Padel rules

How to play padel: the short version

Four players, two a side, on a court with glass walls. One pair serves for a whole game, and the serve goes underarm and diagonally, after the ball has bounced once behind the service line. The receiving pair lets it bounce, then returns it — and from there the rally is open.

The bit that takes ten minutes to get used to: the walls are yours to use. When the ball bounces on your floor, it may carry on into your own glass, and you can still play it back. What you cannot do is hit it straight into the opponents' glass — your shot has to bounce on their floor first.

Points run 15, 30, 40, game, exactly as in tennis, and six games win a set. Nobody serves overarm, nobody is knocked out of a rally for touching the walls, and beyond that it plays like doubles with longer points. If you can rally in tennis, you can play padel within a set.

The court, the net and the glass

The court is 20 m long and 10 m wide, split across the middle by a net that is 88 cm high at the centre and 92 cm at the posts. Service lines run 6.95 m from the net on each side, and a centre line splits each half into two service boxes.

The enclosure is the part that surprises people coming from tennis. At the back the wall runs 3 m high with a further metre of metal mesh above it, so the ends enclose 4 m in total. The sides mix wall and mesh, and all of it is in play. A ball that bounces on the floor and then hits your own glass can still be returned — that rally-extending rebound is the shot padel is built around.

How the serve works

The serve is underarm and there is no way around it:

• Stand with one foot behind the service line, between the centre line and the side wall, and stay there until the ball is served.
• Bounce the ball on the ground first, inside the area you are serving from, then strike it.
• Contact must be at or below waist height, with at least one foot on the ground.
• Serve diagonally, into the service box opposite.
• You get two attempts, exactly as in tennis.

That rules out the three things beginners most often ask about. You cannot walk or run into the serve, because the foot has to stay put until the ball is gone. You cannot jump, because a foot must be in contact with the ground at the moment you strike. And you cannot throw the ball up and hit it out of the air — the bounce is compulsory.

After the ball lands in the correct box it may touch the side glass and stay in play. If it touches the metal fence before the second bounce, it is a fault. And if the serve clips the net but still lands in the right box, it is a let: replay it, with the same number of serves you had.

The receiver has one restriction worth knowing before a first match: you cannot volley the serve. Let it bounce, then play it — take it out of the air and the point goes to the server.

The walls and the fence: the rule that settles most arguments

Almost every on-court disagreement is a version of the same question, and the answer depends on whose side the ball is on.

On your own side, after the ball has bounced on the ground, it may rebound off anything — the glass, the corner, the metal fence — and you may still play it. You may also take it out of the air as a volley before it bounces at all. What you cannot do is let it bounce twice, or play it after it has touched your own fence or ground following your own shot.

On the opponents' side, your shot must bounce on their ground first. Hit their glass, their fence or their corner on the full and the point is theirs. This is exactly why the lob is such a weapon: it forces a deep bounce and pushes them back into their own glass.

Two outcomes people rarely know: if your shot bounces correctly in their court and then lodges in a hole in the fence, or comes to rest on the flat top of the wall, the point is yours. And a return that bounces into the corner where the wall meets the ground is perfectly good — the corner is not a special case.

Scoring: 15, 30, 40 — and what happens at deuce

Points run 15, 30, 40, game. Six games win a set, and at 6-6 you play a tie-break, won by the first pair to 7 with two clear points. Most matches are best of three sets.

At 40-40 the sport splits into three official options, and every organiser has to pick one:

• Golden point. One deciding point at deuce. The receiving pair chooses which side receives it, but may not swap positions. This is what professional padel plays, and it is what keeps a match to a predictable length.
• Star point. Up to two advantages; if the game reaches deuce a third time, a deciding point settles it. A middle road between the other two.
• Advantage. The traditional rule — win by two, for as long as it takes.

The rulebook also recognises shorter formats you can borrow for a busy evening: a mini set of four games, a tie-break to 7 in place of a deciding set, or a super tie-break to 10.

The choice is not cosmetic if you are running an evening: advantage adds roughly 15 minutes to a best-of-three match compared with golden point, and that is per court, per round.

When you lose the point

• The ball bounces twice on your side.
• The ball hits you or your partner, anywhere, after your own side has played it.
• Your shot goes into the net, or touches your own fence or ground after you have hit it.
• Your shot hits the opponents' wall, fence or any fixture before bouncing on their ground.
• You hit the ball twice, or you and your partner both play it.
• You volley the serve, or you serve two faults in a row.
• You touch the net, the posts or the opponents' court while the ball is live.
• You jump over the net, or throw your racket at the ball.

Two of those have a footnote worth knowing. It is not a double hit when both of you swing and one of you strikes the ball while the other only hits their partner's racket. And where the venue has doors and out-of-court play is allowed, you may run outside the court and play a ball that has already bounced in — legal, spectacular, and how most padel highlight reels start.

Can you play padel singles?

You can, but it is not quite the same sport. The official rules describe padel as a doubles game — a pair on either side of the net — so there is no singles chapter in the rulebook and no singles category at professional level.

In practice clubs play it two ways. Some have a dedicated singles court, noticeably narrower than the 10 m doubles court, which keeps the rallies honest. Others simply play singles on a normal court, usually agreeing to treat part of the width as out, because covering 10 m alone turns the game into a fitness test.

Everything else carries over unchanged: the same underarm serve, the same walls, the same scoring. If you are three players rather than two, a rotating format such as an Americano is almost always a better evening than forcing singles onto a doubles court.

The rules that matter for a club night

Everything above is the rulebook. Running an evening asks two more questions the rulebook does not answer: how long each match is, and how you decide who plays whom.

For length, pick a match format and stick to it across the courts — best of three with a super tie-break in the third, one set, a mini set of four games, or just a super tie-break to 10 when the hall closes in ninety minutes. For a social night, most clubs drop games entirely and play to a target score, usually 16, 21 or 24 points, which lands a round in the 12–15 minute range. Worth knowing if you are timing rounds: the rules allow 20 seconds between points and 90 seconds at a change of ends.

For who plays whom, that is what a format is. An Americano switches your partner every round and scores you individually; a Mexicano lets the standings pick the next match; a Monrad ranks a whole field of fixed pairs in a few rounds. PadelLoop draws the rounds, applies the scoring you chose and keeps the table live — and the match scoreboard will score a single match point by point, golden point and star point included.

Sources: this page follows the Rules of Padel published by the International Padel Federation (FIP), the body that sets the laws of the game. Court and net dimensions, the serve, faults, the wall and fence rules and the three deuce options are all taken from it. Club-night guidance — target scores, round lengths — is our own, and is marked as such.