to be formed, we will have all the information in statistics on mobile phones, and the tool video can then be used to review the highlights of his match. Knowing that inside there will be in a few days a padel locker to rent a racket, as well as a vending machine to buy snacks, and drinks or just a box of balls.”
A racket sport between tennis and squash
It remains to discover the sport itself: smaller ground, foam racket, walls usable in the game, Thomas Brissaud summarizes: “It’s attached to the French Tennis Federation, but it’s played differently. The court is 20 meters by 10 meters, there is a net like in tennis, but it’s a mix with squash, because like you see there are glass walls, we will be able to use these walls to return the ball to the opposing camp. There is also a mesh part on the sides, it allows for a somewhat random rebound and that can surprise the opponent. Counting points is like in tennis, we are on games, and two sets of six games.“
– Arnaud Racape
Difficult to estimate the number of followers in Côte-d’Or, but Thomas Brissaud is not worried about the success of his Padel Park. “We had a lot of requests through our pages on social networks, and then the advantage we have is that we are very well located, with access to both tram, ring road, there is the campus which is one or two kilometers away, so we can attract a very large pool of people.”
A relatively inexpensive practice, as long as you are equipped with a racket and balls: the rental of the ground costs six euros per person per hour, nine euros at peak times. Racket rental will cost you three euros per hour.