Daan Veldhuis and the second chance at elite sport
From recreational player to ...
Every good player once started without a ranking, without FIP points and without knowing where the game would take them. But the road to the top is rarely a straight one.
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In From recreational player to…, Padelgids.nl follows players whose development tells us something about Dutch padel itself. Sometimes it starts with tennis. Sometimes with a school outing. Sometimes the real commitment comes years later, when someone decides that simply playing a lot is no longer enough and chooses to take the sport seriously.
This section is explicitly not a collection of fairy tales in which everyone becomes a professional from scratch. Some players already had a strong racket-sports background. Others were selected for national squads at an early age. We therefore only describe someone as a recreational player when the sources genuinely support that. The interesting part lies precisely in the differences.
Nine stories, nine different routes. About talent, partners, money, travel, training hours, starting over, winning and discovering how far you want to go.
The sport was always there
Daan Veldhuis started playing tennis at the age of five and competed at a high level until he was fourteen. For almost five years, he was part of the Dutch junior national selection. He then took a step back and shifted his attention, among other things, to football.
That detail makes his padel story more interesting than a classic switch from tennis to padel. He already knew the world of training, selection and performance. He also knew what it felt like when such a path ends before you fully know where your ceiling might have been.
Later, tennis came back into his life. Veldhuis started giving lessons to earn some extra money, began playing more seriously himself and became familiar with padel through that environment. He completed a qualification as a padel coach. The sport first became part of his work and then increasingly became part of his own sporting ambition.
The wow factor
In his Padelgids interview from April 2026, Veldhuis describes how padel immediately gave him a different feeling than tennis. Beginners improve quickly, the social dynamic is strong and, as a coach, he saw how much enthusiasm a first introduction to the sport can generate.
His daily life increasingly revolved around racket sports. Alongside giving lessons and his own training, he runs Match & Play, a tennis and padel store in Leeuwarden. The sport is therefore not something that starts after work; he is surrounded by it for almost the entire day.
Yet he continued playing tennis for a long time as well. It was only in 2025 that the balance shifted definitively. After his final tennis competition, he decided to focus all of his sporting energy on padel.
From HD4 to the national elite
The results in the Padelgids database show just how quickly that happened. In 2022 and 2023, Veldhuis was still winning tournaments in HD4. In 2024, results in higher categories began to appear, and in March 2026 he won the P100 KNLTB Padelgid Tournament in Leeuwarden with Werner Lootsma.
At the time of the Padelgids interview, he was around 42nd in the Netherlands. That is not the final destination, but it is a remarkable rise for someone who relatively late decided to treat the sport as his own elite-level sporting project.
His development also shows how rankings can sometimes lag behind the story. A player can improve rapidly in terms of level while points, international experience and established partnerships still have to follow.
Friesland as an additional hurdle
Veldhuis does not train from the most densely populated padel region in the Netherlands. In his interview, he mentioned that Leeuwarden had only one indoor location at the time, while Groningen offered many more options. At a higher level, this makes the number of suitable training partners smaller.
His solution is not particularly romantic, but it is typical of serious Dutch players: driving. To Groningen, North Holland or wherever strong matches and training sessions are available.
That costs time and money. It is exactly the kind of practical reality that remains hidden behind a ranking.
Elite sport without an elite-sport budget
Padel is becoming increasingly professional internationally, but many Dutch players find themselves in a financial middle ground. Tournaments involve entry fees, travel, hotels and training hours. Anyone who wants to compete internationally has to invest before prize money or sponsorship can structurally cover those costs.
Veldhuis therefore created his own sponsorship plan. Clothing, support and partnerships with companies should help make the next step possible.
That entrepreneurial side suits him: player, coach and shop owner come together in one person. The advantage is that he can use his network. The downside is that every hour spent working is also an hour that cannot be spent training.
A second chance
The essence of this story is not 42nd place, a P100 victory or any particular ranking. It lies in the decision to explore once again how far sport can take you.
Many talented junior players eventually stop following an intensive sporting path. Education, work, enjoyment or another sport takes over. Usually, there is no second discipline in which the same competitive question can be taken seriously again.
Padel gave Veldhuis that opportunity. He does not have to pretend that his tennis years never happened; that experience forms the foundation. But he now has to earn the next chapter himself in a new sport.
That is why Daan Veldhuis fits so well in From recreational player to…. Not because he was ever an ordinary recreational player, but because his padel career shows that a sporting journey can start again. His first opportunity in elite sport came during his youth. The second one, he is building himself.
Facts:
- Started playing tennis at the age of five; spent almost five years in the Dutch junior national selection.
- Won the P100 KNLTB Padelgid Tournament with Werner Lootsma in March 2026.
- Combines playing with coaching and running Match & Play in Leeuwarden.
- Interview takeaway: he regularly travels outside Friesland for stronger matches.
