Multi-talented Claffey driving on with latest sporting pursuit 

Claffey took up Padel after some hesitation on the recommendation of Susan McCann, her doubles partner this week.

NEW PURSUIT: Padel player Jennifer Claffey poses for a portrait during the European Games team day for Team Ireland. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

That thing about open minds leading to open doors? 

Jenny Claffey never saw herself holding a Padel racquet and representing Ireland in the European Games at Krakow’s KSOS Sports Club this fine June morning, but here she is anyway.

Dig into her story and it’s no surprise.

Once this country’s top-ranked female tennis player, Claffey struggled to come to terms with a professional career cut short by injury but a willingness to try something, anything, new has taken her on some crazy tangents.

Padel will be new to some.

A combination of tennis and squash, it’s played with a net on a small court and surrounded by glass walls, and it has spread like wildfire since its birth in Mexico through South America and on into Europe. Spain is a particular hotbed.

Ireland is catching on with courts built or planned in the likes of Blackrock, Naas and Oranmore. Claffey took it up after some hesitation on the recommendation of Susan McCann, her doubles partner this week.

“Padel is such a different sport to tennis. I thought this would be grand, that I could just switch racquets and play tennis and be grand. At the beginning I was a tennis player on the Padel court and it is so different. The court and the racquets are smaller.

“I came out all guns blazing, power, power, and then you realise that’s not how you play Padel because you can use the back wall and if you smash the ball it hits that and bounces up and gives the opposition an advantage. So I have learned how to play.” 

That initial reluctance stemmed in part from the way her pro dream had been snatched from her grasp having shot up the rankings from a four-figure spot to the 600s in the short spell tops she managed on the circuit. It just wasn’t to be.

There was a shoulder injury that cancelled plans to go pro as a teenager, a gall bladder that had to be removed when she eventually made it, and the elbow problem that left her unable to even flush a toilet by the time she accepted the inevitable.

“After finishing on tour I really had an identity crisis for a few years and I really hated tennis for a time as well. It was so short for me. It was less than 18 months on the tour.

“If I had progressed and backed up the points I really felt that those Grand Slams were within my grasp and a few of the girls I played and beat are playing in the Grand Slams now. It’s tough to watch.” 

Two minutes with Claffey is plenty to twig a driven personality so she was ready to bite when a talent scout spotted her training at the David Lloyd gym and asked if she fancied a crack at the IRFU’s international sevens programme.

Athletes from across the sporting diaspora were being trialled and the competition was all but dog-eat-dog and far removed from the all-for-one team ethos she had expected. Other parts of the transition were even harder to digest.

“I came in the first week and broke my nose. I had the elbow injury as well but when I say I hadn’t a clue what I was doing I was like Bambi on ice in there. I couldn’t participate because I had concussion so it was a stop-start wild ride.” 

Not the type to give in, Claffey worked her way back to full fitness after breaking two fingers in another session and she was eventually just two days out from a debut at the Canada Sevens in 2018 when she broke a foot. That was that.

Just over two years later and an undiminished sense of curiosity and competitiveness brought her to Terenure Rangers FC. Her four brothers had played but this was her first try at the beautiful game and this time the focus of her affections returned the love.

A left-winger, she took to the shuttle runs up and down the touchline like a duck to water and the team’s camaraderie has been hitched to a decent standard of ball that has earned an FAI Cup tie against WNL side Cork City in August.

A sport taken up as a hobby has, inevitably given her nature, morphed into something more serious and she has also been playing in trials for TG4’s latest Underdog series which will see the successful recruits face one of the top WNL teams.

It’s a relentless reel of pursuits and passions that also incorporates her work as a tennis coach and as a life coach and add to this the fact that her wife is expecting their first baby later this summer. Where, you wonder, does one person get the time?

“Yeah, there’s only 24 hours in the day,” she laughed, “it’s not long enough.”