Novak Djokovic proposes Tri-Racket Tournament combining tennis, padel and pickleball
Last Edited
Apr 01 2025
Category
News
Tennis star Novak Djokovic was asked about his thoughts on the rise of pickleball and padel last week as he prepared to play in the Miami Open.
Overall he had good things to say about both and notably offered a prediction that racket clubs that combine all three sports -- tennis, pickleball and padel -- will be popular going forward, compared to clubs that specialize in just one or two of those sports.
"I think that the future of the clubs is definitely a hybrid between all these sports," he said.
But what really caught our attention was a suggestion he made toward the end of his press conference: "It could be fun to do, like, a little racquet sport, mixed racquet sport competition, you know. We can all try different sports and see how we do in different racquet sports."
Call it the Tri-Racket Tournament, not to be confused with the Tri-Wizard Tournament from Harry Potter.
It leads us to wonder: Who from the pickleball world would be the most competitive in such an event?
We know Jack Sock and Genie Bouchard can hold their own in pickleball and tennis, but how's their padel game?
And we've seen evidence of Federico Staksrud, Pablo Tellez, Ben Johns and others working on their padel game outside of pickleball, but can they hang on the tennis court with the pros?
We even saw Anna Leigh Waters holding a tennis racket last week in an Instagram post -- no word on how she fared as of this writing.
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