Humans of Padel
Join your host Max Marsh Pickard, General Manager of Padel Art & Co founder of The Padel Outlet in a weekly entertaining dive into the world of Padel and the people involved in the industry
Humans of Padel
The Future of Padel Player Rating WPPR | Sami Alsayed Founder of WeCourts
How can a simple game of padel turn into a life-changing journey? Join us as we sit down with Sami Al-Sayed, the innovative mind behind WeCourts, to uncover his inspiring voyage from discovering padel in 2019 to revolutionizing the sport's organizational landscape in Dubai. Sami reveals the social and competitive allure of paddle, shares his experiences of battling Dubai’s unforgiving summer heat, and explains why this sport continues to ignite his passion every day.
Ever wondered how a web-based calendar for padel tournaments could transform into a comprehensive mobile app? In this episode, Sami walks us through the hurdles and triumphs of building WeCourts. From the initial concept born out of a personal need to the ambitious features planned for the future, including tournament management and player matchmaking, we dive deep into the technical challenges and the critical role of a dedicated team. Sami’s journey offers valuable insights into the intersection of technology and sports, making this a must-listen for tech enthusiasts and sports aficionados alike.
We also tackle the complexities of player ratings in paddle, discussing the shortcomings of existing systems and the innovative solutions Sami is implementing through the new WPPR rating system. Discover the intricacies of establishing a fair, global rating system and its potential to elevate the sport. Alongside, we share heartfelt stories on how paddle has positively impacted mental health, offering hope and encouragement to those facing similar struggles. Get ready for an episode filled with passion, innovation, and real-life stories that highlight the transformative power of sports.
Links
https://wecourts.com/wppr/players
https://wecourts.com/
Hi guys, welcome back to an episode of the Max Plays Paddle podcast. It's a pleasure to have you here again In this episode. I'm joined by Sami Al-Sayed, the founder of wwwwecourtscom. In this episode, we discuss the challenges facing the development of WeCourts and the WPPR, the road blocks that have been faced along the way, and how the future of rating players in paddle is going to be the next step for the sport to develop, and also we touch on how sports can help deal with mental health issues. I would love to hear from you on Instagram at MaxPlaysPaddle. Enjoy the episode and have a great day. Sabih, welcome to the MaxPlaysPaddle podcast. I want to say thank you first of all for taking the time. I'm excited to have this conversation with you because there's a lot of things that we're going to be discussing.
Speaker 2:First thing I want to start you off with First thing I want to start you off with what's your first memory of paddle? I think the first class I ever had in paddle was in Paddle Pro with Martin Nocese. So it was the first time ever I had a paddle class and the first very thing he taught me was the smash, and that's why your smash is so good and it was so good. Only in that class I didn't miss anything. I didn't miss a single smash at that time and all the balls were out. Everything was good and I didn't understand how great it was. I thought like this is part of padel and I think that was the last time ever like I was so accurate with smashes. After that, all AC, AC, AC. When was this? It was in 2019. Okay, so we're going on five years now. Yeah, it's been five years now playing Paddle.
Speaker 1:How did you hear about?
Speaker 2:it. My friend actually told me let's try to play Paddle and I said why not? Let's go and try? And I said why not, let's go and try. And that was in a time where I'm looking for a hobby. I tried a lot of stuff to look for a hobby, something outside work. I tried many things but when I tried to paddle I understood the meaning of having a hobby. What other hobbies did you try? I tried a lot of stuff. I tried from playing an instrument like piano, guitar. I played badminton, table tennis. I tried a lot of stuff. I tried even to do some safari car driving, something to feel like I'm.
Speaker 2:I want to wake up in the morning to feel excited about. But every time I try new stuff I don't continue, just reach a point where I'm not excited anymore to play or to continue when I started playing paddle and then I wake up in the morning I feel I wanna. My game is at four or at five From the morning. I'm preparing for it. I'm excited to go. I'm excited about the waiting to play Until now, until today yeah, Really yes.
Speaker 1:Why do you think paddle stuck with you but not badminton, table tennis or other racquet sports?
Speaker 2:I think it's not necessarily the game, the game itself. It's amazing because it has a lot of elements like social part, the competitive part. When you start playing, you feel like you are good in it from day one, and then you want to do more, you want to grow more, and then you find that growing in padel is extremely complicated. So that competition, that growth, that joy, that every game, there is a drama from it. And that's one side. The other side is you as a person, because I like this game, and there are other people, maybe I don't know them, but maybe there are. Some people tried the game and didn't like it, which is you understand this. It's okay, they can play pickleball Pickleball, for example. My wife didn't like padel Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you guys are still married. That's unbelievable. Yes.
Speaker 2:With a beautiful child as well. Let's remove this part. Yeah, let's remove it. My wife she likes to play padel, she loves it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So when you started playing in 2019, obviously that was when it was the first clubs in Dubai, right, there weren't many at the time.
Speaker 2:There was, at that time, no indoor clubs at that time, so the only club I was we were playing in it was Paddle Pro outdoor. So and I think when I started was July, also August it was a disaster, like to play at five or being called for a match at four when the degree outside is like 50 and the humidity is one million. You can see fish in the sky. So it's like it was. It was like this, but this did not stop me from going and playing, and playing every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what you know. It's really a hobby when you're willing to go outside and the summer to play paddle in Dubai.
Speaker 2:I think even in winter it's very nice to play outside. It's fresh, it's good enjoying the lobes, the high lobes In summer. It's a very big challenge.
Speaker 1:I remember I would coach at 6 o'clock in the morning, 7 o'clock in the morning in the summer. Yes, I used to do that. The glass was soaked, it was completely wet. So the ballclock in the morning, seven o'clock in the morning in the summer yes, I used to do that and the glass was soaked, it was completely wet. So the ball would hit the glass, it would just drop.
Speaker 2:That was not my problem. Actually, it was waking up at 6 am or 7 am. I will never do it again. Yeah, so I didn't see the glass at that time because I couldn't see anything Do outdoors. No, I enjoy playing indoors, uh, big time. I don't like to play outdoor, even if the weather is nice. I don't like it just because in it's easier to play indoor. Outdoor you have a lot of uh variables or whatever you call it. You have like the lights, you have the wind, you have. The another thing is like, uh, because dubai, usually the weather is dusty. So when you go play outdoor you go with your take care of what you're wearing. You have your black bag and you put it on all dirty stuff. So I don't like it. It's a little like it's also dirty, yeah, the dust and thing. I enjoy playing indoor, like look so beautiful, we can even make an interview. And that's true. Yeah, you can sit on the court and have it under. Enjoy playing indoor, like, look so beautiful, we can even make an interview.
Speaker 1:It's true. Yeah, you can sit on the court and have a chat Under the AC.
Speaker 2:It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of the perfect conditions, isn't it? I mean, personally, I like playing outdoors. I don't know if it's because I'm European and we just like being outdoors all the time, and I love the ability to be able to hit lo paddle yes, it's easier and also, by the way, handling the high loops.
Speaker 2:It's very difficult. You get the ball high. You cannot just say like I want to hit bandega or I want to hit smash. There is a way to handle this high loop. So I remember the last outdoor game I played. It was in charge charge asia championship. Oh my god, we played. We played against the Australians and they were. They didn't give us any single volley, no volleys, no nothing. They just gave us a loop that you don't see the ball in the sky. At some stage, like the ball went up and the bird came down. It's like it was like so bad we couldn't do anything with it.
Speaker 1:This you were competing for Jordan, right? You were representing Jordan in that event.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was like Jordan against our chance. We played against Australia the first game. They won it right. Yes, the level difference between Australia and everyone else was so high you cannot beat them. It's's just different game, yeah, different level, and unfortunately we played against them from the group from the first first game that's an unlucky draw, yeah.
Speaker 1:so obviously five years ago you started getting into paddle and moving on to when you started we courts, which is what we're going to discuss and great initiative that you had for the paddle community, when did you start Wee Courts and what was the idea behind it?
Speaker 2:Well, it's, playing paddle is not only about playing matches, tournaments. Playing tournaments is a big part of playing paddle, because it's it's the easy matchmaking let's call it like this way and people seeking to see, like how they are growing in the sport, so how you can see that you're growing. You go play tournaments, so that's a natural way. You play, you train and then you want to see did you improve or not in the tournament? So I was checking every day to know about the upcoming tournaments. We have to follow everyone on Instagram and you have to check stories every day to see the tournaments happening next week or this week, and then you have to take a screenshot because the stories are for 24 hours. So what I started doing, I started adding the tournaments I'm interested to play in my calendar so that I will not lose. I don't need to check Instagram all the time. And then I say, why not to? Why I cannot just make a website? I create websites since I remember myself, it's very easy for me. And I said why not to create a website? It's a calendar, it has all the upcoming, all the tournaments in UE for me.
Speaker 2:So it started from a personal interest. Yeah, because it's a problem for me. So it started from a personal interest. Yeah, because it's a problem for me, I want to solve it and I say, and I believe it will help everyone. And then I created a website in two weeks that was WeCoursecom. I used some solutions for calendar and I started adding myself the tournaments I find on WeCourse, on Instagram and on the website, and it didn't take so much. Now it's become like I hear it from everyone that the tournaments must be on WeCourts to know about it, so you can see on Instagram a story about a tournament. Ok, here we go. But you are not worried, you know that it's in.
Speaker 1:WeCourts. Yeah, I mean it has become a reference and I don't play tournaments. I don't enjoy playing tournaments, but I use it from a club perspective. So when I want to schedule a tournament, let's say for paddle art, the first thing I do is I go to organizers also do this.
Speaker 2:They go and they see, uh, where empty slots. But there is a problem with it, you know, because many organizers they organize tournaments just couple of days before the tournament, so you will always have it. But for the tournaments that ahead of time you plan it, it's good, yeah, because people are preparing for it, you have time to get registrations and so, yeah, this is benefit, and also for players, even for players coming from outside uae. They don't follow anyone on instagram. They don't know, for example, paddle society. They don't follow anyone on Instagram. They don't know, for example, paddle Society. They don't know WeCourts. They just check on Google tournaments in UAE. They see WeCourts calendar. You're at the top with the SEO, yes, nice. So that's how they check and they see the upcoming tournaments in UAE and they sign up for events.
Speaker 1:And you can sign up through WeCourts. Or is that coming Right now in WeCourts, or is that coming Right now.
Speaker 2:On WeCourts, you contact the organizer directly, but that's the upcoming thing. We have a WeCourts mobile app. It's a mobile app that I've been working on for one year almost one year and a half. I don't have experience building mobile apps. My experience is related to web applications, which is like I started ShortPoint as a company in 2013 in Dubai. It's a web websites design platform, and so it's all about web, but when I started doing the mobile app, it's completely different. Right, yeah, and I thought like I can work with mobile app development companies. It was a disaster. Really, it was a disaster. Really, it was a disaster.
Speaker 2:I'm an IT guy. I consider I know myself, I'm an expert in this field, so I can talk to technical people, but then when I meet, I look for companies, so mobile app development companies that I want to start working with. I do the best homework to find the best company to work with. And the best company to work with is the person you're talking to, who usually is the owner of the company or the CEO, but then when you start working on a project new team members they come. You are not working with a CEO, you are working with their team, and I failed two times.
Speaker 2:I wasted a lot of money. Eight months of work went to the garbage because of this. And then, yeah, the first mobile app attempt failed. The second one also failed and then I said, okay, I need to hire someone full time. So I looked for low budget because I spent a lot of money and I wasted a lot of money. I didn't have enough budget anymore. So I start looking for part-time or someone work with me. Part-time Also wasted a lot of time because but what was the issues that you faced?
Speaker 1:Is it their lack of knowledge about paddle, or is it?
Speaker 2:um, what is it? It's, first of all, these people you're working with. They don't believe in your vision. They are not passionate about what you, what you are doing. They care about the paper hour, so the tasks they want to finish. If they have 10 tasks, I need to finish them. But, for example, if they find issues during the time, if they find like these things might not work, they will still do it because they say you provided them with this requirement.
Speaker 2:For them, they will win extra hours when you ask them for a change. So do double the work. Basically yes. So for them, all the time it was about getting more hours of you, and then the quality of the work is just garbage. You cannot control it and I cannot handle everything. I need to hire people to help me. So it's bad. And plus, I don't have the knowledge in mobile app development. So if you have a knowledge in mobile app development, you can work with the mobile app development companies because you can see what they are working on and give them feedback and you can manage them. But if you don't have experience in this at all, it will fail 100%. But why do you?
Speaker 1:think WeCourts needed an app, why not just keep it as a web?
Speaker 2:Because the long vision of WeCourts is not just listing the tournaments, it's the registration, the tournament management software, the matchmaking, the rating system, getting notified when you have a match and a lot of stuff. Another thing the concept of your paddle play and tournament and matches in your pocket is fancy stuff also. Yeah, it's like you have it on your mobile app and not just on the website and many features you have it on the website not possible to have. There are features not possible to have it on the website.
Speaker 1:When the mobile, it will become easier and more seamless and better user experience, because I mean, obviously, when we started the paddle outlet, we were looking at creating an app for the retail and for the online e-commerce side, but we decided to go against it because we didn't think it was necessary. But then I guess what you're doing is different. Right? This is something that people might be using on a daily, weekly basis to push notifications for retail people are buying from us, maybe once a month or something like that. It's not necessary to have it in an app.
Speaker 2:Exactly e-commerce at our scale exactly and plus when you go to to that website you go one time, look for stuff, pay yeah you are done, but on we course you will use it every day.
Speaker 2:It's it's your schedule, it's your matches, it's your training. You will find the coaches you want to train with you. You will see your schedule throughout the week, what upcoming matches you have, upcoming tournaments. You will track your progress, the winning, the losses. You have the progress. Follow other players to see their progress as well. A lot of stuff I have. We have in the plan for WeCords and now we reached a very advanced stage on WeCords app that we are going to submit it to App Store in August. Now Apple rejected the app 12 times already. It's just another problem. I think Apple has an agenda for Pickleball With two companies and then I had a freelancer also failed with that guy. I went again and I have now. Wecourts is a company. We have a staff of nine people. I have two full-time mobile app developers, two back-end. I have market Like, like. It's a full company. Now I'm going all the way in with this. This is how much I believe in it.
Speaker 1:Are you running this as a business or are you running this as a hobby?
Speaker 2:well, first of all, it's it will be a dream for me to play the game I love, and also it will become my work. It cannot be better than this, so of course, I want to make it as, at some point, to be. This is what I do for, for it is what I do for life. I, I play paddle and I work paddle and I lift paddle and I sleep paddle everything that's what I do and it's great, so it's amazing. So why not? But, um, but right now, what I'm working with we courts is first to make it solve a problem, to make it something players will appreciate, they will use it, and then, of course, this will become a successful business, because you need to make it a successful business to continue growing and renovating. So I'm not worried about that. It will become a very successful business, for sure.
Speaker 1:I agree with you, and I think you're already solving a problem with the calendar and the tournaments. You've put that all into one place. That's great, but now I want to dive into the next step of it, and one that you're working on a lot and you put a lot of hours into, which is a WPPR. So can you tell us what is WPPR? What's the plan?
Speaker 2:why so WPPR? We call it Paddle Player Rating System. So it's a system that rates players based on their tournament matches performance. Now the idea from it started from WeCourts itself. We are organizing, we are promoting tournaments and then we want to help organizing tournaments and make tournament registration, the management, everything seamless. We cannot do it if there is no rating for players. But it didn't start from there. Actually, the WPPR did not start because of weak or anything.
Speaker 2:It's from a personal frustration, like let's call it like this way. It's something I couldn't sleep at night. It was something that frustrated me almost daily basis that tournaments are not fair. Let's make it like this you go to the tournaments, not me, just me. I see players they go play beginner's tournaments and I see high-level players going to beginner's tournaments. I see tournaments C-level players going to beginner tournaments.
Speaker 2:I see tournaments sea level or open sea. The same players have been winning the open sea tournaments for the past one year and a half. I see players they have a record of more than 100 open sea tournaments. There are players like this. I see complaints about everyone. Every single tournament. People are frustrated. There are players. Every single tournament, people are frustrated. There are players. They are frustrated. It's just a and there is nothing, no solution for it, nothing, there is. No one is doing anything to fix this problem. I can see that the organisers and clubs, they are trying to fix it, but whatever they are trying to do, it will fix their tournaments, but it's not going to fix the tournaments in the community and even then it's subjective right.
Speaker 1:If I'm organizing a tournament and I say this person is not C-level, it's my opinion.
Speaker 2:Yes, there's no data. That's also a big thing, because when I see, like, okay, how can you rate players? And I see the standard is there is a self questions. You ask people and we, as humans, we cannot rate ourselves. You cannot evaluate yourself, period like, maybe you will evaluate yourself higher than what you are or maybe you will evaluate yourself lower than you are. You cannot evaluate yourself. And example platforms like Playtomic their entire rating system is based on the self-evaluation. That's how you can get your initial rating in Playtomic, which that's why it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:Because I remember when I went to Spain, I went to Spain to do like a week training in Spain and they told me to play paddle in Spain, you have to have a Playtomic account. So I started the process create a Playtomic account. Playtomic started ask me questions before I answer the questions. I went to Google what is the best answers to give Playtomic to get a high rating? And then I answered exactly how the how Google me and I got rating five. I was playing with LeBron, with Tapia, with Chincoto in Spain. I had one year experience in paddle. I'm below beginner level and I destroyed paddle in Spain. I was damaging the matches there, but I had fun and at that time that was in 2020, my rating in Playtomic is 5. I didn't use it since that time and my rating today is 4.9.
Speaker 1:So it hasn't changed.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:And even based on the results of the matches that you must have lost, it didn't change, it will change.
Speaker 2:But I mean it doesn't make sense. First of all, it doesn't make sense that my rating is 5. Let's start it from there. And it doesn't make sense. Like from that time until today, my rating is 4.9. So it doesn't work. And then I see how rating system I didn't find a way, a way from people evaluate themselves or do like self skills assessment sessions, which also I believe it doesn't work. Because if you invite me for a self assessment session in your court, I come, I'm in the training, I am tapia level, but put me in a match, put me in a tournament. It's completely different. So in the self assessment I might give you the best best. We borrow the best band, they had the best everything. But in the matches I'm completely different.
Speaker 1:It's true, that's how we assess in in padel Ah, is you come for the session? Does for six people. We do some drills, you play like mini matches and we try to assess you and it's. It's not an exact science, right? It's not gonna be accurate Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I, and not just this, it's a lot of work from the club to get. And also, how many people are interested to go to do self-assessment? How many players they are actually interested to go do self-assessment? Maybe the beginners, yes, because they want to start here. They want to okay, they don't know anything. But when players reach from beginners level level to intermediate and advanced, it's impossible to get them into self-assessment. I don't believe they will be going to the self-assessment sessions. So, and I want to give you another thing, if you put five coaches looking at me while playing, every coach will give different rating for me, sure.
Speaker 2:So it was a dilemma. It was not because I wanted to fix this problem when it took me so long like very long time I'm just thinking about it, not able to come up with a solution, until I digged into pickleball in the US. I said pickleball is a growing sport in the US. Us has a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of tech companies, I don't know what, and it's a massive market. So let me see Pickleball is a similar sport to padel. So let me see how they do rating, how they rate players, how does it, how the clubs solve this problem. And then, when I was searching for in the US. I found out that they have a system to rate players based on tournament matches, and then I checked that system. It's exploding. Everyone is using it. They receive results of tournaments, matches, they receive in their system and they give rating to people based on your performance in the matches. So how are they receiving this data From the clubs and partners? That's it. They receive the results from clubs and partners and then they add to the system and they have a formula I don't know what and they give you rating. After like maybe 10, 20 or 30 matches, they can reach for you an accurate pickleball rating, and right now they reached a level that they are the definitive rating player for pickleball in the us. Even the top players are rated there. They look at their rating and it's rating, not ranking. So there is a big difference here. It's not like the more tournaments you win, the better points you get, the higher rating you get. No, no, no, it's not like that. It's about your true level. If you beat players that are stronger than you, your rating will go up, but if you beat the players similar to your level, their changing in the rating will not be significant. It will be very minor, just to. So it's an algorithm, it's a lot of algorithms.
Speaker 2:So when I saw that idea is crazy, because I saw like, first of all, I don't need to ask players to create accounts, I don't need to talk to players, I don't need to talk even to clubs to change the systems they are working on, and then I started thinking about how can I make something better than pickleball in the US. Pickleball in the US they had a problem of collecting results because they forced the clubs to add the results themselves and it was very difficult. So that's where the idea of WPPR came. I said I want to go and talk to clubs, get the results from the clubs in any format Images, handwritten notes, excel sheets even if they have a system, it doesn't matter, that must be a's a data scientist. So before I go, I ask them is it possible to do this? And then I was surprised the amount of work, first of all here, but the creativity in solutions and also using AI. It's interesting, like, for example, when we receive the data.
Speaker 2:We have an AI engine right now that can extract from images, from Excel sheets. It can understand so many type of results and it will translate it into our excel format of matches first name, last name of every player and every match, what is the score and then this goes into another system we call it etl system. It's the system that translates this excel into an actual, clean record in our database. It goes through a lot of stages, from checking the name, similarities, merging accounts. For example, Mohamed El-Meheri. This guy makes a lot of problems for us in the system because his name is written in almost 12 different ways Mohamed, mohamed, mahmoud I don't know Meheri Meheri in like 12 ways. So the system has to be intelligent enough to understand that this name is for Muhammad Al-Meheri. This is his name in the passport. So this goes into a lot of people. Your name is easy. There is no way to make a problem with your name.
Speaker 1:I'm the only one.
Speaker 2:Except sometimes they put it CK, only K and without C. This is an easy problem. Other problems, like Abdullah Ahly. There are two players in UAE they play tournaments and their name is Abdullah Ahly One of them. He plays like the Open Sea tournament, sea level, and you have Abdullah Ahly, the top Emirati player. So the system has also to understand. How can I differentiate?
Speaker 1:How does it differentiate that?
Speaker 2:It understands that, based on the partner, it understands that this player is playing usually with these people. So definitely, this is not Abdullah Ahly, the national team player. This is the other Abdullah Ahly, so the system can also understand your usual partners and I guess the long-term vision would.
Speaker 1:then each player would have like a user ID and you would use that. That's the beauty.
Speaker 2:Once we launch WeCourts mobile app, you can, when you register on a mobile app, you add your mobile number and it will ask you a question have you played a tournament in UAE before? Yes, search for your name. So you look up for your name and then you see, okay, max, oh, there is an account for me. You click on Max and then you see matches yes, these are the matches I played. You have a big button here called this Is Me. So once you click this Is Me. Now you have access to your account. You can edit your name, your nationality, update your photo and this is how it will work.
Speaker 2:Now a lot of people ask me what if somebody else took my account? Yes, it's a possibility. It is a possibility. Someone else took your account. Once you click this is me If somebody took your account, you click this is me. If somebody took your account, let's say by mistake. It will tell you someone took this account.
Speaker 2:Do you believe there is a problem? Contact support. We will fix it. Yeah, but people say like, why don't you get an ids? I cannot go to all the clubs today and tell them, when you give me the results, make sure you have an ID in the results. It doesn't work because there is no ID. They only have the first name and last name. I'm trying to fix the problem step by step. Eventually tournaments will be managed. The idea to have a one solution for tournament registration management to draw everything on WeCourts Payments, you know. So this is long term. Right now, the biggest problem that stopped Paddle from growing is rating players. It's true, I agree 100%. That's more important than even any system Like it has to work. That's why WeCourts Pad Paddle Player Rating System is free today and free forever for everyone. So even the scores we are receiving, anyone can send us the scores we add to the tournament, to the system so that we can give a rating for people. And maybe by the time you will publish this interview already, wppr will be live on the web.
Speaker 1:I mean definitely. I'll put a link anyway to the website for WeQuotes and for WPPR.
Speaker 2:WPPR should be launched now, in a couple of days. We are still solving. The last issues with the names is the most complicated issue, I mean.
Speaker 1:I think you're solving a huge issue, and it has been killing paddle at least tournaments in the ua, I'd say for the past year at least where you know who's going to win the tournaments. Right, a lot of people are not playing tournaments anymore because they've been put off by people sandbagging and joining tournaments that are way below their level. But do you think the issue with that is also to do with the prize money that's involved in these tournaments, in low level tournaments?
Speaker 2:Well, I think, like price money should not be the only motivation for players to play tournaments, but right now it is the only motivation Because you don't have a place to say, like ranking, for example, fip tournaments you want to go play the tournament even if there is no price money, because you care about your global standing. You want to get points. You want to go play the tournament even if there is no price money because you care about your global standing. You want to get points. You want to go up. So there is no price money, but you go play yeah so uepa is the same thing.
Speaker 2:For example, they have a ranking. So you have to play uepa tournaments if you want to stay in the top 10 or top 30. So ranking is there. But now we're talking about the tournaments that happen on a weekly basis. There is no ranking here, it's just a tournament. So what is the motivation for players? Is the medal? For me it's the medal. Like, I want the medal to show my kid so that he can be in the future he can be inspired by his dad. So for me, it in the future he can be inspired by his that. So for me is the middle. For others, yeah, why not to have a price money? There is no problem, but it should not be the only motivation. Another thing I think with the price money, right now the clubs are forced to put a price money because if they don't put a price money, people will not come.
Speaker 1:So we've encountered that issue, because I'm against putting prize money in anything that's not an open category because, like I said, I feel it has poisoned the atmosphere. Yes, so we've tried to push with vouchers, prizes, all kinds of things from different partners and, it's true, the motivation for people to join tournaments is not there, even though most people who play padel in the UAE do not need 2000 dirhams or even 5000 dirhams. They're pretty well off.
Speaker 2:But that's why what I'm trying to fix this by providing the players with another motivation. For example, if I know that that tournament will impact my rating on WPPR, I want to go play because I want to improve my rating on WPPR. I want to see my level, I want to track my progress, I want to see if I'm growing or not. So I think once we have a place for the whole community to see the players their rating and also we can include ranking, like who are the top 10 players in UE, who are the top 10 C-plus players, who are the top B players, who's the strongest coach, I don't know Like something like this. So there will be rating plus ranking, a platform for people to see their progress in value, a global place for them to have a recognition. Also, it's good I hear it from people we didn't launch WPPR yet and I hear it from players that they started the training yeah and taking tournaments so seriously because they want their profile to be good.
Speaker 1:I think you've done something that no one has ever managed to do in paddling the UAE. Is you've created some more thing that everybody agrees on? Yes, everybody supports what you're trying to do, and that is not the case for anything in in the UAE. Is you've created some more thing that everybody agrees on? Yes, everybody supports what you're trying to do, and that is not the case for anything in the paddle in this part of the world.
Speaker 2:I think that's the main reason for it is, first, I'm doing it based on a problem I'm facing and I know how to create products so I can connect, solving a problem with technology. Another thing I know everyone in the community.
Speaker 1:And everyone knows you.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then I find that before I started building in it, I met with you Even before I even started thinking about investing in it. I met with you, I met with other people who I trust. I trust their also feedback and then you are telling me, yes, this is a good solution. Why not to try another? Telling me, yes, it will work. I didn't hear from anyone that there is a problem or against it, so that's give me also some additional motivation that this can work and people can buy in.
Speaker 1:I honestly didn't see how you could make it work. I was very I had a lot of doubt of the feasibility of it, like the idea, yes, 100, but how you were going to implement that and the issue I saw for you doing this was going to be how are you going to get the clubs and the tournament organizers to give?
Speaker 2:you this data? Oh my god, that's what. Something also was for me beyond impossible. Like how can I tell you to get results? To give me results, so. But surprisingly I saw that the problem with the organizers who organize a lot of tournaments is so huge. Like organizers, they actually call me twice a week just to complain. Imagine, like I thought that the problem is with players, but the organizers. They are suffering more than the players Because they get the blame. They get the blame they don't want. I know a lot of organizers I talk to. They actually make the tournaments because they love Fadil. They love to make tournaments, they love to make people happy in their events and it's not easy. It's not easy. And then they get complaints all the time. I hear other organizers in beginners and in C category. They actually disqualify people more like a lot on a weekly basis. They are actually doing their work to find these people that they are not good in this store.
Speaker 1:And then you get complaints, complaints, you get bad reviews, you get all kinds of things, so they are.
Speaker 2:They are helping me. They start sending me results. I started asking the clubs to send me results in first of june. In one month in the system we have 3 000 matches. I couldn't believe it. Today we are crossing the 6 000 matches. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that we can actually reach this stage of having all of the. Actually, we have so much results right now that I don't need more results to go live. I see that now in WPPR we don't need a lot of results to impact your rating. The rating is there. Now we are getting results just to have your uh, your profile, to have your matches, the matches you played. Not all the matches will have a rating impact for you, which what we want like uh, and then players will see their profiles so how many players do you currently have rated 2?
Speaker 2:600 players in the system and this is in the first lunch. It will be 1500. In the first lunch it will be 1,500. You will see their rating. They reached an accurate rating. And then stage two, you will have another 2,000 coming up. Why? Because the new players playing tournaments. They will have an initial rating. So if the match there are three players, they have a WPPR rating and one player doesn't have a rating, he will have an initial rating. So if the match there are three players, they have a WPPR rating and one player doesn't have a rating, he will have an initial rating.
Speaker 2:So we need more matches for this player to reach an accurate rate. So, first launch, I will make sure we will have a rating for only the people who reached an accurate rating and the players who still the rating in progress. We will not show the rating Just, I think next stage, in the following months, we will push the more players. How many players do you think there are in the UAE? Well, in the system which I can, the people who played tournaments. This year we have more than 4,000.
Speaker 2:Okay 4,000 of the people played tournaments this year and organizers send us the results. So I think there, I think we have a lot like we have maybe more than ten thousand. Yeah, the people who play tournaments, but the people who play paddle I don't know, I don't know. This is a big number, I don't know about it yet.
Speaker 1:So let's take, for example, once you release this rating and you're going to have players like, let's say, me I don't play tournaments how is my level going to be defined?
Speaker 2:Yes, this is good because this is next thing. Now, the first thing is tournaments, the next thing is matches. So you can, as a player, add your score in WeCourts, so you can go and create, add a score, and then you add yourself and add the players and you can get a rating.
Speaker 1:Just from a normal match.
Speaker 2:Any match. Yes, it will give you a rating. It will help players who don't have a rating to start having a rating. Also, you can. We are thinking also like you can go to our partner clubs. You go to the reception, say I want to record the match, so the organizers or in the club, they will have an iPad or something. They record your match.
Speaker 2:So another thing we are introducing on WeCourts we have WPPR, social play. So it's a tournament that will not have all the scores will be recorded, but it will not your rating. Okay, it will give you a rating. But, for example, I can go to play this paddle art, organize a tournament and they call this WPPR, verified social play. I have a rating in UE. I care about my rating so much I'm not worried to play your tournament. I will go play your tournament with a low level player because I know playing this tournament will not impact my rating. Okay, but it will help my partner, who doesn't have any rating, to get rated. Right makes sense Because he played with me, because I have a rating, so that's called social play, so it will be good.
Speaker 2:That's called social play, so it will be good. Why I'm? I'm doing this? Also because I hear from players when I start showing them their profiles they are not so much interested in the rating change. They want to see all their matches in the profile. They are interested to see like, okay, I played with, uh, with this, I played there, I played here, this was my score. They care about showing their win and loss percentage. They want to see all the matches and it will help rate all the new players and, let's say, I disagree.
Speaker 1:I see my rating and I'm like Sami, this is ridiculous. This is not my level you can't say this.
Speaker 2:If you see the rating in the system is not your level, there is actually a button called the complain or raise a support, because 100 percent wppr first launch will have issues. There will be rating issues. I did a homework of checking every person manually to see what are the rating, how the system is giving this player rating, and still I cannot rate people, you know. But we have to launch it and then have a platform for the community to complain so we can fix it in the system. So the first launch it will be so clear to the community. I need your help finding issues with the system because my vision is with this is to be the world's most accurate pedal rating system.
Speaker 1:I mean you talk about the world. I mean, obviously you're starting this in the uae. Are you planning to open this to the rest of the gcc? I mean, yeah, around the world like what's the, what's the vision?
Speaker 2:well, for me, the vision is to be the world's most accurate paddle rating system that's number one and to be the definitive rating system for every. So instead of WeCourt paddle player rating, it'll be World Paddle. It should be Like. This is obviously and I will tell you even more I want to see WPPR logo in the finals in Premier Paddle one day. I want to see it under the court. It's like to see. Like even for the top-level players to have also rating is something I want to have. That would be amazing.
Speaker 2:It's like okay, lebron, I don't know Gallant, they can see their ranking, but I'm interested to know who's the strongest player not the best player in the current tour. Not based on points. The tour is like yeah, the more they play For example, if Kowei and Tapia they missed one tour, galan and Chinkotu they might become number one. So that's ranking. But I want to know who's the strongest player. I personally believe Galan is the strongest player, strongest. So people will say, no, it's Tapia. Ok, but based on what? Based on the match score. I will tell you Rating system. Wppr looks at the player and who the player is playing with and you're playing against who. It looks at the score difference, who won, who lost, the difference in the level between each team to give you a rating impact up or down, so that to know who is the strongest player in the tournament.
Speaker 1:That'd be amazing to see, uh, the premier paddle players yeah, like for me, that's that's how.
Speaker 2:Which? That's how you have to think big. You have to put a big goal to so that this is my goal, this is the biggest goal you can ever have. Put it, but don't put some unrealistic stuff. Put something like you can actually have it, like if you have everything around you, you can actually reach this. Put it, put this goal and then for everything I'm doing right now, I'm putting it. So how can I reach that goal? For example, I have to make this. If my goal was to make, uh, business or revenues or profits from this, from the local market, then I will start getting fee from it right now. So, because that's my goal, but that's not my goal, my goal is to have it there. It's to have my wppr logo in the final premiere panel. It will be under, it will be in the tv under so you can see it all the time. Next to Qatar Airways amazing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is my goal, this is how it will be.
Speaker 1:And I think what you mentioned earlier this is very important is that, when you launch this first version, how important it is that people do give you their feedback, like you know, you know this isn't a perfectly finished product yet. Okay, and you're patient and you're willing to work on it and you, you want the feedback from people, right. You want them to tell you what you, what they think is the challenges with it, right?
Speaker 2:yes, well, that's something I have. Um, if it's, if it's my first company, we courts it will not be like this. I will be focusing so much to make a perfect product, bug free, issues free, to make sure it's complete and then go live with it. Yeah, and then it will fail big time because if you think or you work to make a perfect first lunch, then you lunch too late. You have to go live with your idea as fast as possible to get feedback. With ShortPoint, I wasted two years of time and money on doing this. I was focused so much on making a perfect first lunch and then, once we launch the first product right now, that first that everything we launched it's in the garbage All changed because of the feedback from the customers, from the community.
Speaker 1:But also with this, I think people like the vulnerability as well, they like feeling a part of something. And the way that you've included a lot of the paddle community in this, everyone feels a little bit invested in your success and in the success of the PPR. It's not about, it's not a company Right, it's something that's being done for the community. I mean obviously, yeah, great, in the future you can monetize it, you make money. Great, everyone's happy for you. But the way that you've kind of opened your mind as well to everybody to give you the ideas, give you the feedback, and the way that it will go for the future, I think that's brilliant. Well, that's.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm trying so hard to do. It's still very challenging to do this communication because the communication is very big part of it and I'm working so much in the technical part, so I still want to do a lot of stuff in communicating. I just want to finish. The first big roadblock for us it's to go live with the player database so I can start getting more feedback from everyone. And then when we launch the rating impact, I can't wait to launch it so that I can get more feedback. So that's what we are doing right now and it's a community project. At the end, I believe this project will succeed if players see the value from it and they like it, and if clubs see also the value, it will grow by itself.
Speaker 1:And how do you balance the rating of men and women?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. We don't. The system doesn't look at the gender, age or location. It looks at what is the match you're playing, okay, but there are some matches we uh, we don't enter the system for rating impact Student and the coach. It's just a match we record, but there is no rating impact for anyone.
Speaker 2:If you play a tournament with a partner that is higher than your level by two categories, we call this team unbalanced team. So we don't know what happened in the match. They might freeze your partner. I don't know, so we skip this match. Another match we skip is the mixed double. Even if you will tell me, like you brought Alejandra Salazar to play with you, it's a mixed double tournament. We record the match, but we don't do any rating impact. So, having that being said, it's easy for us to give rating to women and men. Easy, so it's on the same rating. Yes, okay. For example, you have players like Alia Tahir. Maybe you don't hear this name, but she grows so well in paddle she's a C-plus player. She's a C-plus in the C-plus category. Yeah, she's a very good player. Yeah, she can actually compete in a c plus tournaments even if there are men in it.
Speaker 1:So you are a c plus player, regardless of your if your category is uh but then if she meets in that tournament with a male partner, wouldn't that be considered mixed doubles? No, yes, it will be considered mixed doubles. It will not have anything.
Speaker 2:Impact right, that's the only thing it will be recorded. She rating impact Right, that's the only thing it will be recorded. She's allowed to play C+, but in women tournaments, if the women tournament is C tournament, she's not allowed to. She cannot play it Okay, because her level is C+. So I think, slowly, slowly, once we launch it and then you start seeing the female and male rating is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem we have today challenge is the difference between the level from Dubai and Abu Dhabi. So it's a bigger problem because padel started in Dubai more than before Abu Dhabi. So Abu Dhabi is growing in the padel, but right now in Abu Dhabi, the players who play who are in C-plus now in Abu Dhabi, the players who play who are in C plus level in Abu Dhabi, they are C level in Dubai. So the letters makes problems for us. So why did you go with letters and not numbers? We didn't go with that, but that's what the community is using yeah, we did the same thing here yes, so the community is using letters.
Speaker 2:We will use letters plus the number, so we have a number. Wppr is a number, is a scale from one to nine.
Speaker 1:So in uae, we reach 6.5, that's here.
Speaker 2:He's the top. I thought you're gonna say it was me. You are above this, so we try to put you in a site, you know, but he's above because of his results in the worldwide tournaments. So, and the number Trying to solve this by getting more results from Abu Dhabi organizers Paddlemania, PaddlePlus, UEPA sending us results from Abu Dhabi tournaments. Paddle Kingdom these are top clubs sending us results from Abu Dhabi tournaments. Paddle Kingdom these are top clubs sending us results from Abu Dhabi. It's something very helpful After we launch the system. This is a challenge. I hope we will fix it. We will reduce the gap between Dubai and Abu Dhabi because the letters make problems. I'm also including players in Jordan. Now we have rated the players in Jordan. So now we have rated the players in Jordan C plus C and they are C plus C in.
Speaker 2:UE so because I am trying also to make the same rating system works in different countries.
Speaker 1:I mean globalizing. That is very, very difficult, right, because the levels are so different because of the letter. But even, like you mentioned, you went to Spain, right, four years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's because of the self questionnaire they asked me. That's why the difference is the difference. If there is no selfie question here. If I went to Spain, my leverage b3 If it was based on, I go. If, for example, let's say, when I went to Spain there was a WPPR, so how should it work? I will go. It will tell me to play a tournament you have to have a WPPR rating. How can I get rated? You go play rating events or you play matches with players with rating. So I go play a match two, three and then I have a rating. It's clear. My rating is three or four because of the matches I played. Yeah, it makes sense. It doesn't have to be accurate, but at least I have an initial rating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it gets you on the ladder of initial stepping stone.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And then I go play a tournament and in the tournament my level will be adjusted even more.
Speaker 1:So I mean, let's say I'm a C-level player and I play a lot of tournaments. I feel like I'm progressing and I feel like I should be in the higher category. How does it change in WPPR?
Speaker 2:That's a very good question. So if you're playing the tournaments and you are now want to improve your rating, you want to see how you are growing, you want to play a higher level tournament? To go play a higher level tournament, don't go and find a higher level player. Find a player similar to your level maximum, above your category by one maximum, and then go to a play high level tournament and win. Every match matters, every score, every point matters and then when you beat a team stronger than you, your rating will go up. So there is a calculation for it. I will make sure it's clear to everyone. We will announce like, we will make it available to the public. But for example, c plus category, it's four, the number is is four. That's the middle number, and you will get rated players in c plus from 3.700 up to 4.300. So you see four is here and you get all of this range. So the maximum change in points in a match is 0.1.
Speaker 1:That's the maximum change in your rating is 0.1 so if you beat someone's way above you, you're just going to go by 0.1 yes, that's the maximum, and that's the maximum of level you can go down.
Speaker 2:Okay, so if you are playing an open C or a C plus C tournament and you are winning, you are winning, your level will go up. But you are going to a C tournament, it's your tournament, it's your level and you are winning. Your level will not go 0.1.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It will go up, but not 0.1.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I guess that's where it brings in the importance of that initial level, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, big time. Yeah, and then the organizer anyways, accepting the players in the tournament is not WPPR thing, it's an organizer decision. Yeah, organizer can organize whatever tournaments they want. The only thing they have to be transparent in the poster and in the flyer when they say this is a tournament, c-level tournament, any player above C will be disqualified. I cannot go to the tournament and I see there are C-plus players playing. This cannot happen. You can say C-plus players can play only with C-minus players. Okay, no problem.
Speaker 1:But it has to be clear in the poster in the tournament. Yeah, and that's only possible if you do have a rating where you can check the players, because then like as we said at the beginning, otherwise it's very much a subjective decision.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that's what we are trying to do. We will launch the WPPR system. You have all the players, all their level, and then organizers can organize whatever tournaments they want. They can organize a tournament. To say this is a tournament will not have a rating impact, only social play. This will have a rating impact.
Speaker 1:So, with all the experience that you've gathered over, obviously, these past years, months especially the first few months, you've been focused on WPPR if you could give some advice to clubs and organizers? How can they organize fair tournaments?
Speaker 2:So number one is to be, even without launching a player database, to be very clear in the poster. When they say like this is a C tournament or C+, they cannot allow players above the category to play this tournament. The more information you have about the acceptance criteria on the players, the better. Another thing remove the word. Don't use open C, open B, because right now the level difference between C minus, c, c plus is massive. Open C is just a massive category of players because Paladins grows so much now you have a lot, thousands of players in this. So open sea is a very not a good balanced. Not a good balanced.
Speaker 1:I mean you only end up with the stronger players. A couple of weaker players join, they get annihilated and they hate it.
Speaker 2:Another thing it's not fun all the time to make one category tournament like C plus only or C or C only. It's nice to have also tournaments that you mix two levels together. But to mix two levels together don't allow like, for example, c plus b minus don't allow two b players to play together, because they will have advantage over all. If you have a c plus b minus, make sure that the team should be mixed between these two. It will. You will have a lot of surprises in the tournament, but how can you do it without having a system? I understand that's what we. That's why I want to launch this system fast, because it will give the organizers the flexibility to do this.
Speaker 1:Because it's never. It's never going to be fair. There's always going to be stronger teams and weaker teams in every tournament, right, whatever you're trying to do.
Speaker 2:Alone, without a unified rating system, you cannot do these things it's difficult because you will have even players you don't know. You don't know who are these players. It's true, you often have people coming from abroad that's why they're having a rating system. It will make paddle and tournaments and events more fair and effortly organized by clubs and organizers, and reduce the couple.
Speaker 1:Remove the complaints from everyone yeah, yeah, I mean, I agree 100% with you that, like, this solution is gonna be excellent. I look forward to being launched. Hopefully, by the time we release this, it will be live and obviously I will link it down wherever I'm linking it, for people to click on it and see it, because we want to see it. Yes, and obviously, like these past five years, it's been amazing for Paddle in the GCC. Now we're seeing it start to spread out into the rest of the countries Jordan, for example. For you, it's also growing Lebanon, egypt, amazing players in Egypt. What do you think the next five years hold for Padel in this part of the world?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it will keep going. You will have more clubs open, more tournaments, maybe more players get into the game, but I believe a change must happen now to make it grow even more. And when we talk about growth, there are two things we look at. Are we looking at the number of players playing the tournaments or sorry, not the tournament the number of padel players? Or the number of courts or the level of paddle? So there are two, three things looking at in growth. So if we're looking at growth in paddly clubs and courts, this will. This is growing, whether it succeeded clubs will become more successful or not, but this will keep happening because there are more players playing.
Speaker 2:But what I can see, the problem is with the level of padel, the players. If it stays like this, if it stays like this without a change, growth in the skills of padel players in GCC is based on the individual performance only. It's based on what I put goals for myself, what I put program for myself, the efforts I put as alone, as an individual. There is nothing in the community that helps grow the skills of players. And the first thing I look at is tournaments. The more you have a more fair and balanced tournament, the better players can track their progress and to have a motivation to go and compete, because if I want to win a tournament I have to go and train.
Speaker 2:Another thing reduce the gap between countries by having global tournaments Like tournaments I can compete in many countries. Global tournaments like tournaments I can compete in many countries. Players can compete in wherever they are, they are living and they can see the results in the whole gcc countries. This can happen also if you have a global or a rating system, a platform to show the results of players everywhere, regardless of their location. So I truly believe that the competition part, having a calendar for the whole year for the big tournaments that will say players can look at there is a tournament in the end of the year, I want to win or I want to have good results in that tournament, so I will go practice Right now in WeCourts. We don't have a good result in that tournament, so I will go practice Right now when we coach. We don't have a calendar of tournaments. It used to have before when we had two big tours in UAE. You have a calendar there. You feel players are preparing for the upcoming challenger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true, you're getting points for each event.
Speaker 2:Yes, because it's a tournament. I want to go play because it will give me points. You have your EPA tournaments as well that I want to go and play to get the points. But the more tournaments like this way, the calendar will be filled with some of the big tournaments. It will help definitely give motivation to people to train and to train hard and to prepare for these tournaments. But if the tournament is not fair, people will not be motivated to train because what's the point? But once we make sure that the tournaments are fair and there are tournaments throughout the year, it will help players to train harder and work more.
Speaker 1:When do you think we'll get to this?
Speaker 2:point. So yeah, once we have this rating system. This is not about promoting the rating system I'm working on, Forget about it. It's just to have a place to have a rating.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, obviously we're talking about WPVR, but I agree this is a healthy progression.
Speaker 2:Yes, it has to be there Because once you have that, you will remove that doubt from players like I will not go this because I will be humiliated. It's not you remove this completely. The tournament is fair. It's clear. Where is it? And then we have big tours. There are already a club. They will announce a big tour in September. It's a very big tour for the whole year Amazing, yeah, this is good, and so we will see this coming back. And they will use the rating system to make sure that only the verified and rated players will play their categories. So this is good. Another thing to have also tournaments for the under 18. So in WCourts we see very low number of tournaments for under 18. And under 18, now they can fill up a tournament. They can fill tournaments easily. There are a lot of kids playing. So I think in WC orts in the players we will put a category called under 18 so we can show the organizers how many under 18 players are there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're actually hosting the UAPA under 18, I think in December.
Speaker 2:This is one and also we have another one for, I think, in November for UAPA under 18, I think in December. This is one and also we have another one for, I think, in November for UAPA.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to see that too, because I mean, obviously now the sport is maturing and we're seeing a lot more younger players participating and they're good Like. It's not like before, where everyone just can barely hit the ball. The level is competitive.
Speaker 2:It's very good and I can see the UEA national team player under 18. They play all the big tournaments. They are playing tournaments all the time. They are playing the tournaments and it's difficult tournaments but they are. You see them, they want to play, they want to grow, they want to improve. So to give them also a platform to have more tournaments for them is good, and I think I want to show the organizers that the tournaments will fill up the last UEPA tournament for under 18, it filled up with so many players I think 32. Really.
Speaker 1:Yes, Because, honestly, I had my doubts when we were announced as the hosts of the under 18s. I was like I'm not sure if this tournament is really going to fill.
Speaker 2:That's what I want to do. I want to make a category only to see the or to show the organizers how many players there. So once we launch the wppr, I will encourage all these young people and parents, I don't know to have their kids create their profile so that we can show that. A lot of people on wii courts they ask us when is the upcoming under 18 junior's tournaments happening? It's one of the top questions we get on wii courts WeCourts. They ask us when is the upcoming under-18 juniors tournament happening?
Speaker 1:It's one of the top questions we get on WeCourts, asking about the upcoming under-18. Do you have plans for a WeCourts tour? Wecourts tournaments?
Speaker 2:That's definitely something we will do with other organizers, because organizing tournaments is something so big. It's something I don't have experience with.
Speaker 1:You need the venue as well, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I prefer to work with Padel Art. We can discuss work with other organizers, so they will organize the tournament.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean even us as a host, to be honest, as a club, padel Art, most of the tournaments that happen here are run by external organizers. Because I mean, like you said, it's difficult to run a tournament. You need the database, you need the man tournament, you need the database, need the manpower, you need the time, like so we're happy. Obviously we give out the course to other organizers. It is literally a speciality to organize tournaments yes, it's.
Speaker 2:There are like people they do full-time this job. It's not easy at all and they have a problem of getting a problem with the verifying a players and disqualifying players. So for them to say, like we are using only WPPR as a rating, they will remove a massive headache.
Speaker 1:It's true, yeah.
Speaker 2:Massive headache. Also the matchmaking. This should help a lot. You can now say like, as a club, we will use WPPR to rate players, that's it. So you have a WhatsApp group called C-plus players, or WhatsApp group called c plus players, or whatsapp a group called b plus. Only b plus players on wppr can be in this group, so you will not have anything personal. If you remove someone from a group, put them in another.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I always look like the bad guy now, because obviously sometimes people are not the level that they were or they were assessed that's why you put your level c in paddle art.
Speaker 2:You use your level.
Speaker 1:Well, I do that so I can open matches to other levels and people can join it.
Speaker 2:I see, so it's good. But that's the thing Like when you have beginners. It's a journey in paddle. People think like B players or B plus or B players, they don't want to play with C players because they show off or they think that they have ego. It's not like that, it's a journey in padel. When you're a beginner, you just want to hit the ball, pass the net. That's your goal, and then you start improving. You start improving. You want to have longer rallies to enjoy, so you go to start doing the intermediate. In the intermediate. It's about longer rallies to enjoy. So you go to start doing the intermediate In the intermediate.
Speaker 2:It's about longer rallies to get into the shots in paddle, like using the lob, using the smash only when you need to do the smash, Using the bandeja, not attacking all the shots from the back. So this is still intermediate. But once you start playing paddle the level of you know all the skills in paddle. You know all the shots. You are not mastered any of them, but you know them all. So now you want to play them. So you go to the intermediate advanced player, intermediate level so you can practice these shots. And now, when you are mastered all of these shots, already. You know how to do the bandeja, the vibora, the rolo, you know how to defend back glass, like hundreds of skills. Now you want to play a match with the players who can do these things with you, so you can enjoy. So it's not about ego or I don't want to play low level. It's about you want to enjoy because you know these shots. So that's the journey, that's the difficulty in matchmaking it is.
Speaker 1:It's huge. The issue we find is everybody wants to play with people of their level and higher, which is fair enough. You're paying money to play. Not a lot of people want to play with players that are lower than them, but mathematically you can't have one well three players better than you. Every time you play right.
Speaker 2:There has to, yes, be some that's why, once you have the rating, the match will be balanced. If the average level in every team is balanced, it's like this team is this. The level difference in all is not the system we are doing. It can say that this match is balanced or not. It has some algorithm. It will tell you this match is balanced or not. So at least to.
Speaker 2:And also, something very challenging in padel, when people start playing, they can see that they can return all the ball. They have no idea what is bandega, what is vibora? They have no, they don't know what these shots. They just think like paddle, oh, I am able to play, I'm able to return the ball. So then you say like, wow, I am very good. And then you go play a beginner's tournament and then you win it and you say, okay, I'm done, show me where is abdullah, let me, let me play them. And then you think like now you should be moved to play with these players. And then you get to know like, oh my God, what are these shots? What's happening here? So that's the beauty of Fadel it's easy to start playing. It's so difficult to improve, it's incredibly difficult. You have to have the physical part, mental part, strategy, technique, everything.
Speaker 1:It is an endless journey.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's so difficult.
Speaker 1:The journey for paddle here is amazing. When do you think we'll see a GCC national qualify for the main draw of a Premier Paddle tournament? Well, I'm not talking about wild cards. I'm talking about actively qualify or be seeded high enough to participate in that event, can we?
Speaker 2:instead of saying GCC, say Arab World better. Yeah, sure, because we have a player called Yousef Hussam, true, okay, the most beautiful profile we have in WPPR is for this guy, yousef Hussam. I was surprised because we are looking also FIP tournaments that plays here. He has some crazy record right now. This guy started with playing local tournaments in WPPR. Once we launch it, go to Yusuf Hassan, go to the bottom of his profile. You will see some local tournaments go up FIP promotion, not reaching the quarter-finals, like losing in early stages, and then another FIP tournament also get lost in the quarter and, I think, quarter-finals. And in the last three FIP rise tournament, one won, won, so and also a lot of match, a lot of tournaments, like WPA tournament. He beat Nacho and his partner in the final. It's amazing. How can you beat Nacho Like? I mean? I understand it's one match. Of course, you cannot say Yusuf Hussam is better than Nacho.
Speaker 1:I mean Nacho is number 20 in the world.
Speaker 2:That's an amazing result, Because it's a team competition and he was playing with who who.
Speaker 1:Hussam was playing with who?
Speaker 2:Hussam was playing with Julian, A very strong partner, but at the end the game is a team sport. It's not one right. But to show this record, to show this record. This is a guy he has. If he continues like this, I can see that he can be on the world ranking soon, this player. And then, if I look at the GCC, let's look how Yusuf Hussam reached this level, so what things he has that we don't have or is not here. So this is what you look at. I see players like abdullah abdullah. He can reach this level. I can see this because young started and I just played him a couple of days ago and I will.
Speaker 1:I don't want to play him again I remember the first time I played against him it was like three years ago and I was oh, this is easy, I'm so good at this sport and I have not progressed in three years. And he's progressed at a level which is incredible. And now he's playing at an amazing level, which is great to see, like the work that they're actually putting into the game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's not just playing shots. There are four elements. You must grow in all of them the technique of how to do the shots Okay, no problem. The strategy where to put the ball, how to handle all the situations in the court. The mental part the mental part is something more important than everything in the match. And the physical, physical part how strong you are in the match. Physical, physical part how strong you are in the match. So you see, for some like has all the elements, has older. And also when you see how he go to the tournament or I want to play, serious face, serious attitude, focused. Abdullah Abdullah, same thing, faris al-janahe, these players, d Dane, dane, tanoub, this also here. This guy Dane, he's improving so well, so much, so fast. He's improving and growing in the sport. He has also the similarity in this charisma or this character of successful athlete. It has all of this. He doesn't have the best defense, for example, but he has the four. He's growing in the four elements.
Speaker 1:What would you say is your biggest weakness as a player?
Speaker 2:Me, I think my stamina and the mental part maybe A lot of stuff anyways, because I wish I started playing sports from a young age. For me, paddle when I started in 2019, it was my first sport activity in my life, so I didn't have a big, I was not raised in an athletic environment or something, and I'm 40 years old now, so you still look good. No, it's.
Speaker 1:the only thing I regret getting old is that I wish I started playing paddle early age, I mean you say that, but I started competing in sports when I was about seven years old in tennis, and I envy you because you're 40 years old and you still have a passion to compete, a passion for tournaments, a passion to win. I've lost it. You know, I had that when I was a kid but I can't find that passion, that hunger like. I mean you've played tournaments with me. I'm not a competitive person. I don't have that drive, that hunger anymore and I envy you to still have that. So it's not a bad thing that you kind of got competitive at a later age.
Speaker 2:Yes, but still like I cannot, no matter what, no matter what I will do in my life, I will never, ever reach a level of Dane or Abdullah or Faris. It's impossible, there is no way. I have to. I'm telling you this and back at my head I'm saying like oh, no, no, no, no. I have to accept that there is a limit and I cannot do this. And it's very difficult, by the way, especially in this game, because you want to win, to win, to win. But that should not be. You should relax a little bit, put a realistic expectation. Actually, my wife helped me to change this mindset because it was giving me a lot of depression. When I go and keep losing matches, keep losing tournaments, and then, even in a friendly match, I'm a player you don't want to play with me because I can lose it mentally. I will get frustrated, I will get angry. So't want to play with me because I can lose it mentally. I will get frustrated, I will get angry. So who want to play with me anymore?
Speaker 1:I think becoming a father has changed you a lot in that regard as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, this is a big thing and also changing the controlling my emotions big time, trying to stay calm, stay focused. It's very big thing. Right now I am so much calm than before, but still I broke two rockets. I regret this year, but it will never happen again. I promise everyone I'll never do this. But what I'm trying now to do, I'm trying to make an example for Amir, my little boy, so I Want him to achieve what I couldn't and I will not be able to achieve. I want to achieve it from with my son, whether he likes paddle or likes anything else. But he has to be raised in a sport environment so he can actually have a sport as a hobby, something he can play, compete from young age. It is a great thing to have as a kid, a sport and I hobby, something he can play, compete from a young age.
Speaker 1:It is a great thing to have, as a kid, a sport. It grounds you and obviously keeps you active. It allows you to meet people Away from the iPad. Exactly, I mean it's a huge issue. I mean I have a four-year-old daughter and I see, obviously, her generation of the level of connectivity to phones. Absolutely, I mean, technology is a huge part of our lives today. I mean, look, we're recording a podcast on a phone, et cetera. Wppr, it's tech-based. It's a huge part of the future. But we need to also make sure that our kids aren't just connected all the time, like, for example, smoking.
Speaker 2:I don't want my kid to smoke, but I cannot force my kid not to smoke. Right, he might do anything behind my back to smoke, but if I get him into sport from young age, he will not want to smoke because he will see that it's bad for his goals and bad for what he want to achieve. Ipad is bad for for him to look at all the time, but if he has a match today, he doesn't have time to look at the ipad. If he has a training at four, okay, let him check iPad for half an hour, but he will not be looked in iPad 24 hours or the whole day. So I'm trying to minimize the risks of him getting off the line by giving him a big motivation. So I think that's how it should be. I agree, and then he will decide. But for me to force him to do everything because I was doing everything my family want me not to do, I was doing everything.
Speaker 1:It's true, the more you try and push in one direction. As a kid you tend to push in the opposite direction. So you can encourage, you can inspire, you can do all these things. I'm glad you're not. I'm glad you're focusing on improving the world of paddle for everybody. Is there anything else that you want to go back on, that you want to discuss, that you want to talk more about?
Speaker 2:We covered a lot of stuff. We've been talking for like an hour and a half almost. Yeah, I was talking, I forgot to interview you.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I mean we talk as friends, right? I mean, this is the whole point of it.
Speaker 2:Actually I wanted to say like, because the biggest thing like for me to look for a hobby anyways is because of the success I made with ShortPoint, that I was only working on ShortPoint, on my company, and when I reached all my goals, everything I dreamed of in life, I reached it. That moment I got burned out big time. The whole war just collapsed in me. I entered into deep depression and anxiety disorder, panic attacks. I was handling I couldn't believe it, what was happening to me, that I reached it when I was at, when I reached all my goals.
Speaker 2:So you reached all your goals everything, all the shit happened and I will tell you like it reached, even like when I was, like in the laptop in the new year's eve, I was still working and I waiting for the time to reach midnight to see what are the numbers we reached by the end of the year. And I see, like we reached, we exceeded everything, everything and I had everything I dreamed of there in front of me everything. There is nothing else. There is nothing else. I wanted to do to be more, and then I celebrated for five seconds and then the thought came to my mind how can I keep growing now, next year? I'm so tired. What should I do? You understand? I feel like I need to continue going up, but I'm exhausted. How can I make it happen?
Speaker 2:And you'd already reached all the goals that you'd say, yes, but then I need to keep growing the company, I need to keep growing the records, I need to keep doing, but I'm so tired. Well, that's the thing I am. Yeah, I have to, but then I'm so tired at that time. That's when it hit me big time that where is the motivation anymore? I'm not. I don't want to open. I couldn't open the laptop, I couldn't focus on anything. I lost it, it just burned out. There is no motivation at all in life Zero. My motivation was sales records, finishing tasks, completing projects. That was my daily motivation, my daily dose of motivation.
Speaker 1:I think it's lonely as well, right.
Speaker 2:And I was also alone. I was not married and away from family, no motivation in life anymore, that's it. No hobby, no sports. There is no way for me to get out of that mood. There is no nature, there is nothing. I just got burned out big time and after suffering from it for a year, my mother actually told me, like what hobby you have? And they couldn't answer. I didn't know. What does it mean? Hobby? Yeah, and then that's.
Speaker 2:I started trying this stuff but there was nothing helped me to calm my mind. It was big time but big thing for me. But then when I started playing a paddle it helped me a little bit, slowly, slowly get off that mood and it helped me big time. I remember many times I was playing paddle. In the game I was playing, my mind was not in the game, my mind was in have a depression episode or some panic attacks before serving and I was having an Oscar on acting. That I'm okay and but literally I remember many times I'm delaying the serve because I just want to finish the panic attack in the court.
Speaker 1:Do you still have these panic attacks?
Speaker 2:No, it's. I had, like I call, like three months ago I was. I can actually say like three months ago. I'm done of this completely. I passed that journey. It took me like three years to get out of it, but I'm a better person, everything. It's an amazing journey that happens to me, but it's all finished, like all gone, it's from the past. I'm actually, but it's all finished, like all gone, it's from the past. I'm actually talking about it like as it's nothing.
Speaker 1:I mean it's interesting you bring this up because when I started really getting into paddle it was about three, four years ago I'd actually been clinically diagnosed with depression and anxiety. What Is that? I'd been clinically diagnosed with depression.
Speaker 1:Ah, you also, yeah clearly paddle is a sport for the depressed, and I was on medication and nothing gave me joy. I was going through my second divorce. I just had a baby, like it was ugly. I was in debt hundreds, hundreds of thousands of dirhams, and I was trying to remember, like something that brings me joy, what makes me happy, what made me happy as a child how can I find something to put a smile on my face for five seconds? And as a kid, that was tennis. So I thought to myself I need to do something that's going to bring me some of my childhood happiness. And I was trying to quit smoking as well.
Speaker 1:At the same time, there's a lot of things going on and I went to a golf course to hit balls at a driving range and, just to clear the frustration, I didn't even play golf, I was terrible at golf and I was hitting these balls and it was actually. Hakan was there at the same time as me and I hadn't seen him in about two years. I was like, oh, max, how are you? We're playing paddle tomorrow. Do you want to come with us? Do you want to come and play paddle? And we played a while back and, uh, I was like you know what? Why not? Maybe this is my chance to get back into racket sports and from that day forward I started playing paddle and it gave me some joy and that really helped me get out of this. I mean, obviously it's not, that didn't cure everything. There's many other things.
Speaker 2:No, it's not the first time, yeah it gave a drive to something.
Speaker 1:there was some enjoyment in my life again, and so I do owe that to paddle and to Hakan.
Speaker 2:I do For me at first, my wife no, but that's true. Like when I met her it filled a massive gap in my life. So I have someone to talk to and the hobby thing it was very good because when I have a match, when I wake up in the morning, especially in the morning was the most difficult times for me because once I opened my eyes it was like panic from the moment I opened my eyes about match today. Let me just play the match today like it was like helping me big time to get over these things and it helped. Yeah, I can say like it helped me a lot. It, as you said, it will not remove it, but it actually gives you a way to go and act, to act, to actually go and get out of the whole snowball effect, isn't it right?
Speaker 1:you get some ball rolling, literally of some form of enjoyment, and it helps you build on that with healthy habits and changing your mindset a little bit, the physical, the endorphins, all that kind of stuff, and it really does help you. So maybe there's someone listening who's suffering from these things, from the panic attacks and all this kind of thing. What would you say to them? How can they take a step in the right direction?
Speaker 2:this kind of. What would you say to them? How? How can they take a step in the right direction?
Speaker 1:well, that's a big topic. It's a big topic.
Speaker 2:I mean I doubt someone came to the max place paddle podcast to find for self-help, but you never know, there could be someone oh, yes, well, uh, number one which I, which I help people that when you get like, uh, let's say the first your panic attack or you experience this kind of whatever emotions you are feeling you never felt before, it will feel at that time that it's the end of the world. It's the most difficult experience human can go through. There's nothing more difficult than this, but it's the easiest to cure because you don't need to do anything. You just need to live it. You just need to accept more. What I did is I was fighting it. I was trying to fix the problem. I was trying to find what's wrong with me so I can eliminate this completely from my life. So you get into the loop. But the more I started accepting that my body just got burned out, these emotions it's normal, this panic is normal. It's part of me as a human. I should feel this panic, but my body, my nervous system is right now is sensitive. There's something wrong with it. So I just need to help myself heal by accepting that this is how I feel.
Speaker 2:Definitely, medication also helped me deal with this kind of extreme symptoms. I should have consulted also doctors from the beginning. I waited so long. I waited for two years suffering by myself before I asked someone for help, because in our culture, asking for someone for help in this situation it means I'm crazy, I will kill myself or I will kill others. So I don't want to have this shame and I'm so terrified that this kind of emotions I'm having or this experience, it means I will die. Like it's like this. So you were suppressing it and making it worse. Basically, yes, it was like fighting it internally, trying to overcome this by myself, without asking for any sort of help. Going to Google, which is the worst thing to do, it's true, it's the worst thing to do. If you go to Google put like the worst thing to do, it's true, it's the worst thing to do. If you go to Google put like I have a fever, the first thing you will get, you have AIDS tomorrow. You have six minutes to live.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's it, it's like, it's not like this. And imagine you are putting the symptoms you're feeling, you're putting like I'm having this feeling of fear or for no reason. The first result in google will tell you like you will kill yourself tomorrow. It's, it's like this, it's true. So I was living in this for like almost two years before I got the courage to at least educating myself what's happening here. So the more knowledge I'm having, the easier it become. The more professionals I'm talking to, the easier it become for me. And it's become from fighting or fighting to fix a problem to understanding myself more and what's happening and try to live it and accept it. The more I start accepting it, the the easier it becomes.
Speaker 2:Now, when I tell you like I overcome this, it doesn't mean like I don't have the same thoughts, I don't have sometimes the same fears happening. No, they come, they keep coming. I have the same fears. They keep coming because, let's say, today, me and you are here, someone opened a club with a gun and shoot us. We survived that day.
Speaker 2:Right now, tomorrow, if someone will open the door again, you will have the same fear, like you will have the same episode coming to you someone might come to hit you with the, with the gun. So it's normal, now, sitting in a club to someone open the door, for you to have this kind of feelings coming up again. It's normal. But when you tell someone who never had this experience he will say what are you talking about, right? So now I have this experience. I have it before, so I know these kind of thoughts that can get me fear, can get me stuff, so I might handle them different than others, but I accept them. This is how I live by them, so there's no problem. So it's become easier the more I accept. Even there is a term for it called radical acceptance. You accept radically these things. It will help your body heal, heal and you should have it like, expect, like it can come again.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so basically it's not gone, you're just handling it yes, yes, and it's come so easy that's great, that's amazing and it's amazing experience because I help many, many people in my company and my team, because I start talking more with the team about it and then I notice, like the more I talk about it, they know that I have these things. People come to me when they have this feeling and then I see a message in Slack or I don't know, I'm not able to work today or something I cannot tell you, but I feel something is wrong. So I tell the person can, can we talk? And then I see the person, I, I see how he talks, I know that something is wrong. And then they open up for me and I help by telling them these things, by telling them everything is okay, explaining what does this feeling you're going through, what does it mean?
Speaker 1:I mean just hearing from someone who's had it, you know, and you're not the only one in these situations.
Speaker 2:Often you feel alone, you feel like it's only yes, but it's actually more common than than we talk about and, as you say, there is a stigma around discussing these kind of issues of mental health and things in a lot of people, a lot of people I know and I'm so happy that every time I help, I talk to talk to people just by talking, hearing someone talking about it and showing them that it's normal, telling them that it's the most difficult thing they are experiencing, but it's the easiest because there is nothing to fix.
Speaker 2:Just acceptance is sometimes the way to go, and then not a problem to go to a doctor. What's the problem? Go to a doctor? I mean, there is no problem. Of course there's another thing like go do meditation, go to yoga. This is something completely different, this is a lifestyle. But for me, the self-help books I don't know this, something didn't help. I did everything I did. The magnetic field, meditation I did. I went to Bali, went crazy for for two months, doing everything you can think about. Maybe it was part of the journey, but it's not what you did. It's very simpler than this Magnetic field meditation.
Speaker 1:I'll have to give that one a try next time. Is there any closing notes that you would like to share with the people who've been listening to this for I think, about an hour and a half now at least?
Speaker 2:Anything. Well, that's a big, deep, deep topic. We finished.
Speaker 1:It's true. I mean, I think it's nice to you know go into a little bit of everything you talked about. I think it's very interesting Because obviously, like I said to you before we started recording the episode, it's about paddle but more importantly, it's about the people of Paddle yes, and the more I even this topic.
Speaker 1:When I talk about it, I hear like everyone is saying like me too, me too, me too. I don't know it's very big, but we can leave it at that for this time and I'm sure you'll be back. We'll do another episode together in the near future, once WPPR is up and running.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Now the biggest thing is to launch this system. There's the player search database and everyone will go see their profile, report issues, complain, the idea of it to receive complaints, but in a nice way, of course, like in a nice way Constructive feedback. Yeah, you can say bad words, but in your language, so I will not understand.
Speaker 1:Sami, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure having you with me. I look forward to obviously seeing WPPR go live and seeing it grow in the years to come and obviously having you back on the podcast very very soon and I can't wait to see also the other interviews we will make with other people. Hopefully they'll be as good as this one. You.