Midlothian Tennis Club sold as Epic Padel plans court conversions

Epic Padel has bought Midlothian Tennis Club in Midlothian, Virginia, and plans to convert some of the club’s clay tennis courts into padel courts. The sale turns a familiar club at 3650 Brandermill Pkwy into a test case for a larger shift in racquet sports: whether existing tennis real estate can generate more value when it is retooled for a sport with stronger growth and denser court usage.

That bet is easier to understand when you look at the numbers around padel. In a September 24, 2025 funding release, Epic Padel said the sport had 30 million players in 130 countries and more than 63,000 courts worldwide, while a September 4, 2025 report from Misitrano Consulting said U.S. padel grew 51% year over year. USA Padel says the sport has surpassed one million players in the United States, and Padel Courts Finder’s 2026 data tracks 331-plus clubs, 1,246 individual courts, padel in 39 states and 29 clubs in the pipeline.

For club owners, that growth matters because padel does not just add another racquet option, it changes the economics of a site. Converting clay courts into padel courts can be faster and less capital-intensive than building a separate facility from scratch, and it can broaden the customer mix without changing the footprint of the property. In a market where every court has to justify itself, that is a cleaner revenue argument than waiting for tennis demand alone to carry the site.

Midlothian Tennis Club is not a blank slate. The club’s website lists Ken McKay as general manager, and says he has served in that role since 2015. It is a members-only, year-round tennis facility, which means the incoming ownership will have to balance a long-running tennis identity with the commercial appeal of padel. The key question is not whether padel fits, but how much of the club should shift before the original membership model starts to change.

Epic Padel is based in Arlington, Virginia, and describes itself as a padel tennis sports investment holding company with a goal of becoming the largest operator of padel clubs in North America. The company said in September 2025 that it had closed a $10 million oversubscribed seed round to launch its first clubs and invest across the padel ecosystem. Its LinkedIn company page lists 1,047 followers and a staff of 11 to 50 employees, a lean profile for a group making acquisition-led moves like Midlothian.

The deal is not just one club changing hands. It shows how padel is moving from a niche conversation to a real estate strategy, with investors looking at existing tennis clubs, court mix and membership demand as the fastest path to scale. At Midlothian, the first converted courts will show whether that strategy can reshape a traditional club without erasing the tennis base that built it.