Twenty players spent three days last week being coached in a sport most of Jammu could not have named five years ago.
From 18 to 20 September, the Mexican international coach Patrice Ramos — associated with the McDonald's Indian Padel Academy — ran a padel clinic at Champions Arena in Jammu, working with the group on technical skills, game awareness and match performance. It was held with the Padel Sports Association of Jammu and Kashmir.
"It was our desire to provide international-standard coaching to our players for skill upgradation and improvement in performance," an association spokesperson said. "This clinic is an important step in that direction."
What padel actually is
Padel is a racquet sport played in doubles on an enclosed court roughly a third the size of a tennis court, with walls that stay in play — the ball can be taken off the glass, which is closer to squash than to tennis. It uses a solid, stringless bat and an underarm serve.
The practical consequence, and the reason it has spread so quickly worldwide, is that the barrier to a first decent rally is low. You do not need a serve you have spent years building. It is one of the few racquet sports where a complete beginner can play an actual point on day one.
Why this is more than one visiting coach
The clinic is worth noticing because of what is already around it. Champions Arena has two padel courts and runs challenges, workshops, coaching clinics and monthly tournaments in partnership with the association. This is not a single facility with a novelty court attached; there is a calendar.
There is also a competitive record. The J&K UT Padel Open held at the same venue in December 2025 drew 45 doubles teams across men's, women's and other categories, with more than 65 matches played over three days.
And the players from last week's clinic are not stopping there: they are scheduled to compete next at an Indian Padel Tour event in Chandigarh, against leading padel players from across the country.
Why it matters if you are 20 in Jammu
Most competitive sport in this city asks you to have started at eight. Cricket, football and athletics all have pathways that effectively close early, and if you missed them there is not much on offer beyond playing socially.
Padel is the opposite case, purely because it is new here. There is a UT association, two courts, a monthly tournament circuit, a national tour to enter — and a talent pool small enough that someone taking it up seriously this year is not hopelessly behind. International coaching turning up in the third year of a sport's life in a city is not a normal thing to have access to.
Whether that holds depends on whether the courts stay busy. For now the entry route is short: the association and the arena run the monthly tournaments, and that calendar is where to start.
Sources: Jammu Links News — "Mexican coach Patrice Ramos leads three-day padel clinic in Jammu"; Daily Excelsior — "Mexican coach conducts padel clinic in J&K".
