How to Play Pickleball: The Beginner’s Guide

A clear introduction to the court, serve, scoring, two-bounce rule and basic rally structure.

Pickleball is a paddle sport played either as singles or doubles on a 20-by-44-foot court. Doubles is the most common format. The objective is straightforward: keep the ball in play and win the rally by producing a legal shot your opponent cannot return.

The court and the kitchen

The non-volley zone — usually called the kitchen — extends 7 feet from the net on each side. You may enter it to play a ball that has bounced, but you cannot volley while touching the zone or its line.

How a rally starts

The serve is sent diagonally into the opponent’s service court. After the serve, the receiving side must let the ball bounce once; the serving side must also let the return bounce once. This is the two-bounce rule.

What happens after the two bounces

Once those two required bounces have occurred, either team may volley or play the ball after a bounce. In doubles, stronger players generally work toward the kitchen line because that position reduces the opponent’s available angles and gives you more opportunities to pressure the next ball.

Where to go next

Once the structure of the game feels natural, the most useful skills to develop are a reliable return, controlled dinks, resets and the third-shot drop. Those shots help you move from simply keeping the ball alive to constructing points.