Player Profile:  Jonathan (Jon) Padilla

Jon Padilla has been playing pickleball for so long (8+ yrs) he’s known as an old-timer.  “I first saw the game when I was playing volleyball at the UCSF Bakar Rec Center while resting between sets”.  Aside from volleyball, where Jon played at Club Level for his alma mater Michigan State, he was also into tennis, playing competitively as a USTA 4.0 player.

As a “huge” tennis player, Jon found that this strange game played with a wiffle ball looked interesting. “Tennis had given me a powerful swing, so it was easy to beat most of the players on the court that first day…initially.  But the soft game, dinking, was another matter.”  When he heard that the Daly City Rec Center offered pickleball, he attended an open play event.  Freddy Nadisaray, who Jon calls one the local game’s original O.G., was one of his early mentors.  “He taught me how the game should be played, and to this day I’m still working on my soft game.”

Jon is not only a player, he’s also a pickleball entrepreneur committed to expanding the number of courts and players. His footprint on the game, like his tennis and volleyball swing, is also huge.

Three years ago, he convinced the management of the Bay Club to open twelve pickleball courts – six at their Burlingame location, and six in the South San Francisco. In return, he and his business partner, Tom Hartman, brought the Club over one hundred new members.

More recently, Jon helped co-found DinkSF, which offers Open Play and lessons at the Palace of Fine Arts.  Jon, a certified pickleball instructor for almost 3 yrs., also teaches classes there. “I particularly enjoy helping former tennis players advance their soft skills versus relying on banging the ball all the time.”

Jon has been an advisor to the Golden Gate Pickleball Club and is a former instructor at the Goldman Tennis facility.  He has helped kickstart youth programs for Pickleball locally, and he also organizes pickleball tours around the world. This October he’s leading fifteen players on a pickleball tour to Vietnam and Thailand.

Then there are his other side businesses. Twenty years ago, Jonathan launched www.tennismachinerentals.com, a nationwide niche marketplace that rents out ball-serving machines by the day or week. “It’s sort of like an Airbnb for tennis machines.”  Based on his success with tennis, he followed suit and launched www.pickleballmachinerentals.com earlier this year.  His newest venture, www.exono.me, is a technology platform designed to launch and manage vertical niche marketplaces.

Afternoons, though, are for playing pickleball with his 12-year-old son at Larsen Playground. The two of them hope that when other kids see them playing, they’ll want to join in too, and get an early start on learning the “soft game.”

- Judy Goddess