Samara Lombok lands Southeast Asia's first Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre
Grand slam on the island
RAFAEL NADAL has spent two decades perfecting his serve on some of the world’s best courts. Now he can do so on one that has an equally killer view: Lombok, Indonesia, where a still-under-construction resort has just picked up the region’s first Rafa Nadal Tennis Centre.
The centre will sit inside Samara Lombok, a ~150-hectare development on Lombok’s south coast set to open in Q1 2028 as the first Destination by Hyatt in Southeast Asia. It joins a small international network of resort tennis academies built on the training methodology Nadal and his technical team developed across two decades on tour, with existing centres already running in Costa Mujeres, Sani, Hong Kong, Marbella and Punta Cana. Southeast Asia has been the one region missing from that list, until now.
Located 25 minutes from Lombok International Airport, Samara Lombok will open with three boutique hotels and 150 of a planned 500 villas. The tennis centre anchors the site with four tennis courts and four padel courts, running programmes pitched at players of every age and ability. Beyond the courts, the development includes 12 dining concepts helmed in part by chef Will Meyrick and children’s cookery author Annabel Karmel MBE, a marine biology and watersports centre run by Rascal Voyages, and a football training centre backed by an as-yet-unnamed global club partner.
Samara Lombok co-founder Steve Ebsworth has described the destination as one built around active pursuits guests can return from to a shared social base, with tennis and padel sitting at its centre. Maribel Nadal, Deputy General Manager of the Rafa Nadal Academy, has said the partnership reflects confidence in Lombok’s international potential and the chance to bring the academy’s methodology to new families in the region.
The centre also sharpens Samara Lombok’s pitch to buyers. Villas span 12 designs across two to five bedrooms, with remaining turnkey options offering fixed prices, milestone payments, a 15 to 18 month build, and a 90-year leasehold, well beyond the 25 to 30 year terms typical across Bali and much of Indonesia.
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