Pickleball Rules in Plain English (And the Five People Argue About)

Every way to lose a point

Useful to have in one list, because most people learn these one embarrassment at a time.

On the serve. Missing the box, hitting the net and landing short, landing in the kitchen or on the kitchen line, serving before the score is called, foot faulting over the baseline, serving to the wrong box.

During the rally. Hitting the ball out, hitting the net and not clearing it, letting the ball bounce twice on your side, volleying before both bounces have happened, volleying while touching the kitchen, following your volley into the kitchen.

With your body or paddle. Touching the net or the post while the ball is live, reaching over the net to hit a ball before it has crossed, dropping your paddle and hitting the ball with something else, catching or stopping a ball that was going out.

The one nobody expects. Being hit by the ball while standing in the court. Even a ball that was clearly heading out of bounds. If it touches you, the point belongs to the other side.

If you are inside your first month, the four you are most likely to break are collected with the rest of the beginner problems.

Singles, briefly

Most of this page describes doubles, because most pickleball is doubles. Singles changes three things and leaves the rest alone.

Scoring is two numbers, not three. Your score and theirs. There is no server number because there is only one of you.

Where you serve from depends on your score. Even score, serve from the right. Odd score, serve from the left. It is a rule you will forget every third game and your opponent will remind you.

The kitchen and two-bounce rules are identical. No differences at all, which means the sport does not really change; it just gets much more tiring.

Who calls the lines, and the rule that ends the argument

In recreational play there are no referees, and the rule is simpler than people make it.

You call your own side. A ball landing on your side of the net is yours to call in or out. Your opponents do not call it and cannot overrule you.

Any doubt goes to your opponent. If you did not see it clearly, it was in. This is the closest thing pickleball has to a golden rule, and it is the difference between somebody people want to play with and somebody they do not.

You cannot call a ball out after you have played it. Decide, then hit, not the reverse.

A ball that hits you is your fault, even if it was going out. If you get hit while standing in the court, you lose the point. This surprises people constantly and there is no version of it where you win that rally.

Scoring, and why nobody can remember it

Doubles scoring uses three numbers, called out loud before the serve, in this order: your score, their score, and whether you are the first or second server.

So "eight, five, two" means your side has eight, the other side has five, and you are the second server on your team. When you lose the rally as first server, the serve passes to your partner. When the second server loses, the serve goes to the other team.

The exception at the start of a game. The very first service turn of the game only gets one server, and it is called as "zero, zero, two". The reason is fairness: without it, the team serving first would get twice as many chances to score before the other team touched the ball.

Call the score out loud, every time, before you serve. This is not ceremony. It is the only mechanism that catches a disagreement before it becomes an argument three points later, when nobody can reconstruct what happened.

The rules people forget

The serve has to clear the kitchen line. A serve landing in the kitchen, or on the kitchen line, is a fault. The other lines are all good.

You cannot touch the net. Not with your paddle, not with your body, not with your shirt, while the ball is live. Contact with the net is a fault even if you have already won the point.

One bounce, always, once the point is under way. The drop serve lets the ball bounce before you strike it, and that is the only place a bounce is optional. From the return onward, a second bounce ends the rally.

Switching sides. Partners swap sides after scoring, and only after scoring. If nobody scored, nobody moves.

What to do when somebody says you are wrong

Most on-court rule disputes are not really about rules. They are about somebody having played for two years and being certain, and somebody else having played for two months and having no way to check.

Three things that work:

Ask what specifically. "Which part?" resolves a surprising number of them in about four seconds.

Give them the point. In a recreational game, the point is worth less than the next forty minutes.

Worth separating from all of this: the written rules are only half of it, and the unwritten ones cause more friction than the real ones.

Look it up afterwards, not during. The rulebook is free and searchable. Being right on Tuesday is more useful than being right during the game, and it is a lot better than being the person who argued.

The short version

Serve underhand and diagonally. Let the first two shots bounce. Do not volley in the kitchen, but stand there whenever you like. Only the serving side scores. When in doubt on a line, it was in.

And when somebody tells you your serve is illegal, they are usually wrong and always confident. That combination is common enough in this sport that we made a shirt about it.

If you are still working out the kitchen specifically, we wrote a longer piece on just that, because it is the rule that confuses everybody at the start.