From this Thursday until Sunday, Barcelona is the nerve center of world padel. The Palau Sant Jordi hosts the Qatar Airways Premier Padel Finals, the last event of the year on the 20×10 sports circuit and which becomes the highlight of the course because it crowns the male and female master pairs. The 16 best players in the ranking come to this competition, making it the most exclusive championship of the season.
It is the fourth time that the Palau Sant Jordi hosts the Final Master – whose spirit is similar to the tennis Masters Cup. The organization expects a sold out in a venue that can accommodate 17,000 people. At the same time, as it is the year in which Premier Padel has taken over from the World Padel Tour, it is the first time in which it is the stage that puts the finishing touch to the first full year of the new circuit.
Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia hope to put “the icing on the cake” of a dream season: they have won 14 titles
This Thursday, starting at 2:00 p.m., the quarterfinals begin. The first two matches are played in both the women’s and men’s categories. Ari Sánchez and Paula Josemaría, the number one couple and favorite to win the crown, debut against Lucía Sainz and Patricia Llaguno. The tandem that leads the FIP classification lands in Barcelona with nine titles achieved this year.
The other three duels will feature Alejandra Salazar and Jéssica Castelló against Marta Ortega and Sofía Araújo; Delfi Brea and Verónica Virseda against Andrea Ustero and Alejandra Alonso; and Claudia Jensen-Tamara Icardo versus Gemma Triay-Claudia Fernández. These last two games will be played on Friday.
The great favorites of the men’s team, the Spanish Arturo Coello and the Argentine Agustín Tapia, will also debut on Thursday on the blue mat installed at the Palau Sant Jordi. Both have had a dream season: 45 consecutive games won since July, they have played 19 of the 20 finals of the course and have won 14 tournaments. Their crossing is not at all easy, since they face Pablo Cardona and Paquito Navarro – the latter was crowned master in 2023 along with Fede Chingotto -.
The other quarterfinal duel on Thursday will be played by Juan Lebron and Martín Di Nenno against Javier Garrido and Lucas Bergamini. On Friday it will be the turn of Franco Stupaczuk and Mike Yanguas, who will face Jorge Nieto and Jon Sanz. On the same day, the Chingotto-Ale Galán tandem will face Jerónimo González-Eduardo Alonso.
The winners of these matches will play the semifinals on Saturday, starting at 11:00 a.m. Between the women’s and men’s semifinals, there will be an exhibition by Fernando Belasteguín (45). He boss He will thus close his career of more than 30 years in paddle tennis, of which 16 he was number one.
Sunday’s day will start at 11:00 am and, for the first time, there will be duels for third and fourth place. Subsequently, it will be decided who the new male and female teachers are in the final stages.
A few hours after their debut in the tournament, Arturo Coello (22) and Agustín Tapia (25) attended The Vanguard. Both arrive with “the highest expectations,” but they believe that, if they did not win the Final Master, their season would not be stained. The one from Catamarca maintains that it is the season of their lives in their second year as a couple: “You stop to think what we have achieved and it is incredible. We hope they don’t wake us up from this dream.”
Coello, whose career in the final tournaments has not been good, hopes to remove the thorn in Barcelona: “Winning would be the icing on the cake.” The key to prolonging this historic streak is in “excitement”: “There are many couples who at the end of the year already know that they are not going to continue together and that shows in the sporting part. We have a good connection, we continue to enjoy together and we have our coaches, Ariel and Nacho, who have been fundamental because they have always come with us to reach 100%.”
On the Barcelona court they hope to demonstrate another element that they highlight about their success, that their project is long-term: “When there is a problem or we lose a game, we both think about ourselves, about what we can improve ourselves instead of focusing on ourselves. in what the partner does wrong. I think that right now you don’t see that much in paddle tennis. We are very self-critical and that makes the team work,” says the one from Mojados.
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