Claudia Fernández: Bio, Titles and Playing Style
Claudia Fernández Sánchez was born in Madrid on February 28, 2006. Nicknamed "la niña maravilla," the wonder girl, she became the youngest player in history to win a Premier Padel title at 18 years and three months, and she did it while still too young to have a driver's license.
A 45-minute drive from a tiny village in Toledo
Although she was born in Madrid, Claudia lives in a small village in the province of Toledo, and every day someone drives her 45 minutes each way to train, since she isn't old enough yet to have her own license. Her love of padel comes from her father, Vicente, who teaches padel as a second job more than a livelihood, a hobby he's passionate about. Her mother helped her through the harder stretches of the journey. Off the court, Claudia describes herself as shy, though it rarely shows: not in front of the cameras, and not when she's playing in front of thousands of people.
Her rise was sudden. She started the 2024 season paired with Lorena Rufo, ranked 24th in the world. Then Gemma Triay, freshly split from Marta Ortega after a strong Hexagon Cup, took a chance on a teenager with barely any experience at the elite level and called her up as a partner. That single phone call changed Claudia's life. Within months she went from playing on secondary courts to contesting finals in front of a packed WiZink Center in Madrid, and people who had never heard of her a year earlier were stopping her in the street for photos.
The youngest champion in Premier Padel history
On June 3, 2024, partnered with Triay, Claudia won the Santiago Premier Padel P1, becoming the youngest player ever to win a Premier Padel title at 18 years, three months and six days, breaking the record previously held by Claudia Jensen. What stands out about her game isn't power or spectacular winners. As one observer put it, she doesn't have a big weapon or an obvious signature shot, but she has the one thing that matters most in padel: she knows how to play. She reads the game, chooses her shots and calculates risk against reward with a clarity that would be remarkable in a veteran with hundreds of matches behind her, and she was still a teenager with braces on her teeth.
2025 with Bea González, and a new partnership for 2026
In 2025, partnered with Bea González, Claudia had her best season yet: six Premier Padel titles, including Asunción P2, Málaga P1, Madrid P1, Dubai P1, the GNP Acapulco Major, and the Premier Padel Finals in Barcelona, taking her career total to 12 titles. Despite that success, Bea chose to move on for the following season. Since 2026, Claudia has partnered with Sofía Araujo, playing the drive side of the court.
Claudia has been open about her ambition. She has said she wants to be, and feels ready to be, the world number one, even though she wasn't aware that the youngest player to achieve that was Marta Ortega, four years older than Claudia is now. She respects Triay's decision to move on to a new partnership but has made clear she doesn't share the reasoning behind it.
Playing style
Claudia plays the drive, right side of the court, and is right-handed. Her game is built on court intelligence rather than raw power: smart shot selection, patience, and a tactical maturity that looks out of place next to her age. She's been compared to a machine calculating the percentages on every ball, rarely forcing a point she doesn't need to force. That composure, on a court in front of 30,000 people or on a practice court in front of her father, is what has taken her from a 24th-ranked pairing to a Premier Padel Finals champion in barely two years.
Read more about the partner who helped Claudia win six titles in 2025 in Bea González's player profile.
