Where a football career beckons for Ids Hannema from Norg, he changes everything in the corona time. He decides to throw himself into padel. The relatively new sport is still on the rise in the Netherlands and the 23-year-old professional padeller is only too happy to be a pioneer in this.
Hannema drives onto the site of the Hertenkamp in Assen with his scooter. Home of Future Padel and Tennis tennis club. The association hires him to give padelles to members. “It is mainly people who want to give it a try, they are a kind of summer courses,” says Hannema. “Padel is a combination of many sports. You use the walls like squash. You play it with a softer tennis ball on a small tennis court. And the racket is a large ping-pong bed.”
The 23-year-old’s football career looked promising. After the youth academy of FC Groningen, he eventually ended up at Achilles. “And after a number of seasons there, I went to America. There I started to combine sports and studying. But then corona came and the competition was stopped. Then I decided to go back to the Netherlands.”
In the end Hannema completes the training in America, but the decision to focus on padel had already been made by then. “Life next to football just didn’t appeal to me. I just never clicked with the people I got to know,” he explains. “After training in America, I went straight to Malaga in Spain. There I really learned to play padel.”
And it is no coincidence that he ended up in Spain. The sport was conceived in Spain and they are very much ahead of the Netherlands. “In terms of coaches, there are not many in the Netherlands who can take me to a higher level. That is why I lived there for three months and trained every day. Now I am saving to go there again next year,” says Hannema.
And he saves that by teaching other people padel. “I would like to transfer the knowledge I gained in Spain to people here in the Netherlands.” And besides the lessons, he also trains himself every day. And that is bearing fruit. Recently Hanneman has been in the top 100 of the best padellers in the Netherlands. “By playing tournaments you get higher in the ranking. Now I have collected enough points to be in the top 100.”
Hannema’s ambitions are clear: “I want to be in the top 10 before the end of next year. Then you have a chance to be called up for the Dutch national team,” he explains. But it is clear that there is still work to be done at the Dutch National Team. “The men have not qualified for the upcoming World Cup. Countries such as Spain, Sweden and many South American countries are very much ahead.”