Mexicano padel, explained

By Ruzgar Yesil. Updated 19 September 2026.

A Mexicano redraws the whole night after every round. Nothing is fixed in advance except the first draw. You play, the standings update, and the software or the organiser pairs the players again by their current position. The effect is that the matches get closer as the evening goes on, because the format keeps pushing you toward opponents at your own standard.

What defines a Mexicano

A Mexicano has three rules.

1. You score as an individual. The points your team wins in a round are added to your personal total. Your partner gets the same number. Your opponents get theirs.
2. The draw is made after every round, from the standings. There is no printed schedule. Round four depends on what happened in round three.
3. The pairing is by rank. The most common rule is 1st with 4th against 2nd with 3rd, then 5th with 8th against 6th with 7th, and so on down the table.

The first two points are shared with the Americano. The third is the whole difference. If you want the partner rotation format with a fixed schedule, read the padel Americano guide instead. This page assumes you already know how individual scoring works and focuses on what the redraw changes.

The redraw after every round

After each round you sort every player by total points, highest first. Then you cut the table into blocks of four and send each block to a court. The top four go to court one, the next four to court two, and so on. Inside each block the standard pairing is the first player with the fourth against the second with the third.

Pairing the leader with the fourth placed player is deliberate. It puts the two strongest players of the block on opposite sides, so the match should be tight. Two variations exist and both are in use at clubs:

• 1st with 3rd against 2nd with 4th. Slightly less balanced, and it keeps the leader away from the player just behind them.
• 1st with 2nd against 3rd with 4th. This makes the top court a straight contest between the strong half and the weak half of the block. It produces one sided matches and most clubs avoid it.

Pick one rule and announce it before the first ball. Changing it halfway through the night is the fastest way to start an argument.

Ties

Ties are common, because both members of a pair collect the same points. Fix a tiebreak rule in advance. The simplest is to order tied players by their position in the previous round, and to order the first round draw at random. Some clubs use head to head, which fails as soon as the tied players have not met.

Scoring and round length

Each round runs to a fixed number of points rather than to games and sets. The two teams share that number between them, so a round to 24 might finish 24-13 or 13-24. There is no bonus for winning the round. A narrow loss is worth more than a heavy win, which is what keeps the bottom court honest.

Serve changes every four points and rotates through the players, so nobody serves every game. Because a Mexicano needs a redraw between rounds, add a minute or two of changeover on top of each round compared with an Americano.

Run five to eight rounds on a club night. A Mexicano has no natural finish line the way a full Americano rotation does, so the number of rounds is set by the court booking, not by the format. Announce the number of rounds at the start so nobody paces the evening wrongly.

A worked example: eight players, three rounds

Eight players, two courts, every round to 24 points. The first round is drawn at random. Ties are broken by the previous round position, and in round one by the draw order.

Round 1

Court 1: Ana and Ben beat Cem and Dia, 24-13. Court 2: Eli and Finn beat Gia and Hugo, 24-21.

Applying 1st with 4th against 2nd with 3rd gives round two. Court 1: Ana and Finn against Ben and Eli. Court 2: Gia and Dia against Hugo and Cem.

Round 2

Court 1: Ana and Finn beat Ben and Eli, 24-17. Court 2: Hugo and Cem beat Gia and Dia, 24-20.

Note what the redraw has already done. Hugo lost round one and still climbed to third, because he took 24 points off the second court. Cem lost round one heavily and is now within four points of fifth place. The format lets you climb from anywhere, because the points are absolute and the lower court still pays full value.

Ana and Finn are tied on 48, so Ana ranks first on the previous round position. Ben, Eli and Gia are tied on 41 and separate the same way. Round three: court 1 has Ana and Ben against Finn and Hugo. Court 2 has Eli and Dia against Gia and Cem.

Round 3

Court 1: Finn and Hugo beat Ana and Ben, 24-22. Court 2: Eli and Dia beat Gia and Cem, 24-15.

The round four draw follows from that table. Court 1: Finn and Eli against Ana and Hugo. Court 2: Ben and Cem against Dia and Gia.

Three rounds in, the table has spread from a four way tie to eight distinct totals, and the top three are separated by three points. That convergence is the reason clubs run Mexicanos.

Repeat partners

Ana and Ben were drawn together in round one and again in round three. A Mexicano does not prevent that, because the ranking decides the pairing and nothing else does. Over five or six rounds a repeat or two is normal. If avoiding repeat partners matters more to your group than close matches, run an Americano.

Group sizes, courts and sit-outs

Multiples of four are clean: 8, 12, 16 and 20 players fill two, three, four and five courts with nobody waiting. Eight is the easiest to run by hand. Past twelve the redraw becomes real arithmetic between every round, with people standing around waiting for it.

Any other number means somebody sits out, and sit-outs are harder in a Mexicano than in an Americano because the ranking drives the draw. There is no single standard, so choose a rule and say it out loud:

• Rotate from the bottom. The lowest ranked players who have not yet sat out take the break. Simple, but it punishes a bad start twice.
• Rotate by fewest sit-outs. Whoever has sat out least sits out next, ties broken by rank. Fairer, and it needs one more column in the table.
• Score the sit-out. Decide in advance whether a sitting player scores nothing or their running average. Awarding the average keeps the standings meaningful. Awarding zero effectively removes them from contention.

Whatever you choose, fix it before the first ball. A sit-out rule invented in round five is a rule invented to suit whoever is winning.

Americano vs Mexicano

Both formats rotate partners and both score individuals. The difference is entirely in how the next round is drawn, and that one difference changes the feel of the whole evening.

Choose an Americano when the goal is that everybody plays with everybody. Choose a Mexicano when the group spans a wide range of standards and you want round six to be enjoyable for the weakest player as well as the strongest. A Mexicano is also the better fit when you already have a padel rating for each player, because the first round draw can be seeded instead of random.

Running one without stalling the night

The format is easy. The bookkeeping is what fails. Three things go wrong at almost every club Mexicano:

• The redraw takes longer than the changeover. Sorting sixteen totals and rebuilding four courts by hand costs five minutes a round, which is a whole extra round lost over a night.
• Scores arrive late or wrong. Four courts reporting two numbers each, six times over, is forty-eight numbers that all have to be right before the next draw can be made.
• Nobody knows where they stand. Half the interest is knowing you are fourth and one win from the top court. If the table lives in somebody else's notebook, that is lost.

For eight players, a whiteboard and one organiser is enough. Past twelve, use something that sorts the table and produces the next draw for you the moment the last score lands. If you also want the raw scoring rules to hand, they are in the padel scoring guide, and the on-court rules are in the padel rules.