Guides · Comparison
From a distance every racket sport looks like the same thing: two or four people, a net, a ball going back and forth. Up close they are built on different rules, and the rules are what make each one feel the way it does. Pickleball is not small tennis, padel is not tennis with walls, and “paddle ball” is at least four different games depending on which country and which decade you are in. This page puts them side by side.
| Pickleball | Tennis | Padel | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Court | 20 × 44 ft, open | 36 × 78 ft (doubles), open | 10 × 20 m (33 × 66 ft), enclosed in glass and mesh |
| Net height | 36 in posts, 34 in centre | 42 in posts, 36 in centre | 92 cm posts, 88 cm centre |
| Ball | Hard plastic with holes, low bounce | Pressurised felt ball | Felt ball, lower pressure than tennis |
| Implement | Solid paddle, no strings, ~8 in wide | Strung racket, ~27 in long | Solid perforated racket with a wrist strap |
| Serve | Underhand, one attempt, must clear the kitchen | Overhead, two attempts, into the service box | Underhand after a bounce, two attempts |
| Walls in play | No | No | Yes, after the ball bounces on court |
| Scoring | To 11, win by 2; traditionally only the server scores | 15–30–40, games, sets | Same as tennis |
| No-volley rule | Yes, the 7 ft kitchen | No | No (serve return excepted) |
| Singles or doubles | Both, mostly doubles | Both | Almost always doubles |
| Origin | Bainbridge Island, USA, 1965 | England, 1870s | Acapulco, Mexico, 1969 |
The obvious differences are size and pace: a pickleball court is under a third the area of a tennis court, and the plastic ball comes off the paddle far slower than a felt ball off strings. But the differences that change how you play are the rules, not the dimensions.
For tennis players the transition is fast in the first hour and slow after that. The hand-eye skill carries over; the instinct to hit hard and close the net does not, and it takes weeks to learn to wait at the line and dink.
Padel is the other paddle sport growing at a ridiculous rate, dominant in Spain, Argentina, Italy and Sweden and spreading everywhere else. It is closer to tennis than pickleball is: tennis scoring, a felt ball, a serve into a box with two attempts. What makes it its own sport is the cage. The court is enclosed in glass and mesh, and after the ball bounces on the court it can be played off the walls, like squash. Rallies are long because the walls keep the ball alive, and positioning is about angles off the glass.
The two are easy to tell apart on sight: padel has walls, pickleball has a plastic ball with holes. They also feel different. Padel rallies are long and looping; pickleball rallies are short and quiet at the kitchen line until someone speeds up. Both are easier to start than tennis and both are overwhelmingly doubles sports, which is why they have grown in the same social spaces.
This is where the naming gets messy, and it is worth untangling because the same two words describe several unrelated games.
If you are trying to work out which one you have been invited to play: walls and glass mean padel, a wire cage on a heated deck means platform tennis, a plastic ball with holes means pickleball, a single wall and a rubber ball means paddleball, and a beach means it is not a competition.
Pickleball, and it is not close. The court is small, the ball is slow, the serve is underhand, and a first-timer can have a rally within ten minutes. Padel is next, because the walls forgive misses and the serve is easy, though learning the angles takes a while. Tennis is the hardest to start: the overhead serve alone takes most people months.
Easy to start is not the same as easy to master. Pickleball’s learning curve goes flat quickly and then rises again at the kitchen line, where the difference between a 3.5 player and a 4.5 player is almost entirely patience, hands and the third-shot drop. That is the part of the sport that a tennis background does not give you.
Singles tennis, then padel, then pickleball doubles, in roughly that order of running. Pickleball singles is a real workout; doubles is a lot of short lateral movement and a lot of standing at the line, which is exactly why it works for people whose knees have retired from tennis. Injury patterns follow: tennis stresses shoulders and elbows, padel and pickleball produce more falls and calf strains from sudden short movements.
If you want to feel the difference before you find a court, the free online pickleball game on this site enforces the rules that make pickleball its own thing: the kitchen line, the two-bounce rule, the underhand serve, games to 11. It plays on a phone or a laptop with nothing to install. It is not tennis with a green ball, which was the whole reason it was built; the about page has that story.
Keep going: the two rules that make pickleball different, the kitchen and the two-bounce rule, and the exact court dimensions.
Or play a match and feel the difference.