How to play padel.

Padel is a doubles racket sport played in a 20×10 metre glass-and-mesh enclosed court — "the cage" — with a perforated foam handle and a depressurised tennis-style ball. The walls are in play, like a giant squash court, but the scoring is borrowed from tennis. It was invented in Acapulco in 1969 and became Spain's second-most-played sport behind football.

Padel is exploding globally — the FIP and Premier Padel tours now run televised events on every continent. The reason is the same as pickleball: it is genuinely easy to start, the rallies are long, and the walls forgive a lot of beginner mistakes.

• — Size: 20 metres long × 10 metres wide. Roughly a third of the area of a tennis court.
• — Walls: glass at the back (3m high) and metal mesh on the sides. The ball can bounce off any wall after one bounce on the floor and the rally continues.
• — Net: 88cm high in the middle, 92cm at the posts. Lower than tennis.
• — Service boxes: 6.95m from the net, marked by a service line.

The walls being in play is the single biggest mental adjustment for tennis players. A ball that flies past you and hits the back wall is not out — it bounces, and you can play it. You learn very fast to keep your eyes on the ball, not your opponent.

• — The padel (the racket): a solid composite frame with a perforated face, no strings. Around 350g. Round shape for control, teardrop for balance, diamond for power. Beginners want round.
• — The ball: looks like a tennis ball but is depressurised — slightly less bouncy. Use real padel balls, not tennis balls; the bounce off the walls is wrong with tennis balls.
• — Court shoes: padel-specific or clay-court tennis shoes. Padel courts have an artificial grass + sand surface that needs herringbone soles.

Padel serves are underhand. You stand behind the service line (not the baseline), bounce the ball on the floor once, and strike it at or below waist height into the diagonally-opposite service box. The serve must land in the service box and bounce there before the receiver hits it.

You get two serve attempts, like tennis. A serve that touches the net cord and lands in the correct service box is a let — replay. A serve that lands in the service box and then touches the side wall is good (the receiver plays it). A serve that lands in the service box and touches the back glass wall before the receiver plays it is a fault.

• — Game: 0 → 15 → 30 → 40 → game. Win by 2 — at 40-40 (deuce), you need advantage and then game. Or use gold point.
• — Set: first to 6 games, win by 2. At 6-6, a tiebreak to 7 (win by 2) decides the set.
• — Match: best of 3 sets.
• — Gold point: at deuce, the next point wins the game outright. The receiving team picks which side they want to receive the gold point on. This is the standard at FIP and Premier Padel events and is increasingly used in club leagues to keep matches on the clock.

A ball is in play after it has bounced once on the floor on your side. Once it has bounced on the floor, you can let it carom off any wall (back glass, side mesh, even both) and then hit it back over the net. You can also play it directly off the bounce without using a wall. What you cannot do is hit a ball that has bounced on a wall before bouncing on the floor on your side.

You also cannot hit your own walls on the way back over the net. Your shot must clear the net into the opponent's side. The opponent's walls are then in play for them, but yours are not after you've hit it.

The single most important rule for new padel players: get to the net. Padel is an attacking, net-based sport. The team controlling the net wins about 80% of points at recreational level. After the return of serve, both partners should sprint forward and stand 1-2 metres back from the net.

The second most important rule: let it bounce when in doubt. If a ball is going to hit the back wall, do not try to volley it before it hits — it will come off the wall slowly and you will have an easy shot. Tennis players struggle with this because they have been trained to take the ball early.