GAME4PADEL is delighted to announce that Ross Murdoch will become the Club Manager and coach at our Edinburgh Park and Thistle Padel Club venues.
Ross, who is also a highly respected tennis coach, took up padel some five years ago and has become one of Scotland’s finest exponents of the game. Taking up his new post on Monday 4th September, one of Ross’s key missions will be to grow a vibrant junior programme which he believes is crucial to the game’s growth and sustainability in Scotia.
Reflecting on all of this and exactly what he will bring to his new role Ross shared: “I think my coaching experience and my passion for padel will be important in this new post.
“As an enthusiastic padel player I compete and I get so much enjoyment from that. People can take from all of that and I am very keen to help them start their padel journey and take satisfaction and fun from the sport as well as enjoying the social aspects. In Scotland padel is still fairly new and it is very exciting for me to play a part in growing padel with Game4Padel and see where we can take it.
“I would also like to really grow participation through my coaching. Game4Padel is doing a great job in building courts and in developing a padel community at the clubs they have partnered with and I am excited to be a part of that. The bottom line is I just want to develop the coaching and get more people involved in padel.”
Right at the top of Ross’s agenda is the development and growth of a junior programme which Ross views as the very lifeblood of our sport. Ross, who is Edinburgh born but Johannesburg raised, said: “Game4Padel already has a coaching programme going with some beginner and improver coaching but maybe not so much of a junior programme so we will be adding junior sessions as soon as I start (September 4).
“We will start at ‘mini’ age – around five – and then take it up to the teenage years with six or seven junior sessions a week and hopefully this will build and grow over the next year. I am passionate about getting young people involved and introduced to padel as early as possible as that is the best way to build the game long term – by getting the younger ones involved from the start.”
Already a fully qualified Padelmba coach, Ross is hungry to bring this to bear in his new capacity.
He said: “Qualifying as a CPC (Certified Padel Coach) with Padelmba has definitely helped me add a few more skills to my repertoire. Obviously the padel court is much smaller than the tennis court and it was excellent in that respect for planning sessions over the smaller area. But there are a lot of very transferrable skills between tennis and padel and I feel the CPC programme has really developed my understanding of coaching padel.”
When it came to explaining how his dual coaching appointment at Edinburgh Park and Thistle will work Ross explained: “I will do a day on court at each venue where I will roll out the junior content and also take some adult coaching and do one-to-one individual lessons. I’m also putting a team together of three other coaches who will help build the programme over time and I am really looking forward to developing all of that.”
When it came to how he first got involved in padel Ross’s rise to his new exalted status has been somewhat meteoric as he revealed: “I started playing about four or five years ago before lockdown and then after lockdown I really got into it and played a lot more regularly.
“In the last 18-months I started competing quite a lot and also added my Padelmba coaching qualification and from there started doing a bit of coaching with Game4Padel and everything just seemed to develop from there.
“I just love it and I’m looking to really build things with Game4Padel. I’ve been a tennis coach for 24 years and I feel that my skills are quite transferrable into padel, and now combined with my own experience as a padel coach and what I have learned from the Padelmba CPC course I am just really excited about the prospect of building this new role.
“With padel being a doubles game, and a very sociable sport, it is easier to pick up if you haven’t played racket sports before.”
Take your game to the next level with coaching:
Join an adult or a kids Padel course at Edinburgh Park and/or Thistle Padel via the MATCHi webpages.
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