How to play pickleball, from the first serve to 11

Pickleball is two against two, or one against one, with solid paddles and a plastic ball on a 20 by 44 foot court: serve underhand and diagonally, let the serve and the return each bounce, never volley from the kitchen beside the net, and play on until someone misses. Only the serving team scores, the server calls the score before every serve, and the first team to 11 with a 2-point lead wins.

USA Pickleball says that within minutes or a single short session, beginners often grasp enough to play and have fun. Rule numbers are from the 2026 USA Pickleball rulebook.

15.0%

of volley serves were faults in videos of amateur doubles, against 6.1% of drop serves.Himawan et al., 2025, 510 serves

What do you need to play pickleball?

A paddle each, a ball, a court with a net, and one or three other people. In USA Pickleball’s words, all you need to get started is a paddle and a ball.

The ball is plastic, with 26 to 40 round holes. There are two kinds, and the rulebook says the one with larger holes is customarily used indoors and the one with smaller holes outdoors (rule 3.C). USA Pickleball’s paddle approval matters for tournament play, so for a first game any solid paddle will do, borrowed or not.

The court is 20 feet wide and 44 feet long for singles and doubles alike (rule 3.A.1), with a net 34 inches high in the middle (rule 3.B.7). On each side, the 7 feet nearest the net is the kitchen. Behind it, the centerline splits the rest into a right and a left service court.

Four players is the usual game. Two can play singles, and three or five can play too: our guide to playing with any number of people has a format for each.

Who serves first?

Decide it any fair way. The rulebook’s examples, written for tournaments, are a coin toss or guessing a number, 1 or 2, written on the back of the scoresheet. The winner chooses to serve, to receive or which end to start on, or lets the other team choose (rule 17.C.4).

The first call of every game is zero, zero, two. The team that serves first gets only one server on its first turn, and that player counts as the second server, which is the 2 (rule 5.B.2). They serve from behind the baseline on the right-hand side. Their partner usually waits back on the left, for a reason the two-bounce rule explains. Across the net, the receiver stands in the service court diagonally opposite the server, and their partner can wait up at the kitchen line.

How do you serve?

Underhand and diagonally, from behind the baseline, into the service court across the net. Our rules guide has the rules on where your feet go, how you swing and which lines count. You get one try: there’s no second serve as in tennis, and a serve that misses is a fault that loses your team the rally.

There are two legal serves: the volley serve, hit out of the air, and the drop serve, dropped and hit after it bounces. If your serves keep missing, try the drop serve. A 2025 study of 510 serves in videos of amateur doubles, at an estimated DUPR rating of 3.0 to 4.0, found that 15.0% of volley serves were faults against 6.1% of drop serves. It’s preliminary observational data, so it can’t prove the drop serve is easier for you, only that it missed less often in those games. Before your first game, hit ten drop serves from each side and count how many land.

What is the two-bounce rule?

The serve has to bounce before the receiver hits it, and the return has to bounce before the serving team hits it (rule 10.A). After those two bounces, anyone may volley, which means hitting the ball out of the air.

That decides where everyone stands at the start of a rally. After you serve, stay back near the baseline, because your team has to let the return bounce, and a deep return is hard to wait for if you’ve run forward. After you return the serve, you have time to move up to the kitchen line while the other team lets your return bounce.

Can you go in the kitchen?

Yes, any time you aren’t volleying. The kitchen, officially the non-volley zone, is the 7 feet on each side of the net, and its line is part of it (rule 3.A.4.c). You can’t hit the ball out of the air while you’re touching the kitchen or its line, and it’s still a fault if the volley’s momentum carries you in after you’ve hit it (rules 11.A.1 and 11.A.2). A ball that has bounced you can play from anywhere, kitchen included, and stay there as long as you like.

Our kitchen rules guide covers the odd cases, from a dropped hat to a partner holding you back.

How does a rally end?

With a fault, and the team that commits it loses the rally (section 2). A rally ends when the ball lands out, doesn’t get over the net (rules 10.C.1 and 10.C.2) or bounces twice before someone hits it, or when someone breaks a rule: a volley from the kitchen, a volleyed serve or return, or the ball hitting a player instead of a paddle. The full list of faults is in our rules guide.

Each team calls the lines on its own side, and a ball on a line is in, except a serve on the kitchen line (rules 8.A to 8.C). The line calls section of our rules guide has the rest.

If the serving team won the rally, it scores a point. If the receiving team won, nobody scores, and the serve moves on, to the server’s partner or to the other team (rules 5.B.5 and 5.B.6).

How do you call the score?

Before every serve, the server calls three numbers: their team’s score, the other team’s score, then which server they are, 1 or 2 (rule 6.B.2). The serving team’s score always comes first, so the call flips when the serve changes sides. This is how the start of a game goes, with your team serving first.

1. 0–0–2. You serve from the right and your team wins the rally. That’s a point, so you and your partner swap sides.
2. 1–0–2. You serve again, from the left, and lose the rally. On the first turn your team has only one server, so it’s a side out.
3. 0–1–1. The other team’s player on the right serves, calling their own score first.

Your score also tells you where to stand. The player who served first for your team belongs on the right when your score is even and on the left when it’s odd, whether you’re serving or receiving (rule 5.B.3). If you lose track, ask before the serve, and the other team has to tell you (rule 6.E.1). The Dink calls calling the score before every serve, loudly and clearly the most important etiquette rule of all. Our scoring guide plays a whole game out rally by rally, with a cheat sheet.

Rally Trace keeps this on your Apple Watch: tap the side that won each rally, and it works out the server and where everyone stands, then calls the next score out loud, so in your first game nobody has to remember whether it’s 1–1–1 or 1–1–2.

When do you switch sides?

Within a game, partners swap sides only when they score on their own serve, as in the first call above, so they don’t always end a game on the side they started.

Changing ends of the court is a tournament rule. In a single game to 11, a referee stops play for the teams to change ends when the first team reaches 6 (rule 21.B.1), and teams change ends between the games of a match (rule 21.F.2). In a casual game nobody calls it, so the four of you decide. Changing at 6 shares out the sun or the wind if one end has more of it.

How do you win?

Be the first team to 11 with a lead of at least 2 (section 1). At 10–10 the game goes on to 12–10, 13–11 or as long as it takes. Some tournaments play to 15 or 21 instead, still win by 2 (rule 15.C), and some groups play rally scoring, where every rally scores a point whoever served. In the standard game only the serving team scores, so the winning point always comes on your own serve.

Then make room for the next game. The Dink’s etiquette advice for when a game ends is to grab your gear, shake hands, and clear out so the next group can start.

What to expect at open play

Open play is a drop-in session at a club or park: no partner or booking needed. In The Dink’s beginner guide, you show up at a posted time, find the paddle lineup, and you’re into the next game.

The lineup is usually a paddle rack. In Selkirk’s description, players waiting for a court put their paddles in a rack, a fence slot or a holder, and when a game ends, the next four paddles in line rotate onto the open court. Selkirk says to rack your own paddle even if you came with friends, unless the facility has a clearly defined group system. Whether winners stay on, and how the rack works, varies from one place to the next, so ask a regular before you put yours down.

Sessions are often split by level: The Dink says courts are almost always divided by skill level and suggests asking which session suits you before you go. For a first visit, look for a beginner session, and tell the other three it’s your first time before the first serve.

Let your watch keep the score

Rally Trace keeps the score on your Apple Watch from your first game on. You press Play, pick who’s on court, leaving the other team unnamed at open play if you like, and say which team serves first, and after that all you do is tap the side that won each rally. The watch works out the score, the server and where everyone stands, calls the score out loud and outlines it at game point, and if you tap the wrong side, a turn of the Digital Crown takes it back. When the game ends, one tap saves it to your iPhone.

Scoring is free, and so is what builds up from it: your record with every partner and against every opponent, your history, and your heart rate in each game. Rally Trace Pro adds how often you win the rally on your serve and on theirs, and your win rate month by month. If you don’t have a watch, your iPhone can keep the score rally by rally on its own. Get Rally Trace on the App Store before your first game, and the score is one less thing to learn.