Padel looks familiar if you have ever picked up a tennis racket, but it has its own rhythm. The scoring is borrowed straight from tennis, yet the serve, the walls, and the court size change the game completely. Here is everything you need to walk on court knowing exactly how it works.
The first thing to remember: padel is always doubles. Two against two, on an enclosed court roughly a third the size of a tennis court, with glass walls and mesh fencing you are allowed to use.
The serve
The serve is where padel feels most different, and where beginners trip up most often. Three rules govern it:
- It must be underarm. No overhead tennis-style serves. Your contact with the ball has to be at or below waist height.
- The ball must bounce first. You drop the ball, let it bounce once on your side, then strike it. You cannot hit it out of the air.
- It goes in diagonally. Just like tennis, you serve crosscourt into the opposite service box, and the serve must land in that box before your opponent plays it.
You get two serves. A let (serve clips the net and still lands in the correct box) is replayed. A serve that hits the net and then strikes the side wall or fence before bouncing is a fault.
Scoring
If you know tennis scoring, you already know padel scoring. There is nothing new to learn here:
- Points run 15, 30, 40, game.
- 40-40 is deuce, and you need to win two points in a row from there (advantage, then game).
- Six games win a set, and you must be two games clear; most matches are best of three sets.
- A tie-break is played at 6-6 in a set.
Some social and club formats use "golden point" (a single sudden-death point at deuce instead of playing advantage) to speed games up, but standard scoring is the default.
Playing off the walls
This is the part that makes padel so addictive. The glass walls are in play, and learning to use them is what turns a beginner into a player.
- If a ball your opponent hits bounces on your side of the court and then strikes your wall, you can play it after the wall, as long as you return it before it bounces a second time on the floor.
- You can let the ball come off the back glass and even the side glass, then send it back over the net.
- What you cannot do is hit the ball into your own wall first and have it go over; the ball must clear the net and travel through the air to your opponent's side. Off your own walls into the net or your own court does not count as a return.
The walls reward patience. Many balls that look like winners simply rebound off the glass and stay in play.
The net and when a ball is out
The net divides the court as in tennis. A ball must pass over it (a ball that goes around the net post and lands in is a tricky edge case, allowed in some rulebooks, but rare in club play).
A ball is out when:
- It bounces and then hits the metal fencing or mesh on the full, or hits any wall on your opponent's side before bouncing on their floor.
- It strikes a wall on the full after you hit it, before bouncing on the opponent's court (your shot must land in their court first).
- It lands outside the lines on the serve.
In open play (after the serve) there are no service-box restrictions; the whole court is fair game as long as the ball clears the net and bounces in.
The most common beginner mistakes
- Serving overarm or above the waist. Old tennis habits die hard. Keep it low and underarm.
- Forgetting to let the serve bounce first. You must drop and bounce the ball before striking it.
- Smashing every ball flat out. Hard smashes often fly off the back glass and come straight back. Controlled placement beats raw power.
- Backing away from the glass. New players panic when a ball heads for the wall. Let it rebound, wait, and play it off the bounce.
- Standing too deep. Padel is won at the net. Move up with your partner rather than camping on the baseline.
Learn these rules, play a few games, and the rhythm clicks fast. The glass stops feeling like a hazard and starts feeling like a teammate. Onward.
