Padel Rackets

The round rackets are the ideal rackets for beginner padel players. This is especially true for padel players who used to play tennis. If you start padel classes, take a round racket, it will be easier with a better control.

The diamond rackets are top balanced, which means that most of the weight is distributed away from the grip and towards the top part of the racket. This shape gives the racket a lot of power, but makes it way harder to control.

The tear drop rackets have that balance between still having some of the power of the diamond-shaped racket but maintaining a lot of the control that round padel rackets have.

Padel, as a sport, has developed and grown popular over the years, all thanks to its simplicity and close similarities to squash, badminton, and tennis. However, we cannot also take away the contributions of brands and companies making rackets. The racket is arguably the most important item you play with, and these brands have been at the forefront of manufacturing and supplying padel packets that ensure you play the beautiful game and enjoy the time spent playing it. Thus, it will feel incomplete to review the best padel rackets in 2022 without touching on these brands. While there are numerous brands in the padel racket manufacturing industry, the following four are the leading names and the focus of this section; Babolat, Bullpadel, Adidas, and HEAD.

Babolat

Babolat is a French company specializing in manufacturing equipment for tennis, badminton, and padel sports. The company, which is headquartered in Lyon, South France, is popular for its high-quality strings and rackets, although it makes other sports accessories apart from rackets. The company started out in 1875 when its founder, Pierre Babolat, used natural guts to make the first strings. Ever since Babolat has strived to optimize the production process for racket strings, this continued until 1994, when the company switched from manufacturing only racket strings to supplying racket frames to different parts of Europe. The expansion that followed saw the brand supply its products to Japan, and by the early 2000s, the company was already supplying racket strings and frames to the United States. With this expansion came an increase in popularity and sales for the company. This has also enabled the company to invest in research and development in the areas of connected sports technology, allowing it to become a pioneer in the field. In 2014, Babolat produced its first connected racket and followed up with a connected wrist wearable in 2015. Today, the Babolat Pop, a sensor produced by the brand, is one of the most widely used in the sporting world. Babolat has remained at the forefront among other padel brands due to two factors. The first one is its sponsorship with popular players, and the second factor is the quality of its products. Because of the nature of its products, Babolat padel rackets are popular amongst beginners in the tennis, padel, and badminton sports.

Bullpadel

Bullpadel is one of the relatively youngest brands in the padel manufacturing industry, but this has not taken anything away from the quality and superiority of its products. The company was formed in 1995 by a union of tennis players from Spain and Argentina. This mode of its ownership allowed it to focus on the production of quality and top-rated rackets. As professional tennis players with years of experience in the sport, the founders understood the factors that make a good racket and honed on these factors. By 2005, 10 years after its inception, the company had blossomed and attracted the interest of a bigger company, Aguirre. Aguirre acquired Bullpadel in 2005 and continued from where its founders stopped. Apart from increased focus on the quality racket and tennis accessories production through research and development practices, the brand also focused on sponsorship for professional padel and tennis players. Some big names partnered with the brand in recent years include Cristian Gutierrez and Maxi Sanchez, whose partnership birthed the Bullpadel Vertex line in 2015, and Paquito Navarro, whose partnership birthed the Bullpadel Hack Racket line in 2016. It is noteworthy that Bullpadel is also making strides in bringing female participation in the sport to the fore. As a result, the brand has also entered into sponsorship deals with several female players like Necky Berwig, Iciar Montes, Cata Tenorio, and Alejandra Salazar. Finally, the brand has three classes of racket products in the market. The first one is the Pro Line which includes the Hack and Vertex lines and is made for attacking players with a superb technical level. The second class is Avant, and this class of product is made with intermediate players looking to improve their skills in mind. The last class is the Mid product class, for beginners starting out in the padel and tennis.

Adidas Padel

While Adidas had always been a big name in the sporting industry, the brand did not make an entry into the international padel manufacturing business until 2013. The company started its padel production through a Spanish company known as Allforpadel. Allforpadel received the license to produce padel equipment on behalf of the global company and introduced Adidas padel to the Spanish market. By 2014, the company had started distributing padel rackets and other accessories to other parts of Europe, such as Germany. Despite being a direct production of Allforpadel, the products bear the famous three-stripes symbol of Adidas. Some of the padel equipment manufactured and supplied by Allforpadel on behalf of Adidas includes padel shoes, padel bags, and other supplies and accessories related to the sport. Due to its late entry into the market, Adidas had to rely on high-quality products and marketing partnerships in the form of sponsorships to gain ground in the market. Some of the athletes that the brand has partnered with include Ale Galan, Martita Ortega, Seba Nerone, Alex Ruiz, and Peter Alonso Martinez.