A One-Stop Shop: Centercourt Expanding Beyond Tennis and Becoming A Leader in Pickleball and Padel Spaces

A key factor of any successful business is meeting the needs of its customers. And being at the forefront of innovation to stand out among its competitors is of the utmost importance.

That’s no different for a tennis academy, especially as we have seen the rise of pickleball popularity in the last several years. Rather than pushing back against other racquet and paddle sports, it’s important for faculty to embrace them, and expand to welcome in more people.

That is just what Centercourt Club & Sports has done. The New Jersey-based academy has been a leader in tennis in the Northeast and has been the home of top-tier talent, and is now becoming a one-stop shop for tennis, pickleball and padel, rebranding as Centercourt Racquet Sports. In doing so, they’re becoming one of, if not the, only places in the Northeast that offers all three sports.

“It goes back to the COVID era, when pickleball really picked up, and it’s when we thought that we need to branch out,” said Conrad Singh, CEO of Centercourt Tennis. “We leaned into it, and created an indoor, air-conditioned facility that our members loved. It’s really taken off, and five years later our pickleball programming is really booming.”

The pickleball facility is the largest in the area, and Centercourt offers all types of programming, including open play, leagues, clinics, lessons, tournaments, social events, parties and more. They balance both the competitive aspect of pickleball, but also the social side of the sport, the component that has elevated its popularity.

“In the beginning we just had a couple members, and now, especially during the indoor season, we have massive groups that come in during the mornings, a different group will come in in the early afternoon, and those groups have only gotten bigger over the years,” said Ari Zuckerman, the Vice President of Centercourt Club & Sports. “We do offer leagues, and every couple of months we run these huge weekend-long tournaments, where we get about 200 people playing. They’re awesome, we have a fun atmosphere going on in the lobby with some food and entertainment, so even if you lose, you can go up to the lobby and have some fun.”

Zuckerman has helped usher in dynamic scheduling for Centercourt’s dedicated red ball facility, so any time those short courts aren’t being used for red ball programming, its available to pickleball players.

And while the clientele for pickleball remains primarily adults, the eventual goal is to create a junior program for pickleball, especially if local schools add pickleball offerings to their interscholastic sports.

“We’d love to get to a point where, similar to tennis, we have hundreds of young kids that come after school to play tennis, we’d love to be able to do that for pickleball as well,” added Singh. “That’s one of the things we have in the process, and we want to expand it to have more younger people playing. “

And Centercourt is leading the charge in terms of bringing padel more into the mainstream. Back in 2023, the higher-ups at Centercourt, led by Singh and Centercourt Club & Sports COO/CFO Matthew Rizzuto, discussed the idea of bringing padel into the fold. One of their top tennis pros, Alvaro Quintana, is a native of Spain where the sport is extremely popular.

“He knew a lot about padel, he put together a background of the sport, why we should do it, how it’s played; everything,” recalls Singh. “We continued to work on the idea, and in May 2024, we opened up the first padel club in New Jersey. There are a couple others in the Northeast, like Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Connecticut, but we wanted to be the first to market here in New Jersey, and we were.”

Quintana has been at the forefront of padel becoming a sought after sport at Centercourt’s Morristown location. The social component of padel has helped elevate its popularity among the club’s clientele, enjoying themed events and special nights.

“It’s a very easy sport to pick up. It’s a mix between tennis and squash, and even if you don’t have any racquet or paddle skills when you start, you can start competing on your first day and have fun,” said Quintana. “We’re building a great community here and people love to hang out, have some food and drinks. We have a lot of members here who have found new friends and embraced the padel community we’ve created.”

Centercourt has seen a growth in padel as people transition from platform tennis, with the sport’s similarities lending itself to that. There are a number of country clubs in the area that feature platform tennis, and Centercourt Club & Sports CEO and Managing Partner Clay Bibbee, a seasoned platform tennis player, has brought many people from that world into the padel one.

“What we’re finding is that a lot of players from those clubs, as soon as it starts raining, they want to come straight to padel and utilize our indoor facilities,” Singh said. “So we have seen that tennis, platform tennis, pickleball, etc. have all fed into each other, and people embrace that faster-paced fun sport. Padel is a workout, it really challenges your fitness. I played a match the other day, and I was moving like crazy. You can play pickleball for an hour and not feel like you got much of a workout, but you play a 30-minute padel match and you are sweating.”

Much like corporate leagues that exist for tennis in New York City, Centercourt will soon be introducing a corporate league for padel.

“In Spain, that system is working pretty well, and those leagues where players from different companies compete against each other are huge,” said Quintana. “We want to bring that model here, and start implementing that as soon as we can.”

Centercourt has taken the successful model of its tennis programming to reach into the pickleball and padel worlds, and is applying what has made it thrive in tennis to those sports. Being innovative has always been a priority for Bibbee, and so by rebranding as Centercourt Racquet Sports, it is offering all three sports under one umbrella. They also created a new app, Play By Point, where everything is available in one place.

“Let’s say we have a member at our Chatham location who wants to try a new sport, they can go into the app and see what padel options are available at our Morristown location which is a 10-minute drive down the road,” said Singh. “A big challenge previously was sometimes on a website you can miss offerings, so you may not even realize that pickleball and padel programming was available to you. We’ve done a lot of research to tap into what works, and spent a lot of time educating ourselves, and putting the right people in the right places to be as diverse as we can.”