🚨 EXCLUSIVE: How Brisas Snagged Madrid’s Legendary M3 Academy for a Massive US Debut

The American padel landscape is growing at a breakneck pace, but while many operators are racing to see how many courts they can squeeze into industrial warehouses, Brisas co-founders Rohan and Lucho are building something entirely different. They’ve rejected the transactional, high-volume model in favor of an experience-first, design-forward sanctuary that nods directly to padel's golden era origins in 1970s Acapulco. With stunning flagships spanning from East Hampton to New York City—and highly anticipated oases launching in Aspen and the Bahamas later this year—Brisas has completely redefined what a modern racket club can look like.

Now, they are pulling off one of the biggest international coups the US padel scene has ever seen. This summer, Brisas is officially serving as the exclusive US launchpad for Madrid’s world-renowned M3 Padel Academy—the legendary training powerhouse behind global top-tier pros like Alejandro Galán and Federico Chingotto. We sat down with Rohan and Lucho to talk about landing this blockbuster partnership, dethroning traditional racket hierarchies in the Hamptons, and why true luxury in the sport means building an environment people simply never want to leave.

Primetime Padel: Rohan, for our readers who haven't yet stepped through the hand-carved wooden archway in East Hampton, Brisas feels entirely unique. It leans into a beautiful 1970s Acapulco aesthetic with pottery, holistic wellness, and design-led social spaces rather than just court rentals. What was the original inspiration behind rejecting the warehouse or traditional tennis country club layout in favor of this boutique, soulful sanctuary?

Rohan: I don't think we ever consciously set out to reinvent the country club. We simply built the kind of place we wanted to spend time in ourselves.

Traditional country clubs tend to revolve around a single activity. Hospitality is often secondary. We became fascinated by the idea of creating a place where padel was the catalyst, but not necessarily the destination.

A lot of inspiration came from places like Las Brisas in Acapulco during its golden era, where athletes, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs and travelers all mixed together. There was an informality and spontaneity to those places that feels increasingly rare today.

We're also drawn to craftsmanship, natural materials and experiences that feel human rather than transactional. That's why you'll find pottery next to padel courts, communal dining tables next to saunas, a ping-pong table carved from a single piece of wood in a faraway mexican forest - spaces designed as much for conversation as competition and focused on the details and the craftsman qualities that create an authentic experience.

The goal was never to maximize court utilization. It was to create an environment people didn't want to leave.

Primetime Padel: Bringing Madrid's world-renowned M3 Padel Academy to the United States for an official summer club partnership is an absolute slam dunk. M3's training methodology is legendary globally, having shaped top-tier professional tour players. How did this blockbuster collaboration come together, and what does it mean to be their chosen launchpad in the States?

Lucho: The partnership began the same way many good things at Brisas begin: through curiosity.

As founders, we're obsessed with learning. We spend a lot of time asking who is truly best in class, not who has the biggest social media following or the loudest marketing machine.

Every road eventually led to M3.

What impressed us wasn't just their results, although those speak for themselves. It was the rigor of their methodology. They've spent more than twenty years refining a system that has produced elite players, elite coaches and one of the most respected academies in the world. They also trained Alejandro Galan and Federico Chingotto, so we thought why not train Brisas.

When we launched the partnership, we discovered several Brisas members had already made pilgrimages to Madrid specifically to train at M3. That validated something we already suspected: serious American players were actively seeking this level of instruction.

For us, the partnership represents something larger than a coaching collaboration. It's the meeting of two padel cultures. One comes from the most mature padel ecosystem in the world. The other comes from one of the youngest and fastest-growing.

Our campaign slogan became "Two worlds unite. Not an invasion. An exchange."

That's exactly how we view it. Hopefully the M3 delegation leaves with some self made clay mugs and a beach chair.

Primetime Padel: The US padel scene has historically been dominated by social and recreational play. By integrating M3’s elite, high-performance structured training processes and tactical monitoring directly into your East Hampton programming this summer, what kind of impact are you hoping to make on the actual standard of play and player development in America?

Lucho: The US has done an incredible job introducing people to padel, but if we're being honest, we're still in the very early innings when it comes to player development.

A lot of players learn through repetition, tips and match play. M3 teaches through understanding. Every drill has a purpose. Every tactical decision is connected to a broader framework. Instead of simply learning shots, players learn how to think about the game.

Our hope is that this partnership helps raise expectations around coaching and player development in America. Not because everyone needs to become a professional player, but because the game becomes significantly more enjoyable when you understand it at a deeper level.

Ultimately, we want people to leave not only as better players, but as better students of the game.

And selfishly, as founders, we've always believed that if you want to improve something, you should learn from the very best. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we partnered with a group that has spent more than twenty years refining one of the most respected methodologies in padel.

Primetime Padel: We recently broke down the Playtomic/PwC Global Padel Report, which highlighted that the US boom is almost completely experience-driven and heavily fueled by premium wellness and luxury hospitality. East Hampton is the epicenter of that exact demographic. How have your players and members responded to the premium amenities you offer—like the contrast baths, saunas, and outdoor gyms—alongside the actual on-court action?

Rohan: I think people often assume our members are coming for the wellness amenities and staying for the padel, but in many cases it's actually the other way around.

People initially discover Brisas through the sport, but what keeps them around is everything that happens around it.

The cold plunges, saunas, Pilates, pottery, outdoor lounge spaces and communal dining areas aren't really standalone amenities. They're all designed to encourage people to spend more time together. This year we even added a pétanque court.

The real luxury today isn't exclusivity. It's having a place where you genuinely want to spend your time.

A lot of what we've built has come from our own curiosities as founders. We don't spend much time looking at market studies or trying to reverse engineer trends. We're constantly exploring things that inspire us—whether that's wellness, design, hospitality, sport or culture—and if it's something we genuinely want to experience ourselves, we usually trust that others might feel the same way.

So far, that simple philosophy has served us surprisingly well.

Primetime Padel: The Hamptons has deep-seated, historic roots in traditional lawn tennis, yet we are seeing a massive shift where premium players are happily trading their tennis rackets for padel bats. As you double your court capacity out East this summer to meet surging demand, how would you describe padel’s rapid ascension within the local East End athletic hierarchy?

Lucho: I don't think padel is replacing tennis. I think it's serving a different need.

Tennis remains one of the great individual sports in the world, but padel is uniquely social. The learning curve is more forgiving, rallies develop quickly, and four people can share an experience from day one.

In a place like the Hamptons, where people increasingly value experiences and community, that social aspect is incredibly powerful.

We've seen families play together, complete beginners sharing courts with experienced athletes, and people who haven't picked up a racket in years suddenly become obsessed with the game. Trust me, we love tennis. But padel scratches a different itch.

What excites me most isn't the growth itself. It's that we're watching a new sporting culture emerge in real time. That doesn't happen very often.

Primetime Padel: You’ve already established an incredible bicoastal/regional rhythm with your flagship in East Hampton and your presence at CityView Racquet Club in NYC. But the pipeline looks even bigger, with expansions slated for Aspen and the Bahamas later this year. How do you ensure that the authentic, slow-paced pura vida sanctuary vibe of Brisas translates perfectly into completely different luxury markets?

Rohan: The mistake would be trying to recreate East Hampton in Aspen or Harbour Island.

Brisas East Hampton works because it's East Hampton. The Bahamas should feel like the Bahamas. Aspen should feel like Aspen.

What we're really trying to carry from place to place isn't a design language or a checklist of amenities. It's a philosophy. Build places people don't want to leave. Create opportunities for connection. Stay curious. Don't take yourself too seriously. Focus on how a place feels rather than what it looks like.

Ironically, the less we try to force Brisas onto a location, the more authentic it becomes.

Every project teaches us something new. The pottery studio came from curiosity. The petanque court came from curiosity. The M3 partnership came from curiosity. We don't have a master plan for what Brisas should become in ten years. We're simply following the things that excite us and trying to build communities around them.

Hopefully, East Hampton, Aspen and Harbour Island all feel different. If they didn't, we'd probably be doing something wrong.

Primetime Padel: Five years from now, when you look back at this summer as the catalyst for the M3 partnership and your multi-location scaling, what footprint do you hope Brisas will have left on the broader cultural and commercial landscape of American padel?

Rohan: Five years from now, I hope Brisas has contributed to the culture of padel as much as it has contributed to the business of padel.

The easiest thing to do would be to measure success by the number of courts we build or the number of locations we open. Those things matter, but they're not what motivates us.

What interests us is whether we helped create a different model for what a sports club can be.

Can a padel club also be a place for design? For wellness? For creativity? For friendship? For meaningful experiences that have nothing to do with sport?

We don't see ourselves as simply building padel clubs. We see ourselves building a broader lifestyle brand and cultural platform that happens to use padel as its foundation.

If, five years from now, Brisas has helped create deeper communities, elevated the standard of coaching in America through partnerships like M3, and inspired people to live a little more intentionally, I'd consider that a success.

The world can be a surprisingly lonely place. If Brisas can create spaces where people form relationships, discover new passions and build memories they'll carry with them for decades, that's the footprint I'd be most proud of leaving.