Move over, pickleball: Padel fans explain why they're 'hooked' on this racket sport

The fast-paced game, which has millions of fans around the world, is starting to build a cult following in the U.S., with waiting lists to play in the few courts available.

You’ve heard of pickleball, the wildly popular sport that’s gone mainstream. But now there’s padel — another racket sport that’s surging in popularity and one that has strong Latino roots.

“It’s a sport that always keeps you on your toes,” said Roy Tabet, a professional padel player and a coach at Reserve Padel, one of the biggest luxury padel brands in the U.S., with clubs in Miami and New York.

Tabet said he had played tennis his whole life but started finding it repetitive.

“I started playing padel and I immediately felt the passion. The hype for the game was real,” he said in an interview with the “TODAY” show’s Morgan Radford.

Santiago Gomez and Morgan Radford at Padel Haus in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y.NBC NewsPadel got its start in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1969 when Enrique Corcuera, a Mexican businessman, was trying to build a makeshift tennis court in his backyard. He didn’t have enough space and chose to make a smaller version — the very first padel court — with a distinguishing feature: It was surrounded by an almost 10-foot wall.