Pickleball Rules: How to Play, Score, and the Kitchen

Pickleball rules and how to play pickleball, from serve to game point

Whether you’re about to play your first game or you’re mid-rally arguing a line call, these pickleball rules cover the court, the serve, the two-bounce rule, the kitchen, scoring, faults, and how a game ends — the same rules a first-timer needs and the ones that settle arguments mid-match.

The court and equipment

A pickleball court is 20 feet wide and 44 feet long — the same footprint as a doubles badminton court — divided in half by a net set to 36 inches at the posts and 34 inches at the center. Each half runs 22 feet from the net to its baseline.

Painted lines mark the baseline at each end, two sidelines, and a centerline that splits each half into a left and right service court — except that the centerline stops at the kitchen line and does not run through the non-volley zone, because nobody serves into the kitchen. Each player needs a solid paddle; the ball is a lightweight perforated plastic ball, with slightly different hole patterns for outdoor and indoor play.

Serving

The serve starts every rally. The server stands behind the baseline, outside the sideline’s imaginary extension, and must contact the ball below waist height with an upward-swinging stroke — no overhand serves. The ball is struck in the air (a traditional serve) or dropped and struck after it bounces (a drop serve, which has no height or swing-path restriction and is a legal alternative under current rules). The serve must travel diagonally and land in the opposite service court, clearing the net and the non-volley zone; a serve that clips the net and still lands in is in play.

Worked example: at the start of a doubles game the score is called “0-0-2” — serving team’s points, receiving team’s points, and server number. Only the second server gets to serve on the very first service turn of the game, which balances out the advantage of serving first. Dana (server 2) serves diagonally from the right-hand court to the opposing right-hand service court. If Dana wins the rally, she serves again, now from the left court, to the opposing left-hand court, and the score becomes “1-0-2.” If Dana’s team instead loses the rally on her serve, there’s no second server to take over since server 1 never served this turn, so the serve passes straight to the other team — a side-out.

The two-bounce rule

The serve and its return must each bounce once before either side is allowed to volley (hit the ball before it bounces). After those two bounces, both sides are free to volley or play the ball off the bounce for the rest of the rally.

Worked example: Dana serves to Eli. The ball bounces once in Eli’s court — required before Eli may touch it. Eli lets it bounce and drives a groundstroke back across the net. That return must now bounce once in Dana’s court before Dana or her partner can touch it — if either volleys it out of the air at this point, it’s a fault. Once both of those bounces have happened, the two-bounce rule is satisfied for the rest of that rally, and anyone can volley.

The non-volley zone (the kitchen)

The non-volley zone — universally nicknamed the kitchen — is the 7-foot strip on each side of the net, running the full 20-foot width of the court. No player may volley a ball while any part of a foot, their paddle, or anything they’re carrying is touching the kitchen or its boundary line. A player who volleys and then is carried by their own momentum into the kitchen has still committed a fault, even if contact with the ball happened outside the zone. Once the ball has bounced, though, a player may step into the kitchen and play it off the bounce — the restriction is only on volleys.

Scoring and calling the score

This page describes the standard, far more common format: side-out scoring, where only the serving side can add to the score. A rally that the serving side loses doesn’t change the score — it’s a side-out, meaning the serve (and, in doubles, the chance to serve again) passes to the other side.

In doubles, the score is called as three numbers: the serving team’s score, the receiving team’s score, then the server number (1 or 2) — for example “4-2-1.” In singles there’s only one server per team, so the call drops to two numbers, like “4-2.” Where a serving side scores a point, the server switches service courts (right to left or back) before serving again; lose the rally and either the partner serves next (doubles) or the serve passes to the other side (singles).

Some leagues and some professional tour formats use rally scoring instead, where every rally awards a point to whoever won it regardless of who served, and games commonly run to 15 or 21 instead of 11. The 2026 rulebook formalises the approved rally-scoring formats and lets a tournament director choose them for most events, but side-out remains the default for recreational play and for sanctioned amateur tournaments, and the professional tours differ from each other on it. Either way, win-by-2 applies: at 10-10 (or 14-14, or 20-20) play continues until one side is two points clear.

Faults

A fault ends the rally immediately and hands a point or the serve to the other side. The faults that come up most often:

• Hitting the ball into the net, or so it lands outside the court.
• Volleying before the two-bounce rule has been satisfied for that rally.
• Volleying while touching the non-volley zone or its line, including from carried-in momentum.
• A serve that lands outside the correct diagonal service court, or a foot fault — stepping on or in front of the baseline, or outside the sideline’s extension, before contact.
• Catching or carrying the ball on the paddle (a “double hit” from the same unbroken stroke is legal; a second, separate strike is not) rather than returning it in one clean motion.
• Touching the net or net posts with body, clothing, or paddle while the ball is in play.

How a game ends

A game ends the moment one side reaches the target score — 11 in standard play, or 15/21 in some tournament formats — with a lead of at least 2 points. A match is normally decided by winning two games out of three, with a tie-break third game played to 11 (sometimes 15) if the first two split.

Singles vs. doubles

Singles and doubles share the same court and the same two-bounce and kitchen rules, but serving differs. In doubles, each team gets two servers per service turn — except for the very first server of the game, as in the worked example above — and the serving player always serves from the right-hand court when their team’s score is even and the left when it’s odd. Singles has only one server per side, so a lost rally is always a side-out, and the server alone (not a rotating partner) tracks whether to serve from the right or left based on their own score being even or odd. Doubles score calls carry the extra server-number digit; singles calls don’t.

Common variations and house rules

• Drop serve. Many recreational and some sanctioned games allow the server to drop the ball and strike it after the bounce instead of serving it out of the air, skipping the upward-swing and contact-height requirements of a traditional serve.
• Rally scoring. Used at much professional/tour-level play and in some leagues: every rally scores, not just the serving side, usually to 15 or 21 points, still win by 2.
• Skinny singles. A practice/drilling variant played crosscourt on half the width of the court, useful for working on shot placement without full-court coverage.
• Stacking. A doubles positioning tactic where partners swap sides after the serve to keep a preferred forehand/backhand matchup, legal as long as both players are in a valid position at the moment the ball is served.