Padel vs tennis: what's the difference?
Padel is the fastest-growing racket sport in the world, and people coming from tennis always ask the same thing: how different is it really? Here's the short version.
The court and the walls
A padel court is smaller than a tennis court and fully enclosed by glass and mesh walls — and those walls are in play. The ball can rebound off them, like squash, which makes for long, tactical rallies you'd never see in tennis.
Because the court is compact and walled, padel is almost always played as doubles. That's why our padel ratings treat the pair as the unit, not the individual.
Serving and equipment
The serve is underhand, bounced once and hit below waist height — far less of a weapon than a tennis serve, which keeps rallies competitive from the first shot. Rackets are solid, stringless and perforated, and the ball is slightly less pressurised than a tennis ball.
Scoring — basically tennis
Here padel and tennis are nearly identical: points (15, 30, 40), games, and sets, best-of-three. The one twist is the golden point — a single sudden-death point at deuce in most pro events, instead of playing advantage.
If you follow tennis scoring, you can read a padel scoreline instantly — which is exactly why our padel model and pages reuse the same tennis-style structure.