In racquet sports like badminton and tennis, it is often seen that a rally scoring system is used. A rally is the exchange of shots that takes place in a racquet sport between the two opponents when they hit shits towards each other over the net. In a rally scoring system, the player who wins the rally, wins the point.
Pickleball is a paddle sport which draws many similarities from the sports of tennis and badminton. However, rally scoring is not one of them.
A singles match in Pickleball is an 11-point match usually. However, in professional tournaments, this number can exceed to 15 or 21. The 11-point format is the more commonly used system. Let us see how to keep a count of its score.
Firstly, the server (Player 1) will begin from the right side of the court. In case the server commits a fault by a false serve or landing it inside the net, he or she will lose serve. However, the opponent (Player 2)
Will not get the point. Similarly on any other point, if a server loses the point after a rally, he or she won’t get the point. The only event on the scorecard would be that the next point will now be served by Player 2. To sum up, in Pickleball, only the server can score a point.
A winner is declared when one of the two players gets to 11 points with a difference of two. In case the score is 10-10, the match would end when one of the two players is ahead by a difference of two. The same rule applies for matches of 15 and 21 points.
A player can lose a point by the following methods:
* Hitting a ball that lands outside bounds
* Hitting a volley while standing in the kitchen
* Hitting the ball in the net
* Hitting a volley on the first return (which means you cannot “serve and volley” in Pickleball as done in Lawn Tennis)
* If the ball hits any other part of the body except the paddle
In some versions of Pickleball, a rally scoring system is implemented for matches of 15 and 21 points. However, these are not recognized or professional matches as the official Pickleball laws do not allow a rally scoring system.
Singles scoring in Pickleball is much easier to understand. The real complexity arises in a doubles match. Please check out guide on the doubles scoring system in a fresh new explainer.
