WIMBLEDON'S OVER, NOW WHAT?
Published: 15/07/2026 | By: Alex Courbat
Wimbledon 2026 may be over, but the racket sports boom is just getting started. Whether you're sticking with tennis or trying padel, pickleball, squash, badminton or table tennis for the first time, here are the best racket sports to keep the momentum going.
The covers have gone back on Centre Court, the strawberries have been packed away, and the queue that wrapped around the All England Club for a fortnight has finally dispersed. It was tennis at its theatrical best, and now it's gone quiet again.
That quiet is the problem. Every summer, Wimbledon does something remarkable. It takes a sport that can feel niche and exclusive for fifty weeks of the year and turns it, for a fortnight, into the only thing anyone is talking about. Rackets sold out at local sports shops, kids badgering parents for a trip to the park courts, group chats full of clips from the Muchova-Gauff semi-final. And then, like clockwork, the interest evaporates the moment the trophies are lifted.
It doesn't have to be that way this year, because tennis was never really the whole story. It was just the loudest entry point into something much bigger. Racket sports as a category have quietly become one of the fastest growing corners of everyday fitness in this country, and Wimbledon fortnight is arguably the best possible moment to notice that, because the appetite is already there. The only thing missing is somewhere to point it, and that includes staying right where the whole thing started.
Tennis: The Easiest Habit To Keep
The most obvious answer to what comes next is also the simplest one: tennis. Nothing stops anyone picking up a tennis racket the week after Wimbledon rather than waiting for it to roll round again next June. Park courts across the country sit underused for most of the year despite costing next to nothing to book, and most towns have a local club with beginner sessions built specifically for the post Wimbledon rush of interest.
The skills on show at SW19, the footwork, the serve, the ability to read an opponent’s shot before it lands, are exactly the same skills on offer at a beginner clinic on a Tuesday evening. Wimbledon is the shop window. The sport itself never actually goes anywhere, and for anyone who watched this year’s finals and felt something, staying on a tennis court is still the most direct route back to that feeling.
Padel: The Social Gateway Drug
Padel is the obvious next step for anyone who watched Sinner and Zverev trade haymakers and thought they fancied a bit of that themselves, minus the years of technique required to strike a tennis ball properly. It borrows the scoring and the rallying instinct of tennis but wraps it in walls, a smaller court and a solid paddle that forgives mishits in a way a tennis racket never will.
It is social by design, almost always played in doubles, and it rewards positioning and touch over raw power, which makes it a far gentler learning curve for anyone inspired by what they've just watched but not exactly about to serve at 130mph themselves. Courts are popping up in cities across the country faster than almost anyone can build them, which tells its own story about where this sport is headed.
Pickleball: The Fastest Sport To Actually Learn
Pickleball occupies similar territory to padel but leans even further into accessibility. A smaller court again, a perforated plastic ball, paddles rather than rackets, and a scoring system that keeps points ticking over quickly enough that a casual afternoon session never outstays its welcome.
It has exploded in America over the past few years and is now doing the same here, helped along by the fact that almost anyone, of almost any age, can pick it up within a single session and hold a rally. For anyone wondering where to redirect all that new enthusiasm without committing to years of coaching, it is close to the perfect landing spot.
Squash And Badminton: For Those Who Want The Intensity Back
For anyone who wants something closer to the speed and intensity of what they've just watched at SW19, squash and badminton remain two of the most underrated racket sports going. Squash in particular rewards the same footwork, anticipation and match fitness that separates the elite tennis players from the rest, just condensed into a smaller box and an even faster ball.
Badminton, for its part, is deceptively brutal, the shuttlecock's stop start nature demanding a different kind of explosive movement that most people underestimate until they've tried to cover a court themselves. Both sports have strong grassroots infrastructure in the UK already, plenty of local leisure centres with courts sitting underused, which makes them an easy add for anyone whose interest has been piqued but who isn't sure where their nearest tennis club is.
Table Tennis: The Quietly Perfect Gateway
And then there's table tennis, perhaps the most accessible entry point of the lot. Cheap, available almost everywhere from pubs to community centres to the garage at home, and built around exactly the same hand eye coordination and quick decision making that made this year's Wimbledon finals such a spectacle. It asks for a fraction of the space, time and cost of any of the above, and it is very hard to find someone who doesn't enjoy it once a bat is actually in their hand.
Wimbledon Is The Shop Window, Not The Whole Story
SW19 will always be the moment racket sports get their annual spotlight. What happens next, whether that's staying loyal to tennis, booking a padel court, trying a pickleball taster session, joining a squash ladder or dusting off a battered table tennis table in the garage, is where the real opportunity sits. Wimbledon's over. The rackets don't need to go back in the cupboard just yet.
