TWO members of Huddersfield Lawn Tennis and Squash club have been picked for the Great Britain padel tennis team for this year’s European Championships in Lisbon.
Michael Tolman, 25, and his 22-year-old sister Kelly-Jayne fly out to Portugal this month to compete against Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Holland, Italy, Switzerland and Portugal in the 2009 competition.
The siblings have been playing at their local Huddersfield club from a young age, with Michael having won the club championship title three times.
Michael and Kelly-Jayne attended High Point University in North Carolina on tennis scholarships and, having graduated, are now back in the area and trying their hand at a new up-and-coming racket sport.
Having represented his home county of Yorkshire at tennis, racketball and badminton it’s no surprise Michael has a natural flare at padel.
Similarly, Kelly-Jayne has been a county netball, tennis and badminton player and is keen to become a master of padel to add to her list of achievements.
More than 150 athletes will be competing at this year’s event and Michael and Kelly-Jayne hope to make an impressive impact in the GB team
And the Tolmans are hoping Team GB will deliver a winners’ performance in Portugal as the next step is the 2010 Padel World Championships to be held in Mexico.
Padel tennis, or just ‘padel‘, is a racquet sport that is typically played in doubles on an enclosed court about half the size of a tennis court.
The balls used and the scoring is the same as normal tennis, and so the biggest difference is that the court has walls and the balls can be played off them in a similar way as in the game of squash.
Padel is great for players of all ages and skills, as it is both quick and easy to pick up, and is less physically demanding than sports like squash.
Most players get the grasp of it within the first 20 minutes and find it easy to achieve a level of proficiency as the game is not as dominated by strength and serve as tennis (in fact, the serve in padel is under-arm).
