Our Team
Meet our management team and professional coaching staff

Richard Hall Smith
MD - Padel United UK | Founder Go Padel Foundation CIC
Go Padel UK was founded by myself, Richard Hall Smith, and I am the current C.E.O. We have been building and operating padel clubs in the UK since 2015 making us the longest serving operator in the UK.
We currently have 4 venues in Essex, and more are under construction or in the pipeline as we speak!.
Each centre is at the heart of its community, we work with over 5 local schools, NHS and teaching sectors and many other areas. We pride ourselves on our social inclusion policies and aim to deliver one message at all our venues, padel is for everyone! With the experience, we have built over the last 5 years we have built up a base of over 1000 padel players in Essex, with the largest junior padel academy in the UK.
I am thrilled to merge with Padel United UK, delighted to be working with Rikard And Markus from Padel United International and can’t wait to continue transforming the Padel landscape in the UK.



Dan Troy
Regional Venue Manager
Dan was into a huge variety of sports! He has achieved well over 15 years of coaching, in all aspects of sport coaching and teaching and brings great experience to the club. He earned a degree in Sport and Exercise Science from the University of Essex in 2009 and became an outdoor sport instructor. Before University Dan worked on a 1 year apprenticeship in sport coaching in New Zealand.
Dan has also worked with behaviour and SEN (special educational needs) students, using sport to help them with their physical, mental and social health. Adapting his coaching to all ages and to all variety of people.
Dan has developed and honed his skills with Go Padel. He has been playing padel for 4 years and coaching for 2 years. He says “the club have allowed me to flourish as a coach, to gain confidence and to learn a new skill set through coaching.”



Gary Mallard
Head Of Marketing
Gary comes from a background of music and event production and promotion. From these roots he started a web services and graphic design business 15 years ago called ‘Brighton Beach Design’ specialising in the event industry. This rapidly expanded into other sectors including solar energy companies, media and publishing, estate agency, international financial services, scuba diving safaris, fine art and many other online stores for various individuals – to name but a few!
He met Rich just after the Maldon centre first launched and built the website and handled all the social media and online promotion for the club.
The rest is history and and from those small beginnings the team are about to launch many new and exciting padel projects all around the UK.
Padel development is now his full focus. He just built this website. Watch this space!



Jake Bewley
Coach
I want to be one of the biggest names in the Padel community, one of my goals is to reach the top 10 players in the UK.
Being part of the Padel United UK coaching team, I have gained a lot of experience over the time I have been a coach. I also want to focus on the business side of Padel, as this interests me and I see a career path in this.



Kai Woodgate
Coach
Hi, My name is Kai Woodgate and I am one of the coaches at Padel United UK. I started playing padel in 2019 in Maldon. I have always had a love for sports and played them throughout my life. While growing up I played football for around 10 years for local clubs, regularly went skiing and competed in cross-country running as well as watching and playing many other sports. As sport has always been my passion, I decided that I wanted to study it more in depth while in school and sixth-form college. I studied GCSE PE in secondary school and then went on to study a BTEC level 3 extended diploma in sport alongside an A-level in biology.



Improve your game!
We offer both 1 on 1 and matchplay coaching.
Everyone can benefit from sessions with our professional and friendly coaching team from absolute beginners to elite players.
We coach all ages from young kids to the vets – beginners and those new to padel are paticuarly welcome!