Padel is doubles on a small enclosed court where the walls are part of the game. You serve underarm, score like tennis, and the ball can bounce off the glass and stay in play. It is the easiest racket sport to be immediately OK at, which is why 92% of first-time players come back after one session. This guide covers the court, the scoring, the serve, the walls, and the three habits that make your first hour genuinely fun.
Padel is the sport your friend will not stop talking about, and the UK numbers back the enthusiasm: from 15,000 players in 2019 to 1,000,000 in 2026, on 1,825 courts across 551 venues, with the player base heading past a million (LTA figures, 2026). Here is everything you need to walk on court for the first time and enjoy it, with nothing gatekept and no jargon left unexplained.
What is a padel court like?
Direct answer: a small enclosed doubles court, roughly a third the size of a tennis court, with a net in the middle, glass walls at the back and part of the sides, and metal mesh filling the rest. The walls are not the boundary of the game. They are part of it.
Sixty-second tour: you play two versus two. The glass behind you is your friend, because a ball that bounces on the floor and then hits your back glass is still live, and you can play it after it comes off. The mesh is spikier: the ball comes off it unpredictably, which everyone, including good players, finds mildly rude. There are service boxes like tennis, and a door or gap in the side, which advanced players occasionally sprint through to chase a ball out of the court. You will not be doing that on day one. It is fine. Nobody expects you to.
You will also need the right kit, which is mercifully short: a padel racket (solid, perforated, no strings, clubs rent them), regular sports clothes, and court-appropriate shoes with decent grip.
How does padel scoring work?
Direct answer: exactly like tennis: 15, 30, 40, game; six games win a set; best of three sets. If you can score tennis, you can score padel. If you cannot, you will learn it in two games because your partner will call it out for you.
The one wrinkle worth knowing: at 40-40 (deuce), many matches use a "golden point", one deciding point instead of the advantage system, with the returning side choosing which of them receives. Social games vary, so just ask "golden point or advantage?" before you start and enjoy sounding like a veteran. The full rules, underarm serve, one bounce, which wall combinations are legal, are laid out in the padel rules explained, and the scoring detail in how padel scoring works.
How do you serve in padel?
Direct answer: underarm. Bounce the ball behind the service line, hit it at or below waist height, and send it diagonally into the opposite service box, just like a tennis serve's geometry, minus the ballistic shoulder workout.
You get two attempts, and the serve must bounce in the box before anything else; after that bounce it may hit the side glass, but if it hits the mesh fence directly it is a fault. Then, and this is the tactical heart of padel, the serving pair moves forward to the net. The serve in padel is not a weapon, it is a key that opens the door to the net position. More on why that matters below.
What do the walls do?
Direct answer: after the ball bounces on the floor on your side, it can hit your back or side glass and remain in play, and you can also deliberately play your own shot off your back glass to send it over the net. The ball must always bounce on the floor before touching a wall on your side; a shot that flies over the net and hits your glass without bouncing is your opponent's point.
Walls are the thing that makes padel feel strange for the first twenty minutes and brilliant ever after. The instinct from tennis is that a ball past you is a lost cause. In padel it is usually not: turn, let it come off the glass, and you have a second chance at the shot, often with more time than you had before. Wall play rewards patience over speed, which is one reason padel is kind to first-timers and to anyone whose sprinting days are behind them. When you are ready to go deeper, how to play the back glass covers it properly.
What should I actually do in my first hour?
Direct answer: rally, do not compete. Spend the first 20 minutes just getting the ball over the net cooperatively, then add the walls, then play points. Padel's structure will do the rest, because the average rally at club level is short, about 4.7 shots (Ungureanu, Lupo & Brustio, 2022), and at professional level almost half of all points end inside 10 seconds (Martín-Miguel et al., 2023). You are never far from the next fresh start.
A simple first-session plan:
| Minutes | Do this |
|---|---|
| 0-10 | Gentle rallies over the net, no walls, no scoring. Find the bounce |
| 10-20 | Let balls go past you onto the back glass and play them after. Weird, then wonderful |
| 20-30 | Practise the underarm serve and the return, both crossed diagonally |
| 30-60 | Play points. Score properly. Laugh at the mesh |
And a reassurance backed by data: this sport is built for beginners to survive in. Even at professional level, only about 5% of returns are missed (Martín-Miguel et al., 2023). Getting the ball back is the whole entry-level game, and it is very learnable.
What are the three habits that make me instantly OK?
Direct answer: let it bounce, get it back, and stand either up or back, never in the middle. These three cover perhaps 80% of first-timer mistakes.
- Let it bounce. When in doubt, wait. The glass gives you a second life, the ball slows down, and most beginner errors come from attacking balls that did not need attacking. At club level, 65% of points end on an unforced error (Ungureanu et al., 2022). You win your first matches by simply not donating.
- Get it back. No winners required. A high, deep, unremarkable ball is a genuinely good shot in padel, and the lob is a first-class tactic at every level: lobs account for 85.4% of the shots used to get past the pair at the net in women's professional padel (Escudero-Tena et al., 2020). Boring is a strategy. Boring wins.
- Stand up or back. The two good places on a padel court are at the net or near the back glass. The middle, where balls bounce at your feet, is called no-man's-land for a reason. This matters because the net is where padel is won: 80% of points are won from the net zone (Martín-Miguel et al., 2023). You do not need to do anything clever there yet. Just be there, or be back, and move with your partner.
What about etiquette?
Direct answer: relaxed, but real. The basics: greet everyone at the start; call the score before serving; if a ball from another court rolls in, stop the point and replay it; send stray balls back to neighbouring courts between points, not mid-rally; own your line calls honestly; and end every match at the net, traditionally with racket taps or handshakes. Nobody minds errors. People do mind sulking. Padel's social contract is: try, laugh, rotate partners generously.
That is honestly the whole entry exam, and the pass rate speaks for itself: 92% of first-time players return after a single session (Playtomic Global Padel Report, 2025). One caveat worth carrying: several of the numbers above come from professional match analysis, and your first social hour will be slower, scrappier and funnier than any dataset. That is the point of it.
When you have a first proper match in the diary, read your first padel match: what to expect. And when you get curious about what your game actually looks like, PADEXA measures it from one phone video: every rally watched, one fix, your own clips as proof. First match free at padexa.ai.
If you want to keep pulling this thread: the bigger picture on padel analysis, then why am i not improving at padel?.
Sources
- Martín-Miguel I, Escudero-Tena A, Muñoz D, Sánchez-Alcaraz BJ (2023). Performance Analysis in Padel: A Systematic Review. Journal of Human Kinetics.
- Ungureanu AN, Lupo C, Brustio PR (2022). Padel Match Analysis: Notational and Time-Motion Analysis during Official Italian Sub-Elite Competitions. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(14), 8386.
- Escudero-Tena A, Fernández-Cortes J, García-Rubio J, Ibáñez SJ (2020). Study of position changes via the lob in padel. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
- Playtomic Global Padel Report 2025; LTA figures 2026.
More numbers: 45 padel statistics every player should know.