Story and photos by Mark Newman
Jonatan Berggren has his entire NHL career ahead of him, but if things don’t work out, he has a backup plan in place. He will happily be a padel player. Like many Swedes, Berggren became obsessed with the sport that has taken the Scandinavian country by storm. A hybrid of tennis and squash, padel had been popular in Spain, Mexico, and Latin American countries before the sport was wildly embraced in Sweden during the pandemic by an estimated 500,000 players. “I have never seen a sport become so big, so fast,” Berggren said. “In the beginning, I was against it. I didn’t want to play it, but once I did, I was totally into it. Most of my time other than when I am training during the summer, I play padel with my friends.” 44 Grand Rapids GRIFFINS
Considered the world’s fastest-growing sport, it’s best explained as tennis played inside a box where players can play the ball off glasspanel walls on the back or metal mesh on the sides. Promoters of the sport say if tennis is checkers, padel is chess. They call it “a thinking person’s sport.” “It’s not like tennis where if you play against someone a little better than you, it becomes boring because it’s so hard,“ Berggren said. “In padel, you can be not as good and still keep the game alive, which is so much fun. It’s fun having long battles with friends.” Berggren confesses that his padel career may have already peaked. “I was really good at it two years ago, but I didn’t play that much last summer because the weather back in Sweden was so nice.
