I have never been passionate about padel, but the passion of my brothers and my nephew Pablo has dragged me towards this world.
(Those who read my adventures already know that I am more of a runner.)
The fact is that this group of padel influencers set up a WhatsApp group and included me in the list to invite me to the game, Sunday after Sunday. I have almost always offered resistance. When they called me, I told them that I couldn't play, that I wasn't feeling well, that I was hungry, thirsty, sleepy, headache, dizzy or in insurmountable pain.
But twelve days ago I got excited.
I said yes.
I took my Babolat paddle and went to play at the David Lloyd Club Turó, south of Diagonal.
As I feared, my performance was questionable: the padel distrusts me as much as I distrust it. Let's just say I was more committed than lucky.
When we finished, very cute, they said to me:
- You weren't that bad either...
I was walking away, cursing my poor padel skills, when I crossed paths with Sergi Galindo and his son Aleix, who were entering the club. They both looked like tennis masters, and in reality they are. Sergi is a coach at the Next Level academy. And Aleix, his disciple, is the best Spanish tennis player in the youth category (between the ages of nine and twelve he won more than twenty tournaments of his age).
(By the way, Aleix is not alone: his brother, Sergi, is also a high scorer.)
- Ours is quite an adventure - said Sergi Galindo, the father, since he has left everything to accompany his children's dream.
Everything, including his job as a radiology technician.
The project is as legitimate as it is commendable. The Galindo-Puigs, father, mother and children, want to train the best possible tennis players. The challenge involves denials, physical pain, psychological and educational commitment and even financial risks, but it also incorporates a hereditary component, the best gift a parent can give us.
(Back in the day, the father, Sergi, was a skier and competed in the World Cup and the European Cup, and the mother, the great Margarita Puig, a colleague in this newspaper, was a water polo player and international mermaid and now feels the passion of yoga.)
(...)
Frustrated and sweaty, I left the club: I left feeling (healthy) envy for this family of magnificent athletes. And already with the paddle in my backpack, I was telling myself that I wouldn't bring it back to the stage, when I received a message on WhatsApp from the padel:
- What, are you signing up next Sunday?
