Padel Serve Rules: How to Serve in Padel (the Right Way)

Almost everyone who picks up a padel racket for the first time does the same thing: they toss the ball up and swing at it like a tennis serve. It feels natural, it looks powerful, and it is completely against the rules. The padel serve is a gentler, friendlier beast, and once you understand why, it becomes one of the easiest parts of the game to learn. That is rather the point of padel: the sport is built to get you rallying within minutes, and the serve starts the point rather than ending it.

This is a plain-English guide to the padel serve rules: where to stand, how to strike the ball, what the walls have to do with it, and the handful of questions that trip up new players. Get these basics right and you will spend far more time enjoying the long, wall-assisted rallies that make padel so addictive.

Why the padel serve is underarm

In tennis, the serve is a weapon. Big servers can win points before the ball is even in play. Padel was designed to avoid exactly that. By forcing an underarm serve, the game keeps points alive and rewards positioning, touch and teamwork over raw power. It is a large part of why padel is so welcoming to beginners and so quick to pick up: nobody is going to ace you into submission on your first evening.

So the golden rule underneath all the padel serving rules is simple: the serve exists to put the ball fairly into play. Everything below flows from that.

How to serve in padel, step by step

Here is the whole thing in order. It takes far longer to read than to do.

Where to stand

Stand behind the service line, in the box on your side, somewhere between the centre line and the side wall. Keep at least one foot on the ground as you serve, and do not stand on or step over the service line until you have struck the ball. Cross the line too early and it is a foot fault, the padel equivalent of the tennis version.

The bounce and the strike

You must bounce the ball on the ground once and then hit it. You cannot hit it out of the air, and you cannot let it bounce twice before striking. Crucially, contact with the ball has to be at or below waist height. That waist-height limit is what keeps the serve underarm and takes the sting out of it. A good habit is to let the ball drop, then brush through it with a relaxed, low swing rather than a big wind-up.

Serve diagonally, cross-court

Just like tennis, you serve diagonally into the service box on the opposite side of the court. Your first point of a game is served from the right-hand side; you then switch sides after every point, serving from the left, then the right, and so on. The ball has to land in that diagonal service box before anything else happens.

Can you serve off the glass in padel?

This is where padel gets interesting, and where a lot of newcomers get confused. After your serve bounces inside the correct service box, the ball is allowed to carry on and touch the glass. If it bounces and then hits the side or back glass, the serve is good and the receiver simply plays it off the wall. That is not a fault, it is padel doing what padel does.

There is one big exception. If, after bouncing, the ball strikes the metal fence or wire cage (rather than the glass), the serve is out. So the glass is your friend on serve; the cage is not. And if your serve clips the top of the net and still lands correctly in the service box, it is a let and you take the serve again, exactly as in tennis.

The serve questions everyone asks

A few quick answers to the questions that come up on court most often.

Do you get two serves in padel?

Yes. If your first serve is a fault, you get a second serve. Miss both and the point goes to your opponents, so a reliable second serve is worth practising early.

Can you serve overhand in padel?

No. The serve must be underarm with contact at or below waist height. An overhand or overhead serving action is a fault, no matter how tidy it looks.

Can a padel serve bounce twice?

No. You bounce the ball once on the ground and then strike it. Letting it bounce a second time before you hit is not allowed.

Who serves, and when do you swap?

One player serves for a whole game. In the next service game it is the turn of a player on the other team, and your partner takes your team's following service turn, so the serve rotates around all four players. Within a game you keep switching sides after each point as described above.

Scoring, by the way, is the same as tennis: 15, 30, 40 and game, with deuce and advantage when it is tight, and sets are first to six games. At least the scoreboard will feel familiar.

A quick note on the 2026 rule refinement

Padel's serve rules are stable, but they do get the occasional tidy-up. From the start of 2026 the International Padel Federation refined the wording so that the ball you bounce must stay within your own service area before you make contact. In practice this changes little for club players and mainly makes line calls clearer on the professional tours. If you are learning the serve the honest way, stood behind your line and striking below the waist, you are already well inside the rules.

Turning a legal serve into a useful one

Because the padel serve cannot be a cannonball, the skill is in placement rather than speed. Aim first for consistency: a serve that reliably lands in and forces the receiver to move is worth far more than an ambitious one that faults. Once that feels solid, mix your target, sometimes serving out wide towards the side glass to open up the court, sometimes tight into the body to cramp the return.

None of this needs fancy kit, but a forgiving racket helps you repeat the same relaxed action without fighting the frame. If you are still getting set up, our ultimate padel racket buying guide covers shape, weight and balance, and our range of beginner padel rackets is a sensible place to start if control matters more to you than power right now.

The best way to learn the serve is simply to serve. Spend ten minutes at the start of your next session bouncing, dropping and brushing the ball cross-court, and the underarm motion soon stops feeling odd. Before long you will not think about it at all, and you can get on with the part everyone comes back for: the rally.