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STANDARD DOUBLES – THE LOWDOWN

Pickleball thrives on doubles play! This social and exciting format has become the driving force behind the sport’s immense popularity over recent years. Learning the basic rules for doubles is critical, and we’ll break them down for you right here. If you are seeking to play competitively we suggest to head to the USAPA and have a good read of the complete rules book, which you can get to here.

THE SERVE
  1. The paddle cannot hit the ball above your waist.
  2. During the swing, the top of your paddle must stay below your wrist when hitting the ball. There’s one exception! You can do a “drop serve” where these restrictions don’t apply (think underhand bounce and hit).
  3. Stay grounded! When serving, your feet can’t touch the lines or court itself. At least one foot must be behind the baseline, either on the court or the ground behind it.
  4. Aim diagonally! Hit the serve diagonally across the court, landing within the opposite service box.
  5. No second chances! You only get one attempt to serve correctly.
  6. The ball must clear the opponents non volley zone, including the non volleyzone line.
  7. A ball which touches any part of any line, other than the non-volley zone line on a serve, is considered “in.”

 

SCORING

More often than not, it’s the scoring system that people new to the sport initially struggle with, but the concept is actually quite simple. The score typically looks like this 8-4-1. As you can see it is made up of 3 elements

  1. The serving teams score (8)
  2. The returning teams score (4)
  3. The server number of the person serving (1). 

 

TWO BOUNCE RULE

The ball must bounce on each side of the court before any player can volley it. (Hit it before it’s bounced). This rule removes the serve-volley advantage we see in tennis, and as such extends the life of rallies.

  1. The receiving team must let the served ball bounce in their service court before they can hit it
  2. The serving team must let the returned ball bounce in their side of the court before they can hit the ball

 

NON VOLLEY ZONE 

  1. An area on both sides of the net, which is 7ft in depth
  2. Also known as the Kitchen
  3. Players are not permitted to be stood in this area or on the line and volley the ball at any time in a point
  4. If when a players momentum from a volley takes them into the no volley zone, this is a fault
  5. A player can stand in there all point but they just cannot volley in there

 

KEY POINTS
  1. At the beginning of a new game, the serving team only have one serve, after their sideout and subsequent sideouts both teams servers, serve.
  2. Points can only be accumulated by the serving team
  3. Standard rec games are usually played to 11, and win by 2 clear points
  4. Tournament matches can be to 11, 15 or 21 and win buy 2 clear points