Who We Are?

Ballmachine specialists

As engineer and tennis trainer and 15 years experience with ball machines we can say, without a doubt, that we are ballmachine specialists. We have passion for all sports and technical tools to make people better in their sport. 

While many sellers on the internet don’t even know what they sell, we are passioned what we sell and we know everything about the machines and how to maintain and repair these. Also the selection of high quality machines is an important job of us. We don’t sell low quality products. Our ball machines are high quality and when there is a problem you can straight contact us and we often can solve by phone or whatsapp. Your machine is in good hands with us.

Making a Padel machine

A Padel machine is not a Tennis ball machine with 1 or 2 Padel features!

While all ball machines are made for tennis, Padel is becoming extremely popular but nobody could make a Padel machine yet. This was for me the reason to do it myself. I found that a tennis machine is very simple compared to a Padel machine because the speed, height, frequency and position should be much more accurate to not hit the Padel walls. A lot of measuring and testing is needed to make a perfect ball machine for Padel. Therefor the maker of a real Padel machine should have passion for the sport and the technics. And we have!

We made this PadelShooter 1 machine with an upgrade of the software from the Racketclub Powershot 3 tennis ballmachine. This machine is our most reliable and best performing tennis ballmachine. This means that if you buy the Powershot 3 machine, it is not yet the PadelShooter 1! It needs some small change that we will do when you buy the PadelShooter 1. Even though the Powershot 3 tennis machine is a very good machine, it still has a few limitations for Padel that we will solve in the next version(s) of the PadelShooter machine. Also, when you see this machine “on the internet”, it is a different machine because it is not built for Padel. The PadelShooter 1 is controlled by a Bluetooth app, which is only available for Android phones (at the moment). When the machine is getting more popular, we will produce the app for iPhone as well.

Why is a Padel machine so difficult?

There are several reasons why it is so difficult to make a Padel ballmachine.

  • Fast movement between high and low balls
  • Change of speed of 2 consecutive balls
  • The exact measuring of the right position and speed
  • The use of slice effect for the balls against the walls
  • The much faster frequency of the balls
  • The low ball should not go into the net, this is critical

For tennis, you set the ball at a desired speed and then you let the machine move left right or set some spin in the ball. The balls stays at the same height and there are hardly machines that could shoot a low ball mixed with a high ball in a training. This is technically difficult because the speed of the high ball can’t be the same as the speed of the low ball. Also the frequency of the consecutive balls in tennis is quite slow compared to Padel.

For Padel the high and low balls mix very often and is necessary that a good Padel machine should do this as well. If the high ball should shoot with the same speed as the low ball, it should go over the back wall. The right position, not go into the net, fast frequency and fast change between high and low balls with change of speeds, makes a Padel machine special and difficult to produce.

Who we are

Arnold van Houten

Arnold

Arnold is an engineer Information Technology with passion for tennis and later Padel. During his career as engineer, he also became tennis trainer and sports massager, mainly from his interest in tennis. In 2007 he was the founder of "De Racketclub" to sell tennis products but soon it became clear that sports machines were the products which made him special compared to other companies in the market. He has now lots of experience with sports machines so he could advise customers and maintain these products the best. Besides the technical part of the company, he manages the company and selects the products for sale. He produces the manuals and video's of the products and also designs new products, all for making better products. Because Arnold is THE specialist in sports machines (especially ball machines) and you can contact him directly (whatsapp/phone/email), your product is in good hands.

Xiangyang

Xiangyang was born in China and has lots of experiences with sales and purchase of products in China. Xiangyang did a technical study and psychology. She knows how to find the best products before Arnold tests these, by monitoring reviews of many Chinese customers, she contacts only the best companies with quality products. As everywhere in the world China has good and bad product companies. While many resellers in Europe mainly buy the cheap products, customers later say that Chinese products are not good quality. This is not true, China has many high quality companies and Xiangyang finds these. Also the service for the products is better because she can straight contact the technician (in Chinese language) to discuss/solve a problem. Shipping the products to Europe is also an important part of her work.