The phone rang and I saw that it was my friend Jenny, so I answered. Her normal relaxed voice was replaced by a stream of excited words spoken so quickly I could hardly make out what she was saying. It took a while for her to calm down enough to express herself clearly: “I know that you don’t really follow tennis players between all your work around padel, but you need to go check out Garbine Muguruza’s Instagram right now!” So I did.
There, smiling back at me was a photo of the former WTA world number one sitting next to a padel court in her home city of Geneva, Switzerland, a padel racket at her side.
Does Garbine Muguruza play Padel? On 23 October 2019 Garbine Muguruza posted a photo on her Instagram where she was sitting beside the padel courts of the Geneva Country Club in Switzerland having just finished playing five consecutive sets of padel.
Muguruza is not the first top tennis player on the active professional circuit to try their hand at padel and I am sure that she won’t be the last. On the men’s side Rafa Nadal. Novak Djokovic and David Nalbandian have all tried their hand at padel. Even Maria Sharapova spent time on the padel courts while at the Juan Carlos Ferrero tennis academy while preparing for her Roland Garros title.
The Swiss-based tennis star had easily her worst season in 2019, crashing out of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in the opening round. She called an early end to her season languishing down at number 36 on the WTA rankings, her lowest ranking since 25 May 2014.
Seeing the post about Muguruza on the padel court has prompted speculation in padel circles about the possibility that she might make the switch from stringed rackets to hard bats.
There are currently three former WTA professional tennis players in the top ten of the World Padel Tour rankings. They are world number one Marta Marrero as well as the sisters Mapi and Majo Sanchez Alayeto.
If Muguruza ever does make the switch, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. As dismal as the 2019 season was by her high standards, Forbes Magazine lists Muguruza’s earnings for the year at $5.9 million. That is a mere half-million short of being double the prize pool of the entire World Padel Tour, and by that, I mean all the prize money of all the women’s and men’s professional padel tournaments for the year.
Personally I believe that Muguruza will be using a couple of games of padel to decompress after a very hard tennis season. It is clear that she was enjoying herself. That is why she was able to post on Instagram under her smiling photo “Me after losing 5 straight sets at padel”
A week later the tennis star jetted off to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro and catch some November beach sunshine before beginning to prepare for 2020.
Should Garbine Muguruza incorporate more padel into her tennis training as a kind of cross-training? I would say so, yes. If Sharapova could use padel as a stepping stone to a Roland Garros title, then it certainly wouldn’t do any harm to try.