Lab notes

Written from our own numbers: 303 scored positions with the reasons written down, and a game engine that plays padel points thousands of times. What we found, not what we read.

2026-09-26

The Padel Price Index: what an hour of padel costs in 13 cities

The Lab lists 224 clubs in 20 cities, each with the price it publishes.

2026-09-20

We scored 303 padel positions. Attacking was the right answer in 16 of them.

Every position in the Lab's bank has one right call and up to three wrong ones, each with a written reason.

2026-09-20

The lob is the best shot in padel and the most overused. Both are true. The difference is where the other pair is standing.

In the Lab's bank the lob is the right answer 28 times and the tempting wrong answer 47 times.

2026-09-20

We built a padel engine to play our puzzles. It has opinions about the smash we did not expect.

Padel: The Game is a small physics engine: a ball with gravity, a 20 by 10 court with 3 metres of glass and a metre of mesh above it, four players with reactions and speeds and error, and a coach who plays every option in his head before you choose.