Padel Rules Explained: The Court, the Walls and the Score

The court, and why it is enclosed

A padel court is 20 metres by 10, with a net across the middle and glass and mesh around the outside. It is smaller than a tennis court in both directions, which is most of why the sport is quick to start playing: there is far less ground to cover and far less technique to learn before a rally becomes possible.

The enclosure is not a fence to stop the ball rolling away. It is playing surface. That single fact is what separates padel from every other racket sport, and everything below follows from it.

Playing off the walls

After the ball bounces on your side of the floor, you may let it rebound off your own glass and play it from there. What you may not do is let it touch your walls before it has bounced — the floor comes first, always. Get that order wrong and the point is lost.

The practical effect is that a ball flying past you is not gone. A shot that would be a clean winner in tennis is, in padel, the moment before the rally restarts, and pairs spend a great deal of the match positioning for the rebound rather than chasing the ball.

When a ball is out, and when it is not

A ball is out if it lands outside the court, or if it hits the opponents’ walls or fence before bouncing on their floor. Hitting the mesh on your own side after the bounce is fine; hitting it before is not.

The most spectacular case is the ball played out through the gaps at the side of some courts. Where the court has openings, a player may run outside and return the ball from there, and the point stands. Not every court has them, which is why the same shot is legal on one court and impossible on the next.

The serve is underarm, and that changes everything

The server bounces the ball once behind the service line and strikes it at or below waist height, diagonally into the opposite box. Two attempts, as in tennis. The ball may touch the side glass after landing in the box, but if it hits the metal fence it is a fault.

Because the serve cannot be a weapon, holding is not the near-formality it is in tennis. Breaks are ordinary, and matches are decided by what happens from the third shot onwards rather than the first. It is the reason padel is a rally sport rather than a serving one.

Scoring: tennis, with one change

Points run 15, 30, 40. Games run to six with a two-game margin, a tiebreak at 6-6, and matches are best of three sets. Anyone who follows tennis already knows how to read the scoreboard.

The change is at 40-40. On the professional tours there is no advantage: a single golden point decides the game, and the receiving pair chooses which of them takes it. It compresses matches, adds a great deal of variance, and is covered properly in our guide to the golden point.

The shots you will hear named

Two Spanish words come up constantly in commentary. The **bandeja** is a controlled overhead played to keep the pair at the net rather than to end the point. The **víbora** is its sharper, more aggressive cousin, cut across the ball to make the bounce awkward.

Both exist because ending the point is often not the best option available. Hitting hard usually just hands the opponents a rebound off the glass with better position than they had. The lob is the other shot that decides matches: it is how a pair pushes their opponents off the net and takes that ground for themselves.

Frequently asked questions