Morphology of the elite paddle player comparison with other racket sports

Athletic performance is associated to an optimal morphology of the athlete. Paddle-tennis is a sport with a large number of followers needing more information about the players who practice it. The aim of this study was to describe the anthropometric somatotype of 48 high-level paddle-tennis players. ANOVA was applied to find differences between categories of the game and a T-Student test for those based on sex and athletic performance (winners and losers). The variables of weight, height and BMI are similar between players of different categories, except between males and females. Dominant somatotype of players was Meso-Endomorphic (3.6 - 6.9 - 1.9 and 4.1 - 5.4 - 3.0; in males and females, respectively). The somatotype dispersion distances show significant differences with other sports such as squash, badminton and tennis. The results provide important information to determine the ideal morphology of paddle-tennis players, so far unknown.