LIMPOPO – Two Hoedspruit men’s teams showed 35 other teams how it is done during a padel tournament held in Tzaneen.

The tournament, hosted by My Padel, was the inaugural tourney hosted by My Padel for women, men and mixed teams with a prize pool of R30 000. My Padel opened its courts in October last year.

The two Hoedspruit teams frequent the Hoedspruit Padel & Sports Bar courts and travelled to Tzaneen to represent Hoedspruit in the tourney.

“The tournament was well organised and run by the SRE Padel. Thirty-six men’s teams entered, and the format was simple, 15-minute games, each team serving twice and playing for the most points,” said Gareth Poole of Hoedspruit Padel & Sports Bar.

“Once the time was up, the game was over and the team with the highest points won or played a sudden death point if the match ended in a tie. If a team lost, they were knocked out of the premier division and dropped down to another division of knockout games, to ensure that at least every team played 3-4 games even if they lost in the initial phases,” Poole explained.

He said that both Hoedspruit teams made the semi-finals of the premier division.

“Locals Kyle Middleton and Joel Alves (Drop Shot Squad) were knocked out in the semi-finals and played a third and fourth place playoff which they won. Diederik Fourie and Francois Cilliers (Hoedspruit Honde) made it into the final against a very competitive team with one of the players being a young semi-professional player on the padel circuit. The format for the final was a three-set game with the deciding set being a 10-point tiebreaker. After losing the first set 6-4, the Hoedspruit Honde stormed back to take the second set 6-2 and with the Lowveld crowd on their side, held their nerve to take the tie-break decider 10-8 and walk away with bragging rights and R10 000 prize money. They are now the team in town to beat and the Hoedspruit Padel & Sports Bar has begun planning for the inaugural local tournament,” he added.