Pickleball looks simple from the sidelines, and the good news is that it mostly is. You can learn enough to play a fun game in about ten minutes. But a handful of rules — especially the serve, the two-bounce rule, and the no-volley zone — trip up almost every beginner. Here is everything you need to step onto a court and play your first real game.
A pickleball court is 20 feet wide and 44 feet long, the same size as a doubles badminton court. The net stands 36 inches high at the sidelines and dips to 34 inches in the middle. Games are usually played as doubles (two against two), though singles is common too. The 7-foot zone on each side of the net is the non-volley zone, almost always called “the kitchen.”
The serve is underhand. Contact with the ball must happen below your waist, and the paddle head must be below your wrist at the moment you hit it. You serve diagonally, landing the ball in the opposite service court, and the serve must clear the kitchen — a serve that lands in the non-volley zone is a fault. You get one serve attempt (there are no second serves like in tennis), although a serve that clips the net and still lands in the correct court is simply replayed in most modern rules.
Only the serving side can score points. You keep serving, alternating service courts after each point you win, until your team commits a fault.
This is the rule new players forget most. After the serve, the ball must bounce once on the receiving side, and then bounce once again on the serving side, before anyone is allowed to hit it out of the air. In practice that means the serve must bounce, the return must bounce, and only after those two bounces can players start volleying (hitting the ball before it bounces). The rule exists to neutralize the serving team’s advantage and create longer rallies.
💡 Easy way to remember it: “Bounce, bounce, then play.” The first two shots of every rally — the serve and the return — must land before anyone rushes the net to volley.
You may not volley the ball — hit it out of the air — while standing in the kitchen or touching the kitchen line. You can step into the kitchen any time to play a ball that has bounced; you just cannot be in it when you volley. A common fault is volleying a ball and letting your momentum carry you onto the line afterward — that still counts as a kitchen fault. The kitchen is what makes pickleball a game of patience and placement rather than pure power at the net.
Games are played to 11 points and you must win by 2. In doubles, the score is called as three numbers before each serve: your team’s score, the opponents’ score, and whether you are the first or second server (1 or 2). So “4–2–1” means your team has 4, the other team has 2, and you are the first server. It feels awkward at first and becomes automatic within a few sessions.
Because only the serving team scores, a side that keeps losing its serve can stall at the same score for a while. That is normal — winning the serve back is half the game.
That is genuinely all you need. Show up to an open-play session, tell the regulars it is your first time, and you will be playing real points within minutes. Court etiquette and the dink and third-shot drop come later — the rules above are the foundation.
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