A new facility featuring four padel courts opened in College Park on Oct. 18, introducing the fast-growing racket sport—often described as a mix of tennis and squash—to the area.
Padel Garten, an outdoor facility next to the College Park Airport at 4928 College Ave., is one of three padel-specific facilities in the DMV.
Padel is a racket sport played in doubles on an enclosed glass-and-mesh court. The game is scored the same as tennis but played with solid rackets perforated with holes and balls that look like tennis balls but are slightly smaller and lighter.
Co-owners Evan Darrow and Jacob Villanueva, founders of Glassbox Padel Club, said they hope the courts will become a community space.
“[Players] have this excuse to get off the phones, get off the computers and have their physical activity, have the exercise and competition aspect of it,” Darrow said. “We want a space where they can hang out and have fun.”
The sport originated in Mexico in the 1960s, according to the International Padel Federation. As of 2025, padel is played in more than 140 countries, and the federation holds biennial World Padel Championships.
Players can buy Padel Garten memberships for $80 a month to get discounts on $60 to $80 hourly court fees. The owners host weekend tournaments and sell snacks, rackets and other merchandise.
Although Darrow said he and Villanueva did not target College Park, the city fit the bill for a location close to the District, where they live, with a variety of “vibrant communities.”
Darrow said they hope being close to the University of Maryland will attract student players. The club plans to offer student discounts soon, he said.
“The university kids have odd schedules during the quiet hours,” Darrow said. “If we can incent them to try something new and come out and make it affordable … we’re going to make it approachable for them.”
In addition to running the courts, Darrow said he and Villanueva have day jobs in IT. He said he had played padel only a handful of times before deciding to open the College Park facility.
He said the culture of playing with three other people in a doubles match made padel especially enticing compared with other racket sports that do not require doubles.
UMD industrial engineering master’s student Carlos Gonzalez is already a Padel Garten regular.
An exchange student from Spain, Gonzalez has played padel for about eight years, he said, and was pleasantly surprised to find the courts so close to campus.
“You might as well have it and take the risk of maybe not having so many people playing,” Gonzalez said. “But once they get started, I think it’s a very fun sport.”
Darrow said the courts, open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, get five or six bookings a day. Weekends are busier than weekdays, when peak hours are 4 to 10 p.m.
Terence Tche, an employee at the nearby Junior Tennis Champions Center, said his skills from 15 years of competitive tennis easily transferred to padel.
“Padel gets that excitement of like, anything can happen,” Tche said. “You play off the glass. It’s kind of satisfying. But sometimes it’s frustrating, just a little bit different from tennis.”
The sport’s growing popularity in the United States motivated the owners to build the courts, Darrow said.
“We had been those guinea pigs ourselves,” Darrow said. “We’re Americans, and we are not familiar with this [sport]. … There was something attractive about the idea that it’s not an established industry.”