Padel Balls

Side by side they are almost the same object: a rubber core, a felt cover, the same yellow. The difference is inside. A padel ball is pressurised to roughly 10 to 11 psi against 14 psi for a tennis ball, and the rules fix its size at 6.35 to 6.77cm in diameter and its weight at 56 to 59.4g. The bounce test is the one that matters: dropped from 2.54m onto a hard surface, a padel ball must rebound between 135 and 145cm. A tennis ball from the same height comes back at 135 to 147cm, which looks close on paper but plays very differently on a court with walls, because the extra pressure sends the tennis ball off the back glass fast enough to make rallies short and ugly.

That lower pressure is why you cannot just use the tin of tennis balls in the garage. They are legal in no competition, they bounce too high off the walls, they feel heavy on a short racket with no strings, and they teach you to hit harder than padel wants you to. Padel tennis balls, as some retailers still list them, means padel balls, not a cross-over product.

The felt is also thinner and tighter on most padel balls, which slows the ball slightly through the air and wears faster on an artificial grass court with sand in it. Expect the fluff to go first and the pressure second.

Almost every ball sold for matches is pressurised, which means the gas inside is what gives it the bounce, and that gas starts leaking through the rubber the moment you crack the tube. A sealed tube keeps the pressure in for months; an open tube is on a clock. That is why match balls come in sealed pressurised tubes of three and why a tube that has been open for a fortnight feels dead.

Pressureless balls get their bounce from a thicker, denser rubber core instead. They never go flat, they feel harder and heavier at first, and they actually get livelier as the felt wears. Clubs use them for ball machines and coaching baskets because a hundred of them stay consistent for months. For a match they feel wrong, and no competition allows them.

If you play once a week with the same three friends, buy pressurised tubes and open a fresh one every two or three sessions. If you coach, feed, or hit alone against a wall, a bag of pressureless balls is cheaper per hour by a long way.

Two to four sessions of about 90 minutes, if you want the ball to still play like a match ball. Players who are not fussy get six or more sessions out of a tube before the balls feel soft. The two things that end a ball are pressure loss, which is slow and steady from the moment the tube opens, and felt wear, which depends on the court.

On indoor courts with clean artificial grass a tube lasts longest. On outdoor courts dressed with silica sand the felt scrubs off in a session or two and the ball gets faster through the air and less grippy on the racket, even though the bounce is still fine. On a wet outdoor court the felt soaks up water, the ball gets heavy, and the pressure drop afterwards is quicker because the rubber has been stretched.

A simple test before you play: drop a ball from hip height onto the court. If it comes back to knee height or above it is still good. If it barely reaches the shin, open a new tube. Competitive players open a fresh tube for every match; social players rotate two tubes and bin the softer one.

Gas contracts when it is cold, so a padel ball at 5 degrees on a November morning has noticeably less bounce than the same ball at 20 degrees indoors. On a cold outdoor court the ball sits lower, dies off the back wall sooner, and smashes that would go out in summer stay in. That is why the faster, higher-bounce balls such as the Head Pro S exist: they were designed with cold and low-altitude courts in mind, where a standard ball plays slow.

Indoors the air is warmer and still, the court is dry and the felt stays clean, so a standard ball plays closer to its rated bounce and lasts longer. If your club is an indoor hall, a standard Pro ball is fine. If you play outdoors through a British winter, the S models are the better choice from October to March.

Altitude matters too, though not much in the UK. Air is thinner higher up, so balls fly faster; the same ball at sea level in Portsmouth plays slower than in a hall in the Peak District, but the difference is small next to temperature.

Head padel balls are the most common balls in British club padel, partly because Head sponsors a lot of venues and partly because they are the balls most coaches learned on. In 2024 Head replaced the Padel Pro and Pro S with the Padel Pro+ and the Pro S+. The Pro+ is the thinner-walled control ball for warm or indoor courts; the Pro S+ is the firmer, higher-bouncing version for cold and outdoor play, and the one most LTA-affiliated clubs stock at the desk.

Bullpadel balls, the Premium Pro in particular, are the choice of players who find Head balls lose pressure quickly. They play a touch slower out of the tube, keep their bounce for an extra session or two, and match the Bullpadel rackets a lot of UK players carry. Dunlop sells a premium pair, the Pro Padel and the Fort, plus the pressureless Eco ball for occasional play and the Team ball for coaching and clubs. Tecnifibre's Team dozen is a similar club-level pack. Wilson (its Premier Padel tour ball is built for faster courts, with the X3 club ball below it and the Premier Padel Speed for slower courts) and Babolat both make FIP-approved balls that play close to the Head Pro (Babolat sells the livelier Ace by the dozen for match play and the durable Court by the dozen for practice, with a Court case for clubs), and Adidas balls are common at venues the brand sponsors. Nox, the A1 Padel tour's ball supplier, sells its FIP-approved Nerbo by the dozen for players who already carry a Nox racket.

For a competition, use the ball the organiser names. For club play, use whatever your club sells, because consistency from one session to the next matters more than any difference between brands. For practice, buy whichever case is on offer; Head's Padel Team case of 24 tubes is the brand's volume ball for coaching baskets and club nights.

A single tube of three match balls is £6 to £8 for padel balls UK retailers sell, which is £2 to £2.70 a ball. A case of 24 tubes, 72 balls, is £120 to £140, which brings the price per tube down to £5.50 to £5.85 and the price per ball to under £2. If you play weekly, a case lasts six months to a year and saves you roughly £25 against buying tubes one at a time. If you organise a group, a case is the obvious buy and you can sell tubes on at cost.

Sealed tubes keep for a year or more if they are stored somewhere cool, so there is no risk in buying a case ahead. Do not store a case in a car boot or a conservatory; heat pushes gas through the rubber faster and the balls will be soft before you open them. The same goes for a tube in a kit bag that lives in the car between sessions, which is the usual reason a brand new tube plays dead.

We ship cases on a tracked parcel service in the same way as a racket, and the case counts towards free delivery on its own.

Once a tube is open, the balls lose pressure whether you play with them or not. A ball pressuriser, a screw-top canister you pump to around 29 psi (the HEAD X4 Pump gauge runs 22 to 34 psi), slows that loss by holding the air around the ball under pressure, so the gas inside has nowhere to go. No maker publishes a figure for how much longer the balls last; in practice an open tube stays lively for weeks rather than days, and it stops the week-old balls going soft between games. For a player who opens a tube a week it pays for itself in a couple of months.

Without a pressuriser, the best you can do is keep open balls in the original tube with the lid on, at room temperature and out of the sun. Freezing them, a trick that circulates online, does nothing useful: cold balls bounce less, and once they warm up the pressure is exactly where it was.

Keep worn balls for warm-ups and wall practice, and keep the fresh tube for the match. Once the practice pile runs to a few dozen, a ball pick up tube that scoops fifteen at a time saves a lot of bending, and Nox makes a red pickup tube with a carry strap. Two tubes in rotation is the simplest system most players settle on.

A padel ball ends its match life in one of two ways. The felt goes bald, which makes the ball lighter and faster through the air and gives the racket less to grip on, so slices and lobs lose their bite. Or the pressure goes, which makes the ball sit low and heavy and takes the pop out of every shot. Bald balls are still fine for practice; dead balls are not fine for anything except the dog.

Change for a match when the bounce test fails or when the felt is visibly shiny. Change for social play when the group starts complaining that the ball is slow, which on an outdoor British court in winter is about every other week. Keep an eye on the seam too: a ball that has split along the seam will bounce unpredictably and should go.

Beginners are better off on slightly softer balls than on brand new ones. A fresh Pro S off the tube is quick, and a new player gets more rallies and more time at the net with a ball that has had a session of use. Open the tube for the second session, not the first.

If you are starting out, buy the standard Head Pro+ or the Bullpadel Premium Pro rather than the S models. The slightly slower bounce gives you more time, longer rallies and a game that feels like padel rather than squash. Pair them with a beginner padel racket with a round shape and a soft core and the game gets easier still. Our beginner racket guide covers the racket side.

If you compete, use the ball your league or box uses and open a new tube for every match. Most UK leagues name the Head Pro S. Keep two spare tubes in your padel bag so you are never the pair who turns up with soft balls.

For juniors, the normal ball is fine from about age ten. Younger children do better with a lower-compression ball from a coaching set, which bounces lower still and gives them time to swing.

A padel club gets through thousands of balls a year and most end up in landfill, where the rubber takes decades to break down. Dead balls still have uses: dog toys, chair-leg protectors in community halls, and juggling practice are the obvious ones. Several UK recycling schemes now take tennis and padel balls, grind the rubber and reuse it in court surfacing and playground flooring, and some clubs run a collection bin by the desk. Ask yours. If it does not have one, a box in the car and a trip to a scheme drop-off every few months is a small effort for a few hundred balls kept out of the ground.

We are looking at a return-a-case scheme for 2027 where a used case of 72 balls comes back to us for recycling against a discount on the next one. If that would be useful to your club, tell us at the contact page.

Balls ship on a tracked service and arrive in 3 to 4 working days. Tubes travel in a padded mailer, cases in their own carton. Full details are on the delivery page.

Sealed tubes and unopened cases can come back within 30 days for a refund if you change your mind. Opened tubes cannot, for obvious reasons, but if a sealed tube arrives with no pressure, which happens once in a while with a damaged seal, photograph it and email us and we send a replacement. The returns page covers the rest.