Padel vs Tennis: Court, Racket, Scoring and Physical Demands

Padel is played on a smaller enclosed court with a solid stringless racket and an underarm serve, while tennis is played on a larger open court with a strung racket and an overhead serve, and padel uses tennis scoring unchanged. Research comparing the two found singles tennis produces the highest cardiovascular and physical load, with padel sitting closer to doubles tennis while keeping the ball in play for a greater share of the match.

• A padel court is 20 by 10 meters (65.6 by 32.8 ft) enclosed in glass; a tennis court is 23.77 by 10.97 meters (78 by 36 ft) for doubles, with no enclosure.
• Padel rackets are capped at 45.5 cm (17.9 in) long and are solid and perforated; tennis rackets can run to 73.7 cm (29 in) and are strung.
• Padel’s default scoring is identical to tennis, including the tie-break at 6-6 and best of three sets.

What Is the Difference Between Padel and Tennis?

The court and the enclosure are the differences everything else follows from. The International Padel Federation specifies a padel court as a rectangle 10 meters wide by 20 meters long measured on the interior, with a 0.5 percent tolerance, entirely surrounded by glass and mesh that remains in play. The International Tennis Federation specifies a tennis court 78 feet (23.77 m) long and 27 feet (8.23 m) wide for singles, widening to 36 feet (10.97 m) for doubles, with no surround and a run-back area behind each baseline that is out of play. Padel is played on roughly half the ground, with four players on it, and with walls that keep points alive.

Nets differ by a surprising amount. A padel net is 10 meters long, 0.88 meters (2.89 ft) high at the center and rising to 0.92 meters (3.02 ft) at the ends, with posts up to 1.05 meters (3.44 ft). A tennis net is 0.914 meters (3 ft) at the center, suspended from posts at 1.07 meters (3.5 ft). The padel net is slightly lower in the middle and dips less toward the center than the tennis version, which suits a game where the ball is frequently played low off a wall rebound.

Rackets are not comparable objects. A padel racket is solid, stringless and perforated, capped by the Federation at 45.5 cm (17.9 in) for head plus handle, 26 cm (10.2 in) wide and 38 mm (1.5 in) thick, with holes between 9 and 13 mm through the hitting surface. A tennis racket may run to 73.7 cm (29 in) in overall length and 31.7 cm (12.5 in) in width under the ITF rules, with a strung hitting surface up to 39.4 by 29.2 cm (15.5 by 11.5 in). The padel racket generates less power by design and offers no string bed to shape the ball with, so spin and pace come from swing path rather than from the equipment, and the padel racket guide sets out how weight and balance replace the string choices a tennis player is used to making.

Balls look identical and are specified differently. A padel ball weighs 56.0 to 59.4 grams (1.98 to 2.1 oz), the same range as a standard tennis ball, but measures 6.35 to 6.77 cm (2.5 to 2.67 in) across against the tennis ball’s 6.54 to 6.86 cm (2.57 to 2.7 in), and it bounces 135 to 145 cm (53 to 57 in) from a 2.54 meter (100 in) drop against tennis’s 135 to 147 cm. A padel ball is slightly smaller and marginally lower bouncing, and its internal pressure is specified directly at 4.6 to 5.2 kg per 2.54 square cm rather than being regulated through deformation as tennis does it.

Is Padel Easier Than Tennis?

Padel is easier to start and the governing bodies say so. The Lawn Tennis Association states on its own padel versus tennis page that padel is generally considered easier to learn than tennis because of the smaller court, underarm serve and slower ball speed, that padel balls have lower pressure so the ball travels lower and slower and rallies are easier to start and maintain, and that the solid racket and enclosed walls give players more control and more chances to keep the ball in play while building confidence.

The serve is the largest part of that. Padel’s rules require the ball to be bounced on the ground before being struck and hit at or below waist level, sent diagonally into the opposite service box. A tennis serve carries no such restriction, which is why the tennis serve takes months to develop and is the single most common reason a beginner’s game breaks down. Removing it removes the barrier: a padel beginner can start a point on the first attempt.

Reaching a decent level is a different question. The walls that make the first rally easy make the tenth point harder, because a shot that would end a tennis point comes back off the glass and has to be played again from a worse position. Judging a rebound, choosing when to let the ball pass and take it off the wall, lobbing to displace a net pair and covering the smash are skills tennis does not teach, and a strong tennis player entering padel usually has to unlearn the instinct to hit hard. The beginner’s guide to playing padel covers the order those skills are best learned in.

Is Padel Harder Physically Than Tennis?

Singles tennis is the most physically demanding of the three formats studied. A 2023 study in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance by Armstrong, Reid, Beale and Girard compared match load across padel, singles tennis and doubles tennis, and found that heart rate, perceived exertion, limb discomfort, total distance covered, PlayerLoad and acceleration load were all higher in singles than in either doubles or padel. The same study found effective playing time was lower in singles and doubles tennis than in padel, and concluded that padel imposes a unique match load that more closely resembles doubles tennis, with players hitting a wider variety of shots and spending a higher percentage of the match actually playing.

That combination explains what padel feels like to play. A padel player covers less ground and works the cardiovascular system less hard than a singles tennis player, and spends more of the hour striking a ball, because the walls keep points alive and the small court means less time walking between them. An hour of padel is busier and less punishing than an hour of singles tennis, which is a large part of why the sport retains older and less conditioned players who have stopped playing singles.

Injury profiles are documented separately for each sport rather than in any head-to-head study. A 2023 systematic review in BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine by Dahmen and colleagues, covering eight studies and 2,022 participants, reported an incidence of 3 injuries per 1,000 hours of padel training and 8 injuries per 1,000 padel matches, an overall prevalence range of 40 to 95 percent, and the elbow as the most common site of injury, followed by the knee, shoulder and lower back. A separate 2022 study of 950 amateur padel players found tendon injuries the most common type, with shoulder and elbow the most affected upper body areas. No study compares padel and tennis injury rates within one cohort using one methodology, so what can be said is that padel has a documented elbow-dominant injury profile of its own rather than a proven advantage or disadvantage against tennis.

Do Padel and Tennis Use the Same Scoring?

Padel’s standard scoring is the tennis system unchanged. The Federation’s rulebook calls 15, 30, 40 and game, uses deuce and advantage, awards the set to the first pair to win 6 games with a two game margin, applies a tie-break at 6-6 which is won by the first pair to 7 points with a two point margin, and plays matches as the best of three sets. A tennis spectator can follow a padel scoreboard with no explanation at all.

The rulebook also sanctions alternatives, and this is where the two sports diverge in practice. The golden point, listed as an option in the same rulebook, replaces deuce with a single deciding point at three points each, and it is widely used in professional padel because it caps game length for scheduling and broadcast. A third option, the star point, was introduced as the default on the professional tour from January 2026. Recreational play generally uses standard advantage scoring, and a club match will look exactly like a tennis match on paper.

Format is the other constant difference. Competitive padel is doubles, played on the full 20 by 10 meter court, whereas tennis is organized around singles at the professional level with doubles as a secondary discipline. That single structural fact changes club economics, social dynamics and how a beginner experiences the sport, since a padel newcomer is always sharing a court with three other people and the padel rules page sets out the positioning and serving order that follows from it.

Should a Tennis Player Try Padel?

Tennis players transfer more than they expect and less than they assume. Timing, court sense, volleying and the ability to read an opponent all carry across directly, and a competent tennis player will hold their own in a first padel session in a way a complete beginner will not. The shots that do not carry across are the ones built around power: a full tennis groundstroke swing into a padel ball off a glass rebound sends it into the back wall and gifts the point, and the flat drive that wins in tennis simply returns in padel.

The practical differences are worth knowing before booking. Padel is always four players, so a session needs organizing rather than pairing up. Court hire in the United States generally runs $20 to $40 per person per hour, with rackets available to rent for a first session, which is covered on the padel court cost page. Shoes are the one item that carries over cleanly, since clay court tennis shoes use the same herringbone sole padel needs.

Scale is the last consideration and it runs the other way. The ITF’s Global Tennis Report 2024 counts just under 106 million people playing tennis across 199 countries. Padel’s own counts are far smaller and disputed between their sources: the Federation’s World Padel Report 2025 claims more than 35 million players, while the Playtomic and Strategy& Global Padel Report for 2026 estimates 19.4 million across 58,300 courts, describing its own bottom-up method as more conservative. Whichever figure is used, tennis remains several times larger globally while padel is growing far faster, and in the United States a tennis player will find a tennis court far more easily than a padel one.

Padel vs Tennis FAQs

Sources

International Padel Federation, Rules of Padel

International Tennis Federation, Rules of Tennis

Armstrong, Reid, Beale and Girard, A comparison of match load between padel and singles and doubles tennis

Dahmen et al., Incidence, prevalence and nature of injuries in padel: a systematic review

Lawn Tennis Association, padel vs tennis

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