The Crocodile Takes To The Glass: Inside Club Lacoste Bali’s New Padel Playground

On a languid Wednesday, Bryan, 28, and Gerald, 26, boarded their Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar and settled into the quiet privilege of Business Class. 

For years, Bali had been their second home. They knew the island intimately: the discreet warungs beyond the tourist trail, the roads that seemed to lead nowhere but somehow arrived somewhere beautiful, the places where visitors disappeared and locals carried on with life.

And W Bali – Seminyak had long been their preferred address.

Yet this trip was different.

There would be no pilgrimage through the crowds at Tanah Lot, no temple-hopping beneath the merciless Balinese sun, no Kuta-to-Seminyak nocturnal odyssey ending somewhere after dawn. 

Their itinerary was considerably simpler. Two brothers, two padel racquets and one destination: Club Lacoste Bali.

The moment news broke that Lacoste was establishing its new padel outpost at W Bali – Seminyak, the decision was almost embarrassingly easy. Flights booked. Villa secured. Racquets packed. Bali, once again, but this time with a sporting purpose. 

For Bryan and Gerald, playing padel beneath the Lacoste crocodile, beside the Indian Ocean, feels almost cinematic: a modern echo of what it might have felt like to occupy René Lacoste’s world, when tennis was still a laboratory for invention and elegance.

And that, ultimately, is the genius of Club Lacoste Bali.

Created through a three-year collaboration between Lacoste and W Bali – Seminyak, the new installation places two signature padel courts beside one of Bali’s most desirable coastal resorts. But calling it merely a pair of courts would be to miss the point. 

Club Lacoste is conceived as a destination: part sporting club, part fashion salon, part social theatre.

There is a dedicated Lacoste boutique, crocodile-themed outdoor spaces and considered locker facilities, where the brand’s latest fragrance collection makes an unexpected but rather persuasive appearance. Guests arrive to play, but the experience does not end when the final ball leaves the glass. Here, performance and lifestyle are deliberately intertwined.

It is precisely why the location matters. W Bali – Seminyak has long understood hospitality as theatre. Its contemporary design, social spaces and Whatever/Whenever philosophy are designed around interaction rather than quiet anonymity. 

The resort currently comprises 152 guest rooms, six suites and 75 private villas, placing Club Lacoste inside an established luxury ecosystem rather than beside it. 

And then there is padel.

Born in Acapulco in 1969 when Mexican tennis enthusiast Enrique Corcuera adapted a smaller, enclosed court to suit his home, padel eventually travelled to Spain and Argentina before becoming an international phenomenon.  

Today, the International Padel Federation estimates roughly 38 million players across 178 countries and territories, with approximately 85,000 courts and 27,000 clubs. 

Those numbers explain the commercial excitement. They do not, however, explain the seduction.

Padel is tennis’s more sociable, mischievous younger cousin. The court is smaller; the racket is solid and stringless; the ball is similar to tennis but played at lower pressure; and the surrounding glass and mesh walls are part of the game rather than boundaries to be ignored. 

Most importantly, doubles play is central. You do not simply play against somebody. You play with somebody.

That distinction is cultural as much as sporting.

Padel creates conversation between points, camaraderie between strangers and the curious ritual of arranging another match before the first one has properly ended. It is competitive without necessarily becoming austere, technical without requiring years of initiation, and physical without demanding the intimidating athletic threshold associated with some traditional racquet sports.

For Gen-Z, that matters. Padel is sport as social currency: active, photogenic, communal and endlessly adaptable to the lifestyle surrounding it. But dismissing it as another fleeting social-media fad would be lazy. 

Its infrastructure is expanding, professional competition is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and padel is now a medal sport at the 2026 Asian Games. Its challenge is no longer visibility. It is longevity.

Lacoste understands that distinction instinctively because it has been negotiating the relationship between sport and culture for almost a century.

René Lacoste was not merely a tennis champion. He was an inventor. In 1933, he founded the company with André Gillier and introduced the revolutionary L.12.12 polo, transforming tennis apparel through lighter construction, freedom of movement and the now-famous crocodile emblem. 

He subsequently patented innovations in racket technology, including a vibration-dampening device and a steel racket. 

The important detail is this: Lacoste never regarded sport as something separate from style.

The polo escaped the tennis court. The crocodile escaped the polo. Both became cultural symbols.

Club Lacoste Bali therefore feels less like a diversification strategy and more like a return to first principles. Padel shares tennis’s vocabulary of movement, anticipation, placement and tactical intelligence while introducing a distinctly contemporary social rhythm. 

It is precisely the sort of evolving sporting culture into which Lacoste can enter without appearing like an outsider.

The launch made that ambition unmistakable. An exclusive padel clinic brought together Thai actor, singer and model Joong; Indonesian actress Nana Mirdad; Malaysian lifestyle influencer Linus Teng; Hong Kong influencer Evelyn Choi; Filipino lifestyle creator Ry Velasco; Indonesian actor and fitness personality Andrew White; and Singaporean model and actress Fiona Fussi. 

Coaching, friendly matches and community play transformed the opening from a conventional brand event into something more kinetic: a gathering in which people actually used the product, the space and the sport.

Then came the wardrobe.

Lacoste’s first dedicated Padel Capsule Collection introduces two rackets: the L.MAX, aimed at regular players seeking power, speed and precision, and the lighter L.SOFT, designed around comfort and easier handling for beginners and developing players. 

The line also includes the L Paletero padel bag, technical apparel and the AG-LT Ultra performance padel shoe in an exclusive padel colourway.

It is a telling collection. Lacoste is not simply putting a crocodile on a racket. It is constructing an ecosystem around the player.

And perhaps that is what Bryan and Gerald are really travelling for.

Club Lacoste Bali is open daily from 6am to 9pm, welcoming W Bali guests and the wider community. Here, the proposition is refreshingly straightforward: arrive, play, meet people, linger, shop, return tomorrow.

Because the most compelling luxury today is not necessarily something one merely possesses. It is something one experiences — and remembers.

A Lacoste polo is therefore more than a logo on a chest. A stay at W Bali is more than an address on a booking confirmation. And Club Lacoste is more than two courts beside the sea.

They are carefully constructed expressions of heritage, design, craftsmanship, service, sporting passion and cultural relevance — accumulated over decades and then translated into the present.

For Lacoste, the crocodile has always been in motion.

In Bali, it has simply found a new court.

*Photos courtesy of Lacoste.