Pickleball is the fastest-growing paddle sport in the world, and it is easy to see why. It borrows the court from badminton, the net from tennis and the paddle from table tennis, then adds one rule — the kitchen — that changes everything. Games are short, rallies are long, and a complete beginner can hold a rally within minutes of picking up a paddle.

How Pickleball Works

Pickleball is played on a court 20 feet wide by 44 feet long, the same size as a badminton court, for both singles and doubles. A net divides the court. It stands 36 inches high at the sidelines and dips to 34 inches in the middle. Players use solid paddles and a hard, perforated plastic ball.

The court is split into service areas, and next to the net on each side sits the most important piece of real estate in the sport: the non-volley zone, known to everyone as the kitchen. It stretches 7 feet from the net on each side, so the two kitchens together form a 14-foot strip across the middle of the court.

Most games are played as doubles, two against two, although singles is played on the same court. The aim is simple: win rallies by hitting the ball where your opponents cannot return it, and be the first to 11 points.

The Core Rules

Five rules define pickleball, and four of them are about the serve and the kitchen.

The underhand serve. Every rally starts with a serve hit underhand, with the ball contacted below the waist, the paddle head below the wrist and an upward arc. The serve is hit diagonally into the opposite service court, and it must land beyond the kitchen. A serve that lands on the kitchen line is a fault. A serve that clips the net and lands in is fine — there is no let replay. The server must keep at least one foot behind the baseline while serving, and serves from the right side when their score is even and from the left when it is odd.

The two-bounce rule. After the serve, the ball must bounce once on the receiving side, and the return must bounce once on the serving side, before anyone is allowed to volley — to hit the ball out of the air. This double bounce rule stops serve-and-volley dominance and guarantees a rally.

The kitchen rule. You cannot volley while you are touching the kitchen, including the kitchen line. Step into it to play a ball that has bounced and that is fine, but your momentum after a volley must not carry you into the zone either, or it is a fault. This one rule keeps players back from the net and turns the area around the kitchen line into a chess match of soft shots, known as dinks, dropped just over the net.

Only the serving side scores. Pickleball uses side-out scoring. If the receiving side wins a rally, it wins the serve, not a point. In doubles, each player on a team serves before the serve passes to the other side, and the score is called as three numbers: the serving team's score, the receiving team's score, and the server number.

A ball on a line is in. Any line counts as in, with the one exception of a serve landing on the kitchen line.

Scoring

Games are usually played to 11 points, and you must win by two. If the score reaches 10–10, play continues until one side leads by two. Some tournaments use games to 15 or 21, but 11 is the standard.

Because only the serving side can score, games can swing quickly. A team that cannot win points on its own serve can watch a lead disappear, and a team trailing 10–2 can fight back simply by holding serve. Matches are usually played as the best of three or five games.

Formats and Major Competitions

The professional game is built around tours and team events. The PPA Tour is the leading professional tour, running events across the United States where the best players compete in singles, doubles and mixed doubles. Team competition has grown too, with franchise teams playing a season format.

Pickleball is governed internationally by the International Pickleball Federation, while USA Pickleball publishes the official rulebook used in the United States and sets the standard most of the world follows. The sport is not yet on the Olympic programme, but its growth — from community centres and converted tennis courts to dedicated pickleball clubs — has made that a regular topic of conversation.

A Brief History

Pickleball was invented in the summer of 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Joel Pritchard and Bill Bell came home from golf to find their families bored, and improvised a game on the property's old badminton court using ping-pong paddles and a perforated plastic ball. They lowered the net to 36 inches when they realised the ball bounced well on the asphalt. Barney McCallum joined them the following weekend, and the three men wrote the first rules together.

The name came from Joan Pritchard, Joel's wife, who said the mix of badminton, tennis and table tennis reminded her of a "pickle boat" — the rowing term for a crew thrown together from leftover oarsmen. The story that the game was named after the family dog, Pickles, is a popular myth: the dog arrived three years after the game was invented. The first permanent court was built in 1967, the sport was incorporated in 1972, and the USA Pickleball Association was founded in 1984 to standardise the rules.

How to Follow Pickleball

The easiest way in is the PPA Tour, whose events are streamed and widely covered, and the USA Pickleball website, which publishes the official rulebook and the calendar of major events. For new players, the fastest route to understanding the sport is to play it: most clubs run open sessions, and the basic rules — serve underhand, let it bounce twice, stay out of the kitchen on volleys — are enough to start a proper game on your first visit.