What Is Pickleball? A Complete Guide to the Sport
Pickleball is a paddle sport played as singles or doubles over a low net on a court 6.10 m by 13.41 m (20 ft by 44 ft), using a solid paddle and a perforated plastic ball. A serve struck on an upward arc with the ball no higher than the waist, or hit after the ball bounces, starts each point, and a no-volley zone 2.13 m (7 ft) deep on both sides of the net bars players from volleying close to the net.
- Pickleball is a paddle sport that USA Pickleball describes as combining elements of badminton, table tennis and tennis.
- The Sports & Fitness Industry Association counted 24.3 million US players in 2025, up 479 percent from 2020.
- A pickleball court covers about 82 m², just over 40 percent of a padel court and less than a third of a tennis doubles court.
What Kind of Sport Is Pickleball?
The 2026 USA Pickleball Official Rulebook opens by describing pickleball as a paddle sport that combines elements of badminton, table tennis and tennis. It is played with a perforated ball on a court of 6.10 m by 13.41 m (20 ft by 44 ft) with a tennis-type net, and the court is divided into right and left service courts with a non-volley zone at each end of the net. The rulebook’s introduction identifies USA Pickleball as the national governing body, and its first rulebook dates to March 1984.
Singles and doubles use the same court. Rule 3.A.1 sets the dimensions at 6.10 m wide and 13.41 m long for both formats, and the net is 91.44 cm (36 in) high at the sidelines and 86.36 cm (34 in) at the center (Rules 3.B.6 and 3.B.7). Indoor and outdoor play follow the same rules. Every approved ball is acceptable in either setting (Rule 3.C.1), though balls with larger holes are customary indoors and balls with smaller holes outdoors.
USA Pickleball publishes a new rulebook each year, and the 2026 edition runs to 25 sections. Its 2024 Annual Growth Report, published January 14, 2025, recorded 142 sanctioned tournaments and a National Championships in Mesa, Arizona that drew more than 2,600 players from 47 states and 13 countries.
Adaptive play sits inside the same rulebook. Players using wheelchairs, and players with certain disabilities, can let the ball bounce twice before returning it, and Section 25 sets out the rules for wheelchair, adaptive standing and hybrid doubles play.
How Is a Game of Pickleball Played?
Each point starts with a serve hit diagonally across the net into the service court opposite the server. The ball must clear the opponent’s non-volley zone and can touch the net on the way (Rule 7.E). The server either hits the ball out of the air on a clear upward arc, with the ball no higher than the waist and the paddle head no higher than the wrist (Rules 7.C.1 to 7.C.3), or drops the ball and hits it after it bounces (Rule 7.D).
Two bounces open every rally. The receiver lets the serve bounce before returning it, and the serving side lets that return bounce before hitting it (Rule 10.A). After those two bounces, players can volley the ball out of the air, except from inside the non-volley zone, the area 2.13 m (7 ft) deep from the net on each side, where a volley is a fault.
The server calls the score before every serve, and the whole call must finish before the ball is hit; a serve struck while the score is still being called is a fault (Rules 6.B and 6.C). In singles the call is two numbers, the server’s score and then the receiver’s, and a game starts at zero, zero. In doubles the call is three numbers, the serving team’s score, the receiving team’s score and the server number, and a game starts at zero, zero, two (Rules 6.B.1 and 6.B.2). A singles server serves from the right serving area when their score is zero or even and from the left when it is odd (Rule 5.A.1).
Under the pickleball rules, standard scoring awards points only to the serving side. The server keeps serving until a fault, and games typically go to 11 points, with the winner leading by at least 2. In doubles, both partners serve before the serve passes to the opponents, except at the start of each game, when only the starting server serves before the first side out (Rule 5.B). Rally scoring, in which the side that wins any rally scores a point, is provisionally approved as an option (Rule 14.A).
Where Did Pickleball Come From?
USA Pickleball’s history of the game dates pickleball to the summer of 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington, and says Joel Pritchard and Bill Bell started the game, with Barney McCallum joining the following weekend to help create the rules and equipment. The history records the first permanent court in 1967 and the formation of a corporation in 1972. The net began at badminton height, 1.52 m (60 in), and was lowered to 0.91 m (36 in), the height at the sidelines in today’s rulebook.
The sport formalized over the next two decades. USA Pickleball’s history records the first known tournament in 1976 and the organization of a national association, with the first rulebook, in 1984. USA Pickleball’s history sides with the pickle boat account, in which Joan Pritchard named the game after the leftover rowers in informal pickle boat crew races, and says the family dog Pickles was born in 1968, three years after the game began. The dog account circulated for decades, and the history records that Joel Pritchard later called it a joke he gave a reporter.
How Popular Is Pickleball?
The Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) counted 24.3 million Americans who played pickleball in 2025, according to its U.S. pickleball participation research, updated in June 2026. That is 479 percent above the 2020 level and 171.8 percent above 2022. SFIA describes pickleball as the fastest-growing sport in the United States over the past three years, as of that June 2026 update.
Compounding SFIA’s two published growth windows shows the pace. A 479 percent rise from 2020 to 2025 and a 171.8 percent rise from 2022 to 2025 imply about 46 percent a year from 2020 to 2022 and about 40 percent a year from 2022 to 2025. That is Racket Chronicle’s arithmetic and assumes a constant rate within each window, but it shows growth easing by about six points a year while the player count kept climbing.
The same survey year puts that scale in perspective. SFIA’s 2026 Topline Participation Report, released on April 13, 2026, counted 1,073,000 Americans who played padel in 2025, the first year SFIA tracked the sport, according to the United States Padel Association. The pickleball count is about 23 times larger. The two figures come from sibling SFIA publications on the 2025 survey year, the Topline report for padel and SFIA’s separate pickleball research, rather than from a single table.
A second dated source gives a much higher count. The Association of Pickleball Professionals (APP) reported on March 29, 2023 that 48.3 million adult Americans, nearly 19 percent of adults, had played pickleball in the previous 12 months, up from 36.5 million in its own August 2022 research. SFIA’s growth figures imply a far smaller base for the same period: a 171.8 percent rise from 2022 to 2025 puts SFIA’s 2022 count at about 8.9 million, and the APP figure is more than five times that. APP defines a player as someone who played at least once in the previous 12 months, but its release does not publish a sample or method, so the gap cannot be traced to a cause. Racket Chronicle treats SFIA’s 24.3 million as the benchmark and APP’s 48.3 million as a different measurement of the adult population from a method that is not public, not as a range for the same quantity.
Court counts trail participation figures by a year or more. USA Pickleball’s 2024 Annual Growth Report, published January 14, 2025, cited a Pickleheads database of 68,458 courts in the United States, with 18,455 added in 2024, and reported 62,260 USA Pickleball members. A Pickleheads statistics guide updated February 19, 2025 cites 70,641 courts and notes that its count includes tennis courts with temporary pickleball lines; it does not reconcile that figure with the 68,458 in the growth report. Taken together, the published counts put US pickleball courts between roughly 68,000 and 71,000 at the start of 2025, and the 2024 report is the latest edition found.
How Does Pickleball Differ From Tennis, Badminton and Padel?
Scale separates the four sports fastest. A pickleball court covers about 82 m² (13.41 m by 6.10 m). Padel’s court is 20 m by 10 m, or 200 m², under the FIP Rules of Padel, so a pickleball court is just over 40 percent of its area. A tennis doubles court is 23.77 m by 10.97 m (78 ft by 36 ft) under the ITF Rules of Tennis, about 261 m², more than three times the size of a pickleball court. Padel is played as doubles under the FIP rules, while pickleball, like tennis and badminton, is played as singles or doubles. Padel also adds an enclosure of glass and mesh walls that stay in play, while a pickleball that strikes a wall or other permanent object is a fault under Rules 10.C.4 and 10.C.5.
Net heights sit closer together than court sizes. Pickleball’s net, 86.36 cm (34 in) at the center and 91.44 cm (36 in) at the sidelines, is close to padel’s (88 cm at the center and 92 cm at the posts under the FIP rules) and tennis’s (91.4 cm at the center and 1.07 m at the posts under the ITF rules). Badminton is the outlier. The Badminton World Federation’s Laws of Badminton set the net at 1.524 m at the center, about 66 cm (26 in) above pickleball’s.
Equipment separates pickleball from tennis and badminton, whose rackets are strung. Pickleball and padel both use solid, stringless implements, but a padel racket is perforated, while a pickleball paddle’s hitting surface cannot contain holes (Rule 3.D.5.a). Pickleball vs tennis comes down to scale and the non-volley zone: a tennis player can volley anywhere on the court, while a pickleball player cannot volley from within 2.13 m (7 ft) of the net.
What Equipment Do You Need to Play Pickleball?
Pickleball uses a paddle, the word the rulebook uses for the implement. A pickleball paddle has to meet size limits: the combined length and width, including any edge guard and butt cap, cannot exceed 24 inches (60.96 cm), and the length cannot exceed 17 inches (43.18 cm). The rulebook sets no limit on thickness or weight (Rules 3.D.2 and 3.D.3), requires rigid, non-compressible material, and bans holes, rough texturing and rubber on the hitting surface (Rule 3.D.5). In sanctioned play a paddle also has to appear on the USA Pickleball Approved Paddle List, and a match forfeit follows if a non-compliant paddle is found while a match is in progress (Rule 18.A.2).
The ball is perforated, and the type of ball used in pickleball has to be a design approved by USA Pickleball (Rule 3.C.2). It must be one uniform color apart from identification markings, carry a manufacturer or supplier name or logo, and be made of durable molded material with a smooth surface (Rules 3.C.3 to 3.C.5). Balls with larger holes are customary indoors and balls with smaller holes outdoors, and every approved ball is acceptable in either setting.
The court and net complete the equipment list. The rulebook sets a minimum playing surface of 30 ft by 60 ft (9.14 m by 18.29 m) and recommends 34 ft by 64 ft (10.36 m by 19.5 m) for new construction and tournament play (Rule 3.A.3). The net should be at least 21 ft 9 in (6.63 m) long and 30 in (76.2 cm) high, hung between posts 22 ft (6.71 m) apart and edged with 2 in (5.08 cm) white tape over a cord or cable (Rules 3.B.2 to 3.B.4).
For tournaments, Rule 18.B.2 requires shoes with soles that do not mark or damage the playing surface.
What Do Pickleball Terms Like Dink and Kitchen Mean?
The kitchen is the common name for the non-volley zone, the area 2.13 m (7 ft) deep on each side of the net where a player cannot volley, and USA Pickleball uses the name on its own site. A dink is a soft shot hit on a bounce from the kitchen that arcs over the net and lands in the opposing kitchen, according to USA Pickleball’s glossary. The third shot drop is a similar soft shot, hit from the baseline by the serving team on the third shot of the rally so that the ball lands in the opponent’s kitchen and the serving team can move forward to the net.
An erne is a volley hit near the net from outside the kitchen, according to DUPR. The rulebook does not use the word, but the shot is legal when the player meets Rule 11.A, which requires every volley to be initiated outside the non-volley zone and lets a player contact the zone at any time except while volleying. A rally is the continuous play after the serve is hit and before the ball becomes dead, according to the rulebook’s definitions. A side out is the awarding of the serve to the opposing team after a singles player or doubles team loses its serve.
Pickleball FAQs
Is pickleball a real sport?
Yes. Pickleball has a rulebook that USA Pickleball revises each year, with the 2026 edition running to 25 sections, and an organized competitive circuit that included 142 sanctioned tournaments in 2024. SFIA counted 24.3 million US players in 2025 and says pickleball ranks among the top 25 most-played sports and activities in the United States.
Is pickleball one word?
Yes. Pickleball is written as one word in the USA Pickleball rulebook. Merriam-Webster lists it as a single-word noun for the game and, in a second sense, for the ball used in the game, with the plural pickleballs.
How do you pronounce pickleball?
Pickleball is pronounced PIK-ul-bawl. Merriam-Webster respells it ˈpi-kəl-ˌbȯl, which puts the main stress on the first syllable and a lighter secondary stress on the last. The middle syllable is the short, unstressed sound at the end of the word article.
Is a pickleball paddle the same as a racket?
No. The rulebook calls the implement a paddle, and a pickleball paddle has a rigid, non-compressible hitting surface with no holes, limited to 24 inches (60.96 cm) of combined length and width. People who search for a pickleball racket mean this same piece of equipment.
Who can play pickleball?
Anyone with a paddle and access to a court can play. USA Pickleball describes the sport as accessible to all ages and abilities, and its rulebook includes provisions for wheelchair and adaptive standing play. SFIA’s 2025 data puts the US player base at 57 percent male and 43 percent female.
Sources
USA Pickleball, “2026 Official Rulebook”
USA Pickleball, “History of the Game”
United States Padel Association, “Padel Surpasses One Million Players in the United States”
USA Pickleball, “2024 USA Pickleball Annual Growth Report,” January 14, 2025
Image: Depositphotos
