Pickleball Rules and Scoring for Beginners: A Plain-English Guide

Pickleball has three rules that make it different from tennis or badminton: you serve underhand, the ball must bounce once on each side before anyone volleys, and you can’t volley from the 7-foot “kitchen” next to the net. Add the scoring system, where only the serving side wins points and games go to 11, and you know enough to join your first social game.

How big is the court, and why does it look like badminton?

A pickleball court is 20 by 44 feet (6.1 by 13.4 metres) for both singles and doubles, the same size as a doubles badminton court. That’s why Hong Kong’s government pickleball courts are converted badminton courts.

The net is lower than a badminton net: 36 inches at the sidelines and 34 inches in the middle. The key marking is the line 7 feet from the net on each side, which encloses the non-volley zone.

How do you serve?

Every point starts with a serve from behind the baseline, diagonally into the opponent’s service court, like in tennis. There are two legal ways to serve:

• Volley serve: hit the ball out of the air with the paddle below your waist, moving in an upward arc, with the paddle head below your wrist.
• Drop serve: drop the ball, let it bounce, then hit it however you like.

Spin serves have been banned since 2023. A serve that lands on the kitchen line counts as short and is a fault; other line touches are in.

What is the two-bounce rule?

This is the rule new players most often forget:

1. The receiver must let the serve bounce before returning it.
2. The serving side must then let the return bounce before hitting it.
3. After those two bounces, anyone can volley, hitting the ball before it bounces.

The rule removes the serve-and-volley advantage, so rallies last longer.

What is the kitchen, and what can’t you do there?

The kitchen is the official non-volley zone: the 7-by-20-foot area on each side of the net. The rule is simple:

• You can walk into the kitchen and hit a ball after it bounces there.
• You can’t volley while standing in the kitchen or touching its line, including if your momentum carries you in after a volley.

This is why so much of the game is played with soft shots, called dinks, that drop into the opponent’s kitchen. They can’t be smashed back, because the opponent must let them bounce or volley from behind the line.

How does scoring work?

Scoring is the part that confuses everyone at first:

• Only the serving side scores. If the receiving side wins a rally, they win the right to serve, not a point.
• Games go to 11, win by 2. Tournaments sometimes play to 15 or 21.
• In doubles, the score has three numbers: serving team’s score, receiving team’s score, then the server number. “4-2-1” means the serving team has 4, the receivers have 2, and the first server on the team is serving.
• Both partners serve before the serve passes to the other team, except at the start of a game. The first serving team gets only one server, which is why every doubles game starts at “0-0-2”.

In singles the score is just two numbers, starting at “0-0”.

Where did pickleball come from?

The game was invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, in Washington state, by Joel Pritchard, Barney McCallum and Bill Bell, who devised the game and its rules.

How should I learn as a beginner in Hong Kong?

The rules make more sense after ten minutes on court than after an hour of reading. Two ways to start:

• Join a social session or beginner class, where you can play the rules instead of memorising them.
• Book a lesson with a coach. Directories such as Pickleball Asia, which lists courts, players and coaches across Asia, are one way to find coaches near you.

Once you’ve played a few games, the next skill to learn is the third-shot drop, the shot that gets your team from the baseline to the kitchen line.