Humans of Padel
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Humans of Padel
Dominic Bechard shares Australia's epic journey at the Asia-Africa Padel World Cup Qualifiers
Join us for an insightful conversation with Dominic Bechard IG:@padelpicasso, Australia's premier padel player, as he unveils the inspiring journey of the Australian team at the Asia-Africa World Cup qualifiers in Kuwait. Dominic shares the highs and lows of competing as amateurs against seasoned teams, revealing the strategic planning and adaptability that propelled them to secure an impressive second place. Along the way, we explore Dominic's personal experiences in Dubai, the art of forming effective player pairings, and how compatibility can make or break a match. Discover the essential elements of their training sessions and the unique challenges faced in observing and planning for opponents.
We also tackle the hurdles in expanding the sport of padel in Australia, from the scarcity of courts to the complex web of government regulations and land ownership. This episode uncovers the potential role tennis clubs could play in making padel more accessible, alongside efforts to attract investment and boost awareness. Experience the luxury paddle scene in Kuwait through Dominic's eyes and compare it to the Australian landscape where playing requires more effort and planning. As we conclude, there's a nod to the vibrant padel scene in Dubai and a hopeful vision for the future growth of padel in Australia, supported by national sporting bodies and enthusiasts alike.
Welcome back to an episode of the Humans of Paddle podcast. In this short episode I'm joined by Dominic Bechard, the number one Australian paddle player. In this episode we discuss the Australian team's journey in the Asia-Africa World Cup qualifiers in Kuwait. I hope you enjoy the episode, dominic. Welcome to Dubai. Thanks so much. Are you enjoying your time here so far?
Speaker 2:So far it's good. Yeah, I like to come here, like stop over before going to, I don't know. It's pretty close to everything, isn't it like Spain? I'll probably stop on the way here before I go to Spain next year. Stop here before Kuwait, so it's a good place to be.
Speaker 1:Paddocks pretty hot here, so you always get good matches indeed, speaking of Kuwait, you were in the Australian team competing in the qualifiers for the world cup. Amazing performance by the Australian team, by the way. Yeah, it was pretty good. What were your expectations going?
Speaker 2:into that, maybe top eight, like our team's just a bunch of guys who, like we're amateurs, we play maybe once a week against people that are pretty new to the sport. You know there's it's not paddle is not massive in australia at all. So our expectations were like yeah, we got a bunch of players who are pretty good at tennis and they really want to win and they've got a good work ethic, but we're going against teams that have been doing this full-time for a couple of years now. So we had a small bit of hope that we could do some real damage, but it really was just going to be like okay, yeah, you get to represent your country again.
Speaker 1:Take that off and have a good time yeah, it's a great experience and you guys came second, which is an incredible feat for for the australian team. Yeah, you guys don't play much together before the event. You don't really know each other.
Speaker 2:You're all coming from different places in australia yeah, there's uh, four of us are in australia, but different states and, as you know, australia is massive. So, like the guy I usually play with, he's four hours away from me, so we don't get to play together, like only for tournaments. Another guy in Sydney we don't play together. And then four of the other guys were was in Europe America, so France, spain, the US and somewhere else. So no, we just came together and just like, all right, guys, let's try make it work so how did you guys figure out the pairings of the teams?
Speaker 1:so how did you decide who was playing with who and all that?
Speaker 2:yeah, it was a tough one, but so me and sam, we play most of the national tournaments in australia together, so that was like a pairing. That's kind of like been on the cards. Tim um, tim brown paddle he he's travelled a lot, he's played with almost all the players, so he was able to provide some insights of who he likes playing with Marius and Emmerich. They both live in Europe Spain and France. They've played a couple of tournaments together. Jake Benzel, who's an ex top 20 in the world first time I met him so I think we were the first team to arrive. I think we arrived on the 18th or 19th, so just straight into practice, sets um and then from there, you know, guys were providing insights to the coach to be like I like playing with him, I don't like playing with him. I think these guys will go together a bit of yin yang style and uh yeah we just went from there.
Speaker 1:I mean, ultimately, it's about how you connect on the court, isn't it right? I mean it may be on paper the perfect pairing, but it doesn't always work out that way. If you guys get along, it usually creates a better pairing than if you do have that perfect match on paper, and so your practices was purely match play, or did you work on some tactics like what was the training like?
Speaker 2:pretty much, um, a lot, of, a lot of sets like switching around. We'd have like one court for like a little bit of feeding for guys who want to work on some vibras or like some returns, but then yeah, just getting different pairs, different pairs, different pairs, and we're also using those practice sets as like established like a bit of a hierarchy. We're like, all right, these guys are the top dogs, so if it came to crunch time, if you win this practice set, you're most likely going to play the next day.
Speaker 1:And were you watching the other teams play? You had any real idea of your opponents before you went into the matches, or was it just like let's see how they play and then we make up a plan?
Speaker 2:I think we had a pretty good idea. We've seen some of their stuff online. I was in Dubai earlier this year playing a tournament, so I think there was two Kuwaiti teams there. Egypt wasn't there, but we were seeing Egypt two years ago and some stuff online, so you kind of have a pretty good understanding as to how some of the teams play. Bahrain was a new one, so we hadn't seen Bahrain, although I saw them in Dubai. Thailand, there's a bunch of new teams. But yeah, I think we had a pretty good idea. Going into every match, we had a. We had a pretty good game plan. We had a game, game A, game B, plan C.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think that worked out pretty good, yeah, I mean, for me, the biggest challenge, as I was coaching the Thai team, was pairings and the order of play. So what was the logic for you guys when you were planning the order of play? So do you? Were you trying to think what the other team was going to do? Did you decide to put your strongest team first, like was there any logic to that? Or you were just like fuck it?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's tough, right, because three rubbers if you win the first two, then the third rubber's dead. So you probably you want to play your top pair, one of the top top two spots. So where do you play them? That's another question. So we've got to figure that out. Me and Sam were probably the strongest pair for the tournament, so half the time we were playing number one and number two. We were trying to then see where they were going to put their team. So against Egypt, me and Sam were trying to play against Yusuf and his partner because we think their number two was a bit stronger. So we didn't want to like have our top team play their top team because we thought we had them on depth. So when you have it on depth, you try like get your top team to play their second best team and by the time our third team comes in they're better than that more work out for you guys.
Speaker 2:It did nice, and our guys. There's a guy called vuk who's crazy on our team. Under pressure he can rile anyone up. He can be very clutch, so most of the time we put him third, playing with a guy, jake benzel, who's very calm. It's a bit of yin and yang and together we thought for sure, these guys at number three are going to bring it home nine times out of ten.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you feel you can trust them in the clutch moments. That's good if you know you've got those guys that you can rely on. And let's talk about the big match the final. I thought you guys qualified because I genuinely believed it was the top two teams that went through believed it was the top two teams that went through, so I thought it was a bit of a dead match.
Speaker 1:But then you guys played the UA in the final and that was the game for the qualification yeah obviously you were up against an extremely, extremely strong lineup of the UA four players who are top 60 in the world. I think in premier paddle three of them. Sorry um, how was that? How did you plan for that one?
Speaker 2:yeah, that one, that one was tough. Um, yeah, their top two teams are probably going to beat any of our teams. So I think they could have played their top two teams first up and just, you know, said good game, see you later. They put their uae team second to give us a chance. I think, maybe for the crowd or maybe they felt sorry for us. So I think, no matter what we did, we wouldn't have a chance. Um, but I won the second match which made it one all, and then it went down to the final and again we had those guys who fight like dogs in the last game and it was a pretty close game, like on the scoreboard I think maybe it was 6-2, 6-2, but it was actually pretty close and some really high level paddles. So it was really unfortunate to just have one spot out of 15 teams. I think that's a bit crazy. And then for the UAE to bring in four Spanish people is very. That one hurt, that one hurt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that was a big debate, all the teams were talking about it and it was very last minute as well. No one knew this was happening until they showed up. So I mean let's see if that changes in the future. Until until they showed up, yeah, so I mean let's see if that changes in the future. I genuinely hope for the sport that it does change. Yeah, because I think personally, even for the uae national players, it's a shame for them because it takes away that opportunity and the hard work that they've put into the game yeah that's my personal opinion.
Speaker 2:Many may disagree yeah, I think I think they also like agreed. I spoke to a couple of the players and, you know, although they don't have a choice as to who the team is, they then have a choice to play. They're still they like their choices. Although we got four spanish players and it might, you know, be on it, be in that gray area, I'm still going to play for the team and represent the country.
Speaker 1:I respect their decision yeah, and what do you think's next for australian?
Speaker 2:paddle? Um, probably not much. I probably still playing once a week um trying to build up some courts. Um tribe paddle coming to australia we got, we got tribe here. Paddle and wellness um, so that's my, that's my um buddies. Um things will be like uh, paddle, hot tub, cold tub, maybe some masseuse cafe which will change the game in Australia. In Australia it's just like some mantle courts, a little bit of vibe, a couple of drinks. So I'll be like an investor in that one and also like trying to help grow that We'll be working together. So hopefully there's much more clubs coming up. Hopefully we get more support from Tennis Australia. So far hasn't really been the case, but it's hard. It's like chicken or egg. You need more courts more players.
Speaker 1:Is the Paddle Federation part of the Tennis Federation in Australia? Yeah, similar to the UK and a lot of European countries, which has its benefits but also has its drawbacks if they decide to hold off on the funding. Do you feel the sport is taking off though in Australia, or do you feel like it's still very, very?
Speaker 2:slow. I feel like 60% of the people I talk to and I say I play paddle, I end up explaining exactly what paddle is. So it's not that I feel. If it was maybe 30% of the time, I think that's a good data point to be like. All right now padua is like an actual thing, but it feels like compared to the last two years, it is like gaining momentum. You're just not really seeing many new players come through though, but, like, for the amount of courts that we have and the amount of players we have, we're pretty good, I think, compared to all the other countries who are like finishing in the top eight of the world cup championship, for the amount of players and courts we got, like we're probably here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you look at the UAE alone from this. If you go three kilometers radius from where we are right now, there's over 100 paddle courts. That's crazy. So and that's just Dubai. Right, dubai, there's over 250 paddle courts. There's a lot of people playing. Everybody knows the sport now, five years ago and I said, you know, I work in paddle. They thought it was like stand-up paddle, you know, like on the boat thing. Now everybody seems to know what paddle is here and hopefully you'll get to that point soon in Australia. What do you think is missing? Do you think it's more clubs, more investment, more popularity of the sport, famous people involved. What do you?
Speaker 2:reckon I think it's the structure of the, how the government operates. So they mostly own their land there rather than, I think, some countries. You know it's private land. You can buy the land and develop pretty quickly, but you've got to go through all this council approval so the government, they division it up into council. You've got to go to the council and be like, hey, look, we want to build some paddle courts. Yeah, they're like what's paddle? And then you try to explain paddle to them. So it's like, rather than them already knowing paddle and knowing like the numbers and investment and the return, you firstly got to explain what the sport is.
Speaker 2:It's really hard to do when there's when it's not very big in australia. You gotta like go show their market outside of australia. But then they're like well, that's outside of australia, you know. So it's a. It's a massive, long process and it's expensive as well, like I think a court costs between 80 to 100 000 australian dollars, which is like 50 000 us dollars just for one court. Why is it so expensive? Uh, very strict rules in australia. Architecture it's got to be glass, got to be this thick, steel's got to steel's got to be this strong um, there's uh sound um laws like it can't be within a neighbour's radius and it'd be above certain decimals. There's a lot of rules in Australia.
Speaker 1:Do you think tennis clubs will just put paddle courts there? Is that the easiest option?
Speaker 2:I think so far that's predominantly what's been done, so they're probably going to follow that model.
Speaker 1:I'd say but tennis is still pretty strong in Australia, right Like it's still a strong. A lot of people are playing. It's not dying like in the UK and a lot of other countries where less and less people are playing tennis. Yeah, I feel like your guys still have a lot of good tennis players and there's a lot of desire to keep playing tennis.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. Um, we have. We have lots of good players, like some of my old doubles partners from my tennis days. They're, I mean, alex diminer, like top 10 in the world, and max purcell, who's won like three doubles grand slams now. So like the tennis is really strong, probably will continue to be very strong tennis. Australia like owns that, and they're the one who owns paddle now. So like for them, paddle is just like a little blimp. The focus is predominantly on tennis and I don't know, with the grand slam still being held in Australia, I don't really see that changing too much in the near future. And what about pickleball? Don't worry about people.
Speaker 2:People is actually crazy in Australia really yeah, they're having, um, like I think this weekend there's a tournament where there's 150 000 prize money and, uh, they've booked out all the tennis courts of this one venue in the gold coast. I think. There's maybe 30 tennis courts for a whole week, totally booked out over a thousand entries. But this one tournament is pretty insane and so like you can make a living in australia as a full-time pickleball player. Um, you know some sponsors paying you up to like forty thousand dollars, but you can't do that in paddle. You're playing a paddle tournament and if you win the tournament you get six hundred dollars. You gotta move to pickleball. It will hurt, but I might have to.
Speaker 1:You've got to follow the money at some point, I know.
Speaker 2:But the thing with pickleball is you just get bored of it. It's just like what else is there to do? That's why I love paddle so much, because there's so many different things to think about, so many different tactics.
Speaker 1:There's a lot more dynamic and more nuanced to paddle that field than pickleball, but pickleball singles is very physical, though I think so If you've played it.
Speaker 2:It's exhausting. No, just doubles, but I see it and I don't think I'm cut out for that. I don't think my body would handle it, you've got to really want to do it.
Speaker 1:Is there anything you want to discuss, anything you want to touch on, anyone you want to shout out to or point you want to?
Speaker 2:cover before we let you the Aussies on my team. It was an unbelievable year this year, so I'll go through them. We got Tim, who's the captain, myself, sam Ross, vuk, marius Emmerich and Jake Benzel Probably the biggest upset in paddle history Australia making the finals and being the unofficial winners of the Asia-Pacific Paddle Region. It was just an enjoyable week at an amazing paddle luxury facility in Kuwait with the boys and with the manager, matt Burrell, as well a special mention to him. It was just so good to be away, not having to work and being full-time paddler, which is a great change because I only get to play once every two weeks. Like I have to drive an hour and a half to get to my closest club in Australia, so it's good to play, you need to move to.
Speaker 2:Dubai. Yeah, life's pretty good in Australia, but Paddle is pretty good in Dubai, so it's like you can't have everything. Hey, it's true, you can't have everything.
Speaker 1:Dominic, thank you for your time. We can find you on Instagram Paddle Picasso we'll be there we'll put the links and everything you have great content, keep it up. Thank you for your time today, thank you for chatting with me and safe travels right to australia. Thank you, max. Thank you.