Padel serve rules, explained without the rulebook

You’ve been serving the same way since your first session. Bounce, swing low, get it in. Nobody has ever stopped a point to tell you otherwise, and there’s still a question in the back of your head about whether your contact point is legal.

It almost certainly is. The rules that quietly cost you points are the ones nobody reads: what happens when a served ball reaches the enclosure, and what the receiving pair may do with it. Both come up in ordinary matches, and both usually get settled wrong.

TL;DR

A padel serve must be bounced once behind the service line, struck at or below waist height with at least one foot on the ground, and land diagonally in the opposite service box. Once it bounces in, the glass is live and the metal fence is a fault.

Bounce it yourself, behind the line. Drop it in your own box, let it bounce, hit it. No toss, no wall.
Waist or below, foot down. Contact at or under waist level, one foot on the ground.
Diagonal, two attempts. Into the box across from you. Miss the first and you get a second.
Glass is live, fence is a fault. A serve that bounces in and finds the glass is playable; the metal fence before the second bounce is a fault.
The receiver has to let it bounce. Volley the serve and the point goes to the server.

What makes a padel serve legal

Every legal serve clears these, in order.

Set up behind the service line. One foot behind the line, inside the box you’re serving from, between the sidewall and the imaginary continuation of the center line. Stay put until contact, feet off both lines.
Bounce the ball yourself. Drop it and let it bounce once inside your own box. It can’t cross either line before you strike it, and no setting yourself up off a wall.
Make contact at or below waist level. That’s the entire height rule. No measurement is attached to it anywhere, which is why nobody wins an argument about it.
Keep one foot on the ground. At least one foot touching as you strike. This is the half of the rule that gets skipped: no hopping, no jumping into it.
Send it diagonally. Over the net into the box across from you, alternating sides point by point. You get two attempts, so a missed first serve costs only your second.

If the rest of the rule set is hazy, how to play padel covers the court, scoring and wall game.

Waist height is the rule that worries people and about the last one a social US match will call. We play, and the calls that happen are about where the ball went after it bounced.

Every way a padel serve is a fault

The fault list splits neatly: before contact it’s about you, after contact it’s about where the ball goes.

What happened	The call
You broke a condition above: stance, bounce, height, foot down, diagonal	Fault
You swing and miss the ball entirely	Fault
The ball lands outside the receiver’s service box	Fault, but a ball on the line is good
The ball hits you, your partner, or anything either of you wears or carries	Fault
The ball bounces in the box, then touches the metal fence before the second bounce	Fault
The ball bounces in the box and goes out through the gates, where out-of-court play isn’t allowed	Fault

That’s a plain-language summary, not the legal text. A disputed call turns on FIP’s wording, not ours, and the arguments live in the conditions rather than the rows: a ball on the line is good, and the fence only faults a serve before the second bounce.

Two faults in a row lose the point, so the first one is free. Use it.

Glass is live, fence is a fault

Here’s the argument that actually happens at a club. Your serve bounces inside the box, kicks off the side glass, and the receiver catches it and calls it out.

It isn’t. The fault list names the metal fence, and only the metal fence. A serve that bounces correctly in the box and then hits the glass is live, and the receiver can take it early or after the rebound. If you picked up somewhere that glass ends the serve, unlearn it.

The fence is a different animal. A served ball that bounces in the box and then touches the metal fence before it bounces a second time is a fault. The fence isn’t automatically fatal, it’s fatal in that window. Come off the glass, land a second time, then rattle into the mesh, and the server already has the point.

Which hands the receiver a decision. Play the ball, as your default. Off the glass it gives you time and a readable bounce. The exception is the wide serve clearly traveling into the metal after its bounce: leave that one and it faults itself, though misjudge it and you’ve gifted a point that was never in danger.

Glass, play it. Metal before the second bounce, let it go.

When a serve gets replayed

Some serves are neither good nor faults. They go again.

The net cord. A serve that clips the net or posts and still lands in the correct box is a let, as long as it misses the metal fence before the second bounce. A let on the first serve gives you both back; on the second, only the second is replayed.
The receiver isn’t ready. Serve before the receiving player is ready and it’s replayed. No fault can be called against a receiver who genuinely wasn’t set.
The limit on that. You can’t claim you weren’t ready after attempting the return. Swing at it and you’ve accepted it.

The words belong to the receiver: hand up, “not ready,” before the server bounces the ball. Not once it’s in the air, and not after a swipe at it.

What the receiving team can and can’t do

This is the rule most likely to be costing your pair points. The receiver has to let the serve bounce in their service box, then hit it before it bounces again. No taking it out of the air, however invitingly it floats.

The tell is the partner at the net. A serve sails wide and high toward them, weight already forward, racket already up, and the instinct that makes them good everywhere else fires at the one moment it shouldn’t. If the ball touches either receiving player or either racket before that first bounce, the point goes to the server. Not a fault, not a replay: the point.

Every other ball is fair game, and the padel volley is most of what holds the net. The serve is the one ball where the answer is racket down, feet still.

Who serves, from where, and when it switches

Before each set your pair decides who serves first, and that order can’t change until the next set. The receiving pair does the same, picking who takes the first serve of each game. By the second game the whole rota is settled for you.

Within a game you alternate: right side, then left, point by point, always into the box diagonally across. Partners can stand wherever they like on their own half, so if you’re still working out which side of the padel court suits each of you, settle that first.

Mistakes get corrected forward, never backward. Serve out of turn, or from the wrong side, and whoever should be serving takes over as soon as anyone notices, with every point already won standing. A first serve you’d already missed is the one thing that differs: from the wrong side it travels with you, out of turn it’s wiped.

Nothing gets replayed. Fix it and play on.

Golden point and tie-break serving

At deuce, some formats play one deciding point instead of playing out advantages. That’s the golden point, and it changes one thing about the serve: the receiving pair chooses which side to receive on, and can’t switch positions to do it. Win it, win the game.

Golden point is a format choice rather than a fixed rule, so the organizer picks it. Ask before the match, because deuce is a bad moment to negotiate.

The tie-break has its own pattern, and it’s the one people get lost in.

Whoever’s turn it is serves one point from the right. The opposing pair serves the next two, starting from the left. After that everyone serves two consecutive points until it ends. One point, then twos all the way down.

FAQ

Can you serve overhand in padel?

No. Contact has to be at or below waist level with at least one foot on the ground, and no overhand motion survives both. No measurement is attached to waist height anywhere, so there’s nothing to measure and little to dispute.

How many serves do you get in padel?

Two. If the first serve isn’t valid you’re allowed a second, and two faults in a row give the point to the receiving pair. A let doesn’t count against you: clip the net on a first serve and land it in, and you get both back.

Is a serve that hits the glass a fault in padel?

No. The fault list names the metal fence around the court, not the glass. A serve that bounces in the correct box and then hits the glass is live and playable, either before or after the rebound. The fault is the ball touching metal before the second bounce.

Can the receiver volley the serve in padel?

No. The receiver has to let the serve bounce and hit it before the second bounce. If the ball touches either receiving player or either racket first, the point goes to the server. That’s why a reflex volley at a wild serve, usually from the partner at the net, donates a point nobody had to lose.

What happens if you serve from the wrong side in padel?

Correct it as soon as somebody notices and carry on. Points already played stand, so nothing is replayed and nothing taken back. If you’d already faulted a first serve, that fault follows you into the correct position.

How to practice the padel serve

The serve is the only shot you can drill alone, which makes it the cheapest thing to fix.

Book a court and get there early. Find a padel court near you, bring a tube of balls, and use the empty end of the booking. Bounce, low contact, into the box across.
Pick the one fault you actually commit. Go back up the list and be honest: the foot creeping onto the line, the bounce drifting past it, contact rising as you tire. Fix that one.
Settle the glass call in the warm-up. Say it to the pair across the net before the first point, so it’s agreed rather than argued. Glass is live; metal before the second bounce is a fault.
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Nobody wins a match with their serve in padel. Plenty of people lose points with it.