Carmel Valley resident Fernando Garcia Sotelo recently opened a new sports and social club centered on padel and pickleball.
With business partner Francisco “Chisko” Angel, they completely transformed an old Harley-Davidson warehouse on Morena Boulevard in the Bay Ho neighborhood into the Kingdom of Padel, featuring six padel tennis courts, three pickleball courts, three golf simulators, a gym. and a restaurant and bar. The Kingdom will offer open play sessions, coaching and clinics.
A soft opening was scheduled on Oct. 13 with a grand opening set next month but the club’s founding 65 members have already been taking to the courts, paddles in hand.
“We have been busy, we are happy,” said Garcia Sotelo, who co-owns the Kingdom with Angel.
Padel tennis is the fastest-growing sport in Europe and is very popular in all of the Hispanic countries and Latin America. Played on an enclosed court, it’s a cross between racquetball or squash with tennis: “Padel tennis is more like tennis but it’s a lot easier than tennis, that’s what makes it so fun,” Garcia Sotelo said.
The game can be played by all ages and fitness levels: You can work up a sweat for fun or flex your competitive side in tournament play.
Garcia Sotelo has been playing padel since he was a teenager growing up in Mexico City. His parents had a home in Acapulco, the birthplace of padel in 1969, and he used to go to the beach town and play on the weekends. He came to the United States to earn his master’s degree from Columbia University, going on to work in real estate, being responsible for a large commercial real estate investment fund.
When he moved to San Diego, he continued playing padel at King of Padel in San Diego, where he shared the court with one of the owners and his future business partner Angel.
“I learned about this new padel place opening and I found a really nice community, making friends, playing almost every week and then I met Chisko,” Garcia Sotelo said.
“They decided to close that location because the ceiling wasn’t high enough and that was an issue, the players weren’t happy. You need a really high ceiling for the sport. Chisko found another place perfect for the club and he decided to buy out his other partners and invited me, we are the only two owners.”
Francisco “Chisko” Angel and Fernando Garcia Sotelo are the owners of the new Kingdom of Padel club in San Diego. (Courtesy Kingdom of Padel)
The makeover of the old Harley-Davidson warehouse was so transformative that Garcia Sotelo said former employees have stopped in to take pictures because they can’t believe what they did with the space.
In addition to two outdoor padel courts, they have four courts inside which is very unique for San Diego.
“All of the professional players really value playing indoors because that’s when the real padel shows up,” said Garcia Sotelo of the game played without any outside factors coming into play. “It’s something that we’re really proud of.”
Inside, the high-ceilinged Kingdom looks expansive with brightly colored murals and purple neon signs on the walls around the pickleball and padel courts. One of the courts is even tinted a very fun pink.
There is a gym, a locker room with showers and three top-of-the-line Trackman golf simulators where people can play up to 450 golf courses. A health-focused restaurant and bar serves up coffee, avocado toasts, smoothies and açaí bowls. After 4 p.m., it becomes more of a sports bar where people can enjoy a beer and watch games on TV after playing games with friends.
A fitness area will offer yoga and pilates classes and they plan to partner with a sports massage therapist to help work out sore muscles in a massage room. They even added a small playground area for kids.
Garcia Sotelo envisions friends and families meeting up for open play on weekend mornings, enjoying padel, pickleball or golf, getting in a workout and staying for brunch or hanging out.
Currently, players are coming from all over San Diego to the Kingdom of Padel, from Oceanside to Chula Vista and everywhere in between.
“I don’t think there’s another club that offers a nicer facility than we do. We really invested in the place, it’s a really beautiful place,” Garcia Sotelo said. “We’re the only ones that provide indoor courts and, most importantly, we focus 100% on the community, which is very important for the sport.”
“One of our priorities is no client or no member will lose a game because they didn’t find someone to play with,” he continued. “All the time our employees are jumping in to play a game or sometimes, I play. You always meet different people.”
The small Kingdom of Padel staff operates as a team, made up of certified coaches who are truly passionate about racket sports. A lot of their focus is on promoting padel, with clinics and lessons to introduce people to the game and grow the base of people who are playing and practicing the sport which is still so new to the U.S. The club is close to bringing an international professional padel player in as the Kingdom’s head coach to help players continue to improve and to develop young talents as there are hopes to make padel an Olympic sport by 2032.
“If Europe is any indication of what’s going to happen, I think padel is going to replace a lot of the racquet sports like pickleball in popularity for the amateur player,” Garcia Sotelo said.
To learn more visit kingdomofpadel.com