Pickleball Rules for Beginners: How to Play and Score

Pickleball borrows pieces from tennis, badminton, and table tennis, but its actual rulebook is short and easy to pick up in your first session. The official USA Pickleball rulebook covers every edge case, but you only need a handful of basics to play a fun casual game with friends - here's everything you need to know before you step on the court.

The Basic Goal

Pickleball is played on a badminton-sized court, either as singles (1 vs 1) or doubles (2 vs 2, the far more common format). Games are usually played to 11 points, win by 2, though tournament formats sometimes go to 15 or 21.

How Scoring Works

Traditional pickleball scoring only awards points to the serving side, which trips up almost every beginner at first.

• Only the serving team can score a point when they win a rally.
• If the receiving team wins the rally, no point is scored, but the serve passes to them (or to the second server in doubles).
• In doubles, each team gets two server turns per side-out (except for the very first serve of the game, which only gets one), so the score is called as three numbers: your score, your opponent's score, and which server you are (1 or 2).

A growing number of casual games and some tournaments use "rally scoring" instead, where every rally scores a point regardless of who served. Check with your group before you start; it changes the pace of the game significantly.

Serving

Serves are hit underhand, diagonally cross-court, and must clear the net and land in the opponent's service box, past the kitchen line. The paddle must contact the ball below waist height on an upward arc. Like tennis, you get one serve attempt per turn (no second serves), though a serve that clips the net and still lands in is replayed as a "let" with no penalty.

The Two-Bounce Rule

This is the rule that most separates pickleball from tennis. After the serve, the receiving team must let the ball bounce once before returning it, and the serving team must then also let that return bounce once before hitting it back. Only after both of those bounces can either side start volleying the ball out of the air. This rule exists specifically to slow the game down at the start of the point and prevent the serving team from serving and immediately crashing the net.

The Kitchen (Non-Volley Zone)

The "kitchen" is the 7-foot zone on each side of the net. You cannot volley the ball (hit it out of the air without a bounce) while standing inside this zone, or while your momentum carries you into it during or immediately after the shot. You can stand in the kitchen and hit a ball that has bounced; you just can't volley from inside it. This rule is why so much of pickleball strategy revolves around "dinking," soft shots hit from just outside the kitchen line meant to draw an opponent into a mistake rather than power the ball past them.

Faults

A "fault" ends the rally and either scores a point for the serving team or passes the serve, depending on who committed it. Common faults include:

• Hitting the ball out of bounds or into the net
• Volleying while standing in the kitchen
• Letting the ball bounce twice on your side before returning it
• A serve that lands in the kitchen or doesn't clear the net
• Touching the net (or the net post) with your body or paddle during play

What You Don't Need to Worry About Yet

Casual games almost never enforce things like exact foot-fault positioning on serves or precise let-serve calls, those matter mostly in sanctioned tournament play. For your first games, focus on the basics above: the two-bounce rule and staying out of the kitchen on volleys cover the vast majority of beginner mistakes. Everything else becomes second nature after a few sessions.