Padel Clube

Padel Clube began, in its founders' own telling, with a month away from the weather. "In the middle of the pandemic, with both work and schools in remote mode, we decided as a family to spend the month of January 2021 in Portugal, leaving behind a cold Chicago winter" — where two coaches introduced them to padel, and the family came home with a project. Their own comparison is the most Chicago sentence in this whole list: "Padel is very similar to Platform Tennis, a racquet sport played in Chicago." A city that already plays paddle outdoors in February was always going to take to this, and Padel Clube's stated mission is to develop the sport in the Midwest.

The club is at 939 Tower Rd in Mundelein, in Lake County about 35 miles north-west of the Loop — the furthest of Chicago's five padel venues from the city and the largest of them. Its price list is also the plainest in the metro: $100 for an hour, $150 for 90 minutes, $200 for two hours. That is exactly $100 an hour at every length, with no peak rate, no weekend surcharge and no per-player component. Alongside it, and unusually, is a separate product for an outdoor court at the same $100 an hour.

Flat pricing has a consequence worth spelling out for anyone organizing: your cost per player is fixed by how full the courts are, and by nothing else. Four players on one court for 90 minutes is $150, or $37.50 each. Twenty-eight players across all seven courts is $1,050 — still $37.50 each. Book two courts for eight people or seven for twenty-eight and the arithmetic is identical. In a city where Alma charges by the head and Club Pickle by who the heads belong to, this is the one club where the price does not have an opinion about your group.

The court count has to come with its provenance, because the club does not publish one. Its own website says nothing about how many courts it has. Its submission to the international federation — data the club supplied itself, for two sanctioned events it hosted in 2025 — lists six indoor courts, one outdoor and two practice courts, under owner Rudi Kalil. The US federation's listing says seven. And its own booking page sells "Outdoor Court Reservations", which is first-hand confirmation that at least one outdoor court exists. This page is built on seven playable courts, six in and one out, and the session numbers below follow from that. If you are planning something that needs all seven, confirm on the phone.

That outdoor court raises a question the club leaves unanswered: Lake County is a genuine winter, and the outdoor reservation is listed year-round at the indoor price with no seasonal note attached. Nothing on the site says it closes in November, and nothing says it does not. Ask before you book an outdoor slot between the clocks changing and spring.

The hours are the best in the metro and stated in one line: "Monday to Sunday from 7am to 11pm". Sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, with no shorter weekend — which matters more than it sounds, because three of the five clubs here publish no hours at all and the fourth closes at 4pm on a Saturday. A 9pm start on a Tuesday is a real option here.

The club is busy rather than dormant. It runs a league whose divisions run from Winter 2023 through Summer 2026, with named captains and rated rosters, and it hosted two federation-sanctioned events in 2025. Programming on its own booking page covers clinics at three levels at $45, beginner clinics at $45, coached matches and open play nights at $50, men's and ladies' nights, a two-and-a-half-hour round robin at $60, private lessons at $100 for one or two players, group lessons at $50 a player, and training and recovery at $80. Memberships run $150, $250 and $350, with a personalised tier at $500. Its pro shop sells rackets and shoes online.

One inconsistency to know about before you pay: the club's shop page still lists a "Court rental $75" product marked down to $37.50, which does not match the $100-an-hour ladder on its bookings page. The bookings page is the live service list and the one this page quotes, but if the shop item is what you are looking at, confirm what it covers.

Seven courts seat twenty-eight players in a round, and thirty-seven is the ceiling worth planning, with nine resting each round. That is the biggest single session available in Chicago padel.

A 90-minute booking is about 80 minutes of play, or six rounds to 32 points. A twenty-eight-player Americano wants twenty-seven rounds, so at that size run a Mexicano or a King of the Court and let the format handle the numbers.

The flat rate means group size does not change the cost per head: $37.50 a player for 90 minutes on full courts, whether you book one court or all seven. Book the courts your group fills and nothing else.

Twenty-eight players is a lot to gather. The ladder below shows what fewer courts do to the group size, and two or three courts here costs exactly what two or three courts cost anywhere else in the metro.

Ask which of the seven you are getting if the weather matters — one of them is outdoor, at the same price, with no seasonal note published.