Ex-tennis player Enzo Chua gets a second lease of life with padel

SINGAPORE – Enzo Chua never expected to return to competitive sports after a lower back injury at 16 scuppered the former national junior tennis player’s dreams of turning professional.

But nine years later, the 25-year-old is back on court – this time as a padel player.

Said the tennis coach: “When I was younger I wanted to be a pro tennis player, so that dream was gone. After that I didn’t think I would become a professional player again, but now with padel, it’s like a second opportunity...

“The last one year has completely flipped my brain from what I thought I would be doing to what I actually do now. It was really unexpected.”

Even his foray into padel – a mix between tennis and squash which is often played on an enclosed doubles court – was serendipitous.

Towards the end of 2023, Chua tried playing padel for fun and immediately got hooked. While it had some similarities to tennis, the ability to play the ball off the walls of the court added an exhilarating dimension.

He said: “You have a lot of net play, smashing, volleying, but then you have the new challenge, for tennis players especially, to understand how to use the wall.”

He recalled how his “lungs were on fire” after two sets of a drill in one of the first few sessions, as he was not used to the intensity and short bursts of the game.

During a trip to Manila in November 2023 to get his padel set done, he took part in a competition where he was exposed to the level of some of the top players.

That reignited the competitive fire in Chua. When he returned, he started to train two hours a day as well as relook his diet and his gym workouts.

In February, he took part in his first Asia Pacific Padel Tour (APPT) event in the Philippines.

Since then, he has participated in another six tournaments and will also be competing with his partner Shane Marshall at the upcoming Singapore APPT event, which will be held from Oct 3 to 6 at The Cage Padel Tribe.

The US$13,000 (S$16,700) tournament will feature 58 players across the men’s, women’s and mixed categories for the pro division. There will also be an amateur competition for the three categories.

Six months into his APPT foray, Chua is ranked 24th in the Tour’s rankings and on Sept 27 he achieved his first quarter-final finish in the Jakarta event with partner Thomas Barateau.

But he is not resting on his laurels, as he aims to become one of the top players in Asia in the next two to three years.

Chua said: “I enjoy the travelling, meeting all kinds of other players, just pushing yourself to be better. Every time I go on the court, be it for match or training, I always want to be better than when I first stepped on the court.”

That determination is what keeps him going, even though his padel pursuit has not been short of challenges.

With the sport still considered niche in Singapore, his endeavour is mainly self-funded, as he tries to schedule as many tennis coaching sessions as possible in the mornings and evenings while training in between.

He trains for free at The Cage Padel Tribe, where Marshall is one of the directors. As the pair do not have a coach, their training is based on what they learn from TV and YouTube.

But he hopes that will change one day, with more players and support for the sport. He said: “One of our main goals is to get more local talent aware of the sport... and hopefully building a team, rather than just me as an individual.”

That is also one of the main reasons The Cage Padel Tribe wanted to bring the APPT tournament to Singapore.

Director Farah Kusairi said: “We wanted to promote this sport at the grassroots level... Promoting this APPT is to fast-track the process of getting visibility. We trust that this sport is going to get better. We want to create players on our own, that’s the ultimate goal for us.”