Before the board said yes, before the glass went up, padel at Fort Wayne Country Club was just something playing on the pro shop TV.

That was the plan all along. Brock Orlowski, the club's Director of Racquet Sports, didn't walk into a boardroom with a slide deck and ask for a court. He spent a long time getting the word "padel" into members' everyday conversation, then took them to see it for themselves. In late April 2026 the club opened Indiana's first outdoor padel court, built by Goshen-based Off The Glass.

Now Orlowski is selling the idea to clubs well beyond Fort Wayne. He's stayed full-time at FWCC and taken a fractional advisory role with Off The Glass, focused on country clubs. By the company's count there are about 4,000 private golf and country clubs in the U.S. Roughly 1% offer padel. His pitch to the rest: get going.

Orlowski's case rests on timing. "The landscape of racquet sports is evolving daily and the trends are moving quickly," he says. "It is important to stay in front of the trends instead of chasing them."

Country clubs have been through this twice already. Tennis turned into a core amenity, and then pickleball went from novelty to expectation almost overnight. Orlowski thinks clubs are especially well set up for round three: "they have the existing infrastructure and dedicated racquets spaces, but they also seem to have more vibrant communities where amenities are always needed."

And why not wait five years and watch? He has a blunt answer.

"Because in 5 years you'll be behind the eight ball and scrambling to keep up with the clubs down the road or the demands of your membership."

Take note, every club still waiting for the committee to circle back.

There was no single big moment that won Fort Wayne over. It took a slow build. "The process was small to big," Orlowski explains. "We would put padel matches on our pro shop TV, use padel racquets to teach tennis volley technique, and tried to get the name of the sport in the vernacular of our members."

Then he started posting on-court content from his own matches and certification workshops. Finally he loaded up a group of members and drove them to Zmash Padel in Sterling Heights, Michigan, for a demo day, so they could hit their first balls.

When it was time to ask the board, he made it about the members and kept himself out of it. "The pitch wasn't about me or my desire, it was about providing a new, pioneering opportunity for our members," he says. His points were that members who winter in Florida would already know the sport, that no other club around had one, and that it might help bring in new members. In his words, padel would be "a feather in our proverbial cap."

So what got it over the line? Orlowski is honest about that too: "leadership pulled the trigger because I was insistent and believe deeply in it and they trusted me, but also they see the value in innovating and not always following the crowd later on."

Primetime asked him about the 1% gap and offered a list of suspects: money, space, board politics. He chose none of them. "The biggest 'blocker' for padel is member and board education," Orlowski says. "What is it, why is it growing, why is it a good addition?"

He considers that part of his job. "It's the director's job to educate members, GMs, and the board about industry trends and to drive vision for the club short and long term."

He has a test for whether something is a fad, and it's a good one: zoom out. "Where was it 10 years ago, and where is it projected to be in the next 10 years?" Then look at who actually benefits. "If you're catering to a small minority of people, it may not be prudent, but if it can appeal to a large percentage of your membership, it may have more staying power."

Off The Glass co-founder Brevin Bennett has said Fort Wayne was the company's first commercial install. That gives Orlowski something most court salespeople can't offer: he and his staff use the product every day.

"Being a consumer before I was a consultant changes the game and my approach completely," he says. "I can give 100% honest feedback and insight because my staff and I have lived it daily." He knows what the install was like, what upkeep involves, and how customer service responds when something goes wrong, and he says that experience lets him "paint a full picture for a potential customer of OTG."

He says the reason he signed on had nothing to do with quick money. "What's appealing about working alongside Brevin and the OTG team is their desire to problem-solve and grow this landscape in a way that benefits the consumer and isn't just a way to make a quick buck." The company says it's the only U.S. maker producing every court component, steel and glass included, domestically.

Florida and the coasts still get most of the padel buzz in America, and Orlowski doesn't pretend Indiana is about to catch Miami on court count. "The midwest doesn't need to be like the southeast," he says. "It just needs to continue pursuing ways to grow and evolve as clubs and as a racquets ecosystem."

He thinks the Midwest's advantage is attitude. "The midwest has a culture of going out of its way for hobbies and amenities and that fits well with the growth of padel," Orlowski says. "The volume of courts may never be the same, but the passion for the sport will persist and people will always find a way to make it happen — that's the midwest grit and passion."

Ask how he'll know the advisory work paid off, and he doesn't give you a sales number. "No more brand or sport confusion — no more comparison to other sports — just a general understanding and interest growing among our US population," he says. Within three years he wants padel to be a household name in sports generally, not only among racquet players, and to show up "in more clubs… on TV, and having it become a part of normal conversation."

As Orlowski put it: "The courts will come, but is it ingrained in the DNA of any racquets sports conversations? That will be the telltale sign."

Fort Wayne got there with a pro shop TV, a stack of padel racquets and one van trip to Michigan. The playbook is out there now. The roughly 99% of clubs still without a court can decide whether to use it while they're early, or wait five years and end up behind the eight ball.

For more on Off The Glass: https://offtheglass.com//