Padel is the world's fastest-growing racket sport, a mix of tennis and squash played on a small enclosed court where the walls are part of the game. It is almost always played as doubles, it is easy to learn, and rallies last far longer than in tennis because the ball can be played off the glass. Here is everything a new fan needs to know.

The court

A padel court is 20 metres long and 10 metres wide, about a third of the size of a tennis court, and it is enclosed by walls. The back walls and parts of the side walls are glass, standing about 3 metres high, with metal mesh fencing above them up to about 4 metres. A net divides the court in half, at 0.88 metres high in the centre and 0.92 metres at the posts.

Service lines run 6.95 metres from the net on each side, with a centre line dividing the two service boxes. The full width of the court is always in play, and there are no tramlines to worry about. Padel is played with a solid racket with holes rather than strings, and a ball similar to a tennis ball but slightly smaller and with less pressure.

The serve

The serve is underhand, and there is no overhead serve in padel. The server stands behind the service line, bounces the ball once on the ground, and strikes it at or below waist height. Both feet must stay behind the service line during the serve.

The serve is hit diagonally, cross-court, and must land in the opponent's service box. It may hit the side wall after bouncing, but it cannot hit the back wall directly on the serve. The serve is not a weapon in padel the way it is in tennis: it starts the rally, and the point is usually won in the exchanges that follow.

The walls: the heart of the game

The walls are what make padel different from every other racket sport. After the ball has bounced once on your side of the floor, you can let it rebound off your own back or side glass and play it back over the net. The ball stays live, and rallies that would be over in tennis keep going.

There are two rules that matter most. First, the ball must bounce on the floor before it hits a wall. If it hits the back wall before bouncing, the point is over. Second, your shot must travel over the net and bounce on the opponent's floor before it touches their wall. You cannot hit the ball directly into the opponent's wall, and you cannot play the ball off your own wall to get it to the other side.

You can volley, hitting the ball before it bounces, during a rally, but never on the return of serve. In professional matches, players sometimes run outside the court through side openings to retrieve a ball that has gone over the glass, although that is an advanced move rarely seen in club play.

Scoring

Padel uses the same scoring as tennis. Points within a game go 15, 30, 40 and game. At 40-40, known as deuce, there are three formats under the International Padel Federation rules: the traditional advantage format, in which a game must be won by two points; the golden point, a single sudden-death point in which the receiving team chooses which side receives; and the Star Point, used on Premier Padel and the FIP tours since 2026, in which advantage is played up to two times before a deciding point settles the game.

A set is won by the first pair to reach six games with a two-game advantage. At 6-6, a seven-point tiebreak is played, won by two points. Matches are normally best of three sets. Players switch sides after every odd game, just as in tennis.

Formats and major competitions

The sport is governed by the International Padel Federation, the FIP, founded in Madrid on July 12, 1991. The FIP runs the World Padel Championships, first held in Madrid and Seville in 1992, and the CUPRA FIP Tour, its international circuit.

The professional game is led by Premier Padel, launched in 2022 as the official global tour governed by the FIP. In 2024 it merged with the World Padel Tour to form a single unified professional circuit, with Major tournaments on four continents. Spain and Argentina remain the sport's heartlands, but padel is now played in more than 90 countries.

A brief history

Padel was invented in 1969 by Mexican businessman Enrique Corcuera, who wanted a tennis court at his home in Acapulco but did not have the space. He built a smaller court, walled it in so the balls would not fly into his neighbours' yards, and the walls became part of the game. His wife Viviana wrote the first set of rules.

The game reached Spain in 1974, when Corcuera's friend Prince Alfonso de Hohenlohe built courts at his Marbella club, and it spread from there to Argentina, where it became a national obsession. The FIP was founded in 1991 to standardise the rules worldwide, and the professional tours of the 2000s and 2010s turned padel into a global sport.

How to follow it

If you are new to padel, watch the walls, not just the ball. The best players use the glass deliberately, letting the ball come off the back wall to buy time or to set up an attacking shot. Watch the positioning too: good pairs move together, and the team that controls the net usually controls the point. And remember that the serve is gentle, so the real contest starts after it, in rallies that reward patience and teamwork more than power.