Private or public padel matches: build real stats with your friends

Public match: the court fills with players you do not know

A public match is visible in the match feed. Everyone signed in can see the time, venue, level and how many spots are open, and can claim a vacant spot themselves. That is the right choice when you are two or three players short, or when you want new opposition to see where your level really sits.

Public matches are also the fastest way into a new group. You play an hour, become a familiar name and get invited the next time somebody drops out. To see what is happening in your city, browse the open matches in the feed.

Private match: same features, only your group

A private match never appears in the feed. You create it, fill it with the people you invite, and nobody else sees it. That is the default for a weekly fixed slot, the crew from work or the Sunday morning family match.

The important part is that a private match is not a stripped down version. It has the same chat, the same attendance confirmation, the same score entry and the same statistics as a public match. You only decide who can see it. Plenty of groups run both: the fixed Tuesday slot private, and a public match on Friday when somebody is missing.

• Pick private when you already have four players, when you run an internal series, or when the slot belongs to a group that does not want outsiders.
• Pick public when spots are open, when you want even opposition from outside the group, or when a booked court would otherwise go to waste.

What happens once you actually log the score

Entering the result is the only effort required, and it takes twenty seconds in the changing room. Someone enters sets and points, the match is closed, and from there the numbers work for you. Here is what you get:

• Match history. Every played match is stored with date, venue, teams and score. No more arguing about who won last time.
• Wins, losses and win rate. Total matches plus the split between wins and losses, per player.
• A ranking that moves. Ranking is recalculated automatically after every finished match, so beating a stronger pair counts for more than beating a weaker one. The maths is covered in the guide to padel ranking.
• Attendance. Recent matches show up as dots on the profile, so it is visible who turns up and who cancels an hour before.
• Level according to others. After the match you rate your opponents manually on a 1 to 10 scale. The average becomes a level other people set, not a self assessment.
• Match analysis. When the match is closed, the player traits are compared against the result and a short analysis is written. It gets sharper with every match you record.

Why stats make a friend group more fun

An ordinary Tuesday match with no score fades from memory in three days. The same match with a logged result becomes part of a season. After ten matches you see patterns nobody could have guessed: one pairing that almost never loses together, somebody who wins far more often in morning slots, or the player who has called himself a beginner for two years sitting comfortably mid table.

It also produces tighter matches. With ranking visible you can build teams that stay close instead of finishing 6 to 1 every time, and that is what makes an evening worth leaving the house for. A good format for collecting many results quickly is an americano, where everyone plays with everyone and every match awards points.

Get your group started in fifteen minutes

1. Create an account and set your city and level.
2. Create your fixed slot as a private match and invite the group.
3. Have everyone confirm attendance so you spot a missing player early.
4. Fill in the score right after the match and rate your opponents' level.
5. Short one player next week? Make the match public instead of cancelling the court.

After four or five weeks you have a history worth looking at, and the motivation takes care of itself from there.

Padel groups: keep your friends' statistics in one place

Once you have played private matches for a couple of months the questions start coming: who actually has the most wins, which pair works best, and how many matches have we played this year? That is exactly what a padel group is for. A padel group is a set of players you gather under one name, for example Tuesday Crew or Work Padel, where all the statistics from your matches are shown together.

Here is how you create a group when you are signed in:

1. Go to Players in the menu and choose Padel groups.
2. Tap Create group and give it a name your crew recognises.
3. Select the players, usually the four to eight people you normally play with.
4. Save. The group appears as a card with its name and member count.
5. Expand the card to see the statistics, or tap Copy link to share it.

Need to change something later? Choose Edit in the expanded card. There you rename the group, add new players and remove the ones who stopped joining. The person who created the group owns it, so nobody else can change the line up.

What the group shows

The group view is built on the same results you already log after every match, but it puts them in a context made for a group of friends:

• Matches played, wins, losses and win rate per member.
• Ranking that moves up and down across the season.
• Head to head records between two players, so you know who leads against whom.
• Winning and losing streaks, the thing that makes someone play to keep a streak alive.
• Attendance, so you can see who tends to show up when it matters.
• Badges for things like most matches and best win rate.

Everything updates automatically. The moment someone enters the score from tonight's match the table changes, and whoever shared the group gets a notification that there are new numbers to look at.

Sharing the group

Every group has a share link you copy with one tap and paste into your group chat. The link opens a view that works without signing in, so even people without an account can follow the table, tap an avatar and read more about the players who chose to show their profile. Anyone who wants to start playing can create an account from the same page.

Padel groups are part of Premium, since that is where the deeper statistics live. The private matches, results and basic statistics work as usual without Premium. More short answers about groups can be found in our FAQ.

Frequently asked questions