A Quick Overview On How To Keep Score In Pickleball

It is easy to learn how to keep score in pickleball if you know how everything works in pickleball and some little-known secrets that we will discuss near the end. Without delaying you thirsty readers from the fountain of information we have here, let’s get started.

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How to Play Pickleball and Keeping Score in Pickleball:

In case you haven’t heard already, pickleball is an internationally-played game, much similar to tennis (and ping-pong somehow), but is played in the court which is equal in size to a badminton court. Each state in the US has at least one pickleball court, and we are speaking both indoors and outdoors. Keeping score in the simple game of pickleball is fun and easy as you will learn.

Before knowing about pickleball scoring basics, you need to have a clear concept and idea of what goes in pickleball and what means what.

For this reason, we suggest you go through our other two articles on rules of pickleball and non-volley zone (kitchen) rules. If you already read these, we can say that you are now well knowledged about the basic rules of this game.

Now we can move forward to know more about scoring rules of this game.

Pickleball Scoring Rules

Only the serving side scores, with their ability or disability to do so. The serves till a fault. For doubles, teams serve until they fault and hand over the Serve, called a Side Out. As easy as it is in singles, there’s something you need to know for the doubles.

In doubles, each player of the team gets to serve at least one time. Whoever is on the right serves first, and the one on the left serves second. 

But it isn’t like our team served twice, now it’s time for your team to serve. Rather, we serve as long as a fault, if our first Serve scores a point. We score, we keep serving. After a Side-Out, it’s time for the opponents to be in the game of serving.

Again, you score with a lead of two points. So if you are on 10-10, you can’t stop at the usual benchmark of 11, because you have to make a difference of two points.

Calling Out Scores 

The server number is yelled at first or second before he/she serves, after what the scoreline is. So, if the server scores 3 and the receiving scores 2, you can call out the score as 3-2-first, if it the time of the first person to serve or 3-2-second if the second person will serve next. There may be referees or not, so it will be wise if you call your score out yourself before serving. Clears confusion and chances of a fault.

Where To Stand in Pickleball

For singles, you start at the right, then your opponent is on the left. For doubles, let’s think players 1 and 2 are on team A, and players 3 and 4 are on B. 1 standing in the right plays diagonally to 3 in the left, on the opposite side. 2 stands parallel to 1, on the left side. On the other hand, 4 stands just near enough to the net, where the non-volley zone ends.

Pickleball Scoreboard

3-2-1.

Using the example above, and that we did mention earlier. This is what the scoreboard will look like. 3 is the current server’s score. 2 is the score of the receiver. The last number can be a 1 or 2, which means it is time for the server or receiver to hit. The servers score always comes first.

Pickle Rally Scoring

Games played under rally point scoring feature 2 numbers, not 3, on the scoreboard, because in the rally point scoring there is no second server. Also, players of a team have one service per serve, but they do alternate in the middle. That is, the same server scoring the point serves next.

Better Pickleball describes scoring rules what we found best. Hope it will help.

Conclusion:

We can’t but thank you enough for sticking till the end!

We hope you’ve learned something and now know how to keep score in pickleball like a pro!