Over the last couple of years, padel has quickly become a chic sport with a high-profile fan club — David Beckham, Serena Williams, Cristano Ronaldo, Derek Jeter and Jannick Sinner have all been spotted with a racket in their hands.
And the man who deserves much of the credit for its emergence and rapid expansion in New York and Miami is Wayne Boich, an investor with a hefty Rolodex.
Since launching his first members-only Reserve padel club at Miami’s Seaplane Base in 2022, Boich has expanded the clubs presence in Florida and opened locations in Manhattan — with more planned. He has attracted celebrities like Rande Gerber, Cindy Crawford, Kevin Love and comedian Andrew Schulz to his tournaments and secured sponsorships from Uber, Aston Martin and Richard Mille.
This past weekend, Boich, the Chairman and CEO of his family’s 60-year-old Boich Investment Group, with stakes in coal mines, real estate development and technology, hosted a padel invitational at his Bridgehampton home, sponsored by UBS. Robin Thicke, who happened to be in attendance, sang to guests as the event concluded.
Creating cachet is central to what Boich is doing.
“I wanted to start a company that wasn’t just a padel club company,” the 50-year-old told me. “Reserve is an entry point to reach a certain set of people.”
The name encompasses the clubs, branded merch, tournaments and a pro-am series.
Stepping out of the Midtown grind and into the Reserve club near Hudson Yards, where I met Boich, is like entering a Zen retreat — albeit with Reserve-branded gear everywhere: water bottles, sweaters, socks and, of course, padel rackets (a joint venture with Adidas).
Boich, who went to the University of Miami on a tennis scholarship, first played padel in France in 2013. By 2015, he was so addicted that he scrapped plans for a tennis court and instead built a padel version at his Miami home.
The game has been big in Argentina and Europe, particularly Spain, for decades but was initially slow to make inroads in the US.
Boich’s trial balloon for launching it as a brand was a February 2023 Miami event where he brought in top pros from Europe and filled the crowd with celebrities. It worked.
“People so easily get addicted to the game that I thought we could start up a company that would be focused on building a community — a lifestyle brand that originated off the backs of padel and everything it has to offer,” he said. “So with that, we started Reserve.”
He now runs annual series in Miami and Marbella, Spain with plans to expand to New York in 2026.
Padel courts are compact, as in pickleball, but also enclosed like with squash. The addictive appeal is its simplicity — you can easily pick it up without years of lessons.
“You feel very athletic very quickly,” Boich told me. “You can put amateurs in a position where they feel like pros quickly.
“It’s nice to say to yourself, ‘I’m pretty good at this game’… you go home thinking, ‘Wow, I’m really athletic.’”
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Boich’s timing is good: Padel is the fastest-growing racket sport, with chatter that it could be included in a future Olympics.
“When I started the business, there were 100 courts and no business associated with padel in the US,” Boich told me. ”Now you have 500 courts in the US and it’s growing very quickly. And the addressable market is huge … The growth is going to look like a hockey stick.”
Up next, he said: “We’re looking to host a few events and create a masters series. The clubs are profitable, the merch and apparel could be huge, and we’re building a strong membership community.”
But that may be just the beginning.
“If we’re attentive to what we’re trying to become as a brand, I think the assets will continue to evolve and become more interesting and more global,” Boich explained. “The core business is what we’re focusing on, but there will be more and more growth.”
Boich has been putting branded courts in developments and is in discussion about putting Reserve padel courts in new housing developments and even opening a Reserve residence. The brand is developing a new wellness space and planning to expand clubs to Europe.
“This is a lifestyle brand starting on the back of padel — you can feel the energy around what we’re doing and we’re doing.”
