The Padel opened from Monday to a new stage with the Ooredoo Qatar Majorthe first tournament of Premier Padel, the circuit created by International Padel Federation (FIP) and the investment group Qatar Sports Investments (QSI)who presides Nasser Al Khelaifi, also president of PSG, and who has the support and backing of the players.
Doha hosts the first ‘major’ of the year. After weeks of negotiations, because the players have a valid contract with the World Pádel Tour, which claims exclusivity with them and informed them that it could ask them for 25 million euros to break it. But the new circuit of the FIP has started to walk in a big way, along the lines of the last World Cup, and with a sensation of relief and tranquility for players in the heat of the media and legal battle.
A first date of the calendar of ten published for 2022 that boasts an unprecedented media deployment. Personalized attention to the players, private transfers between the airport, accommodation and the club, five-star hotels, haute cuisine catering, television coverage of all the courts or retransmission in more than 120 countries are some of its assets.
“There is an exceptional treatment of the players. And not only those at the top. We have never seen the professionalism that we experience here and it must continue to grow,” says Pablo Limaformer number one, fifth seed in Doha and member of the Board of the Professional Padel Association (PPA).
A tournament, which from the organization, they assure, seeks to equate the paddle player with the elite athletes of other disciplines. And, for this, the financial endowment amounts to 525,000 euros, a record figure.
“For playing the final table we get 1,500 euros each. And with the expenses paid”, reveal Pedro Meléndez and Cristóbal García, classified from the previous draw, while they prepare at the Dusit hotel, in the west bay and with a five-star standard, to go to training. In 2021, the season they paid them between “about 5,000 and 8,000 euros”, they remember in comparison.
An Ooredoo Qatar Major that takes place at the Khalifa International sports complex, for which the former British and Real Madrid soccer player was seen david beckhamand that on Saturday will crown the first champions (there is no female competition, at least, in this first test) of this new international proposal between FIP, QSI and PPA.