Club Manager of mitte — the cabrio in Hamburg
I am Paul, and these days my world is padel. My focus isn't really my own game — it's the community around it: building a genuine third place where the sport grows, people meet, and everyone feels at home. I do play competitively, but what makes me happiest is bringing people onto the court and watching a room full of strangers turn into regulars.
On my background: I'm a mathematician. I completed my doctorate at the University of Hamburg under Reinhard Diestel, supported by a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, working in structural graph theory — coarse graph theory, local-global questions, and the assorted infinities of infinite graphs.
Research
Competitive padel
Padel
I play competitive padel for fun in the German GPS series. My live GPS ranking and overall record are below; the official source is my GPS-profile.
Stats from padelradar.io — unofficial, reconstructed from public tournament data, refreshed weekly.
Get in touch
Contact
The best way to reach me is by email. To keep the address away from scrapers, here it is as a little substitution — read off the two variables and put them together:
firstname := paul
lastname := knappe
website@firstnamelastname.de
That is: website@, then my first and last name run together, then .de.